Book Review: “A Course Called America”, by Tom Coyne ⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2-⭐

Having Exhausted the British Isles, Tom Coyne Gets Exhausted in America

Tom Coyne has become a phenomenon in the world of golf. He has a minor golf-related novel to his credit, A Gentleman’s Game (2001), which was made into a movie; and he followed it up with a non-fiction book, Paper Tiger, documenting his 2004 attempt to make it to the PGA Tour. In 2008, married and a father-to-be, the college English professor then undertook to walk the perimeter of Ireland—yes, walk—and play all the links golf courses (and drink in all the pubs) that got in his way.

His Irish golf journey was documented in 2009’s A Course Called Ireland, a book that was very well received, and was followed in 2018 by A Course Called Scotland—in which he documents a run through the links courses of Scotland (with detours to the English courses of the Open rota, and a few other notables), an attempt to qualify for the 2015 Open Championship at St Andrews, and his journey through the beginnings of sobriety.

How to top those Irish and Scottish journeys? What else but take on the wide-ranging variety of courses in his native land, the United States—thus was born A Course Called America.

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I’m late to the party reading and reviewing A Course Called America, I know. It’s not like I didn’t have an early start—I received a bound galley for early review, but I found my self stopping and starting my reading of the book, then diverting my reading time to other books in my to-be-read stack, and the next thing I knew nearly four months had flown by since the book hit the street.

Part of the reason for the procrastination and delay was that, well… I just wasn’t drawn in to the narrative of Coyne’s hop-scotch, criss-cross journey across the United States “in search of the Great American Golf Course” as I had been by his previous book, A Course Called Scotland.

Much is made of the planning and set up of his meanderings, organizing convenient travel to a large number and bewildering variety of golf courses, in all fifty states of the Union. From an all-dirt (no spikes allowed) nine-hole layout on an Indian reservation in Arizona to some of the most revered and prestigious golf courses in the country—including every course that has hosted a U.S. Open—Coyne teed up a golf ball on 295 courses (at least one in every state) for 301 rounds of golf, playing with everyone from local “muni Bobs” to captains of industry (how do you think he got on at places like Cypress Point, Riviera, and National Golf Links of America?)

The trouble, at least for me when I would pick up the book again, was that all the rushing around meant that Coyne was very limited in the amount of page space that he could devote to many of the courses, and while some prestigious and/or distinctive courses got a chapter, or most of one, to themselves, many were mentioned only in passing. All in all, the narrative is less cohesive than in his Ireland and Scotland books; that is what made it difficult for me to stick with the book.

I will admit to jumping ahead to the Northern California chapters—San Francisco, California and Pebble Beach, California—out of order, and then re-reading them when I got to them in reading order, and I feel that Coyne did justice to our little corner of the golf world. I mean, what’s not to like? With layouts like Cypress Point, the Cal Club, Pasatiempo, Pebble Beach, the Olympic Club, Sharp Park, Harding Park, and Pacific Grove Golf Links, we are blessed with an embarrassment of riches (even if most of us will never set foot on some of those hallowed fairways.)

All things considered, I was leaning heavily toward no better than a four-star rating as I approached the final chapters, but his write-ups of the time he spent in California (Northern and Southern) and Hawaii, and especially closing out the book as he had begun—writing about his dad, clinched the last half-star.

I’m still not sure that Coyne made a definitive choice for the “Great American Golf Course”; but frankly, I think that there is no such thing. The variety of golf courses in the United States is reflective of the wide variety of the terrain that is available to build on, and the great variety of the people that build those courses and play the game. And while Tom Coyne may not have nailed down a candidate for the Great American Golf Course, he has certainly introduced his readers to the rich variety of courses there are to play in the USA, and similarly to the wide range of American golfers who play them. In so doing, he has done our country, and all golf fans, a great service.