Playing Dirty, by Golf Digest senior writer Joel Beall, is the newest book from the golf specialty publisher Back Nine Press. An intriguing mix of thoroughly researched investigative journalism and golf sentimentalism of the Golf in the Kingdom school of golf writing, it is a “compare-and-contrast” exercise between what might be seen as two wholly unrelated aspects of the game of golf.
The book combines a hard-news journalistic examination of the current state of men’s professional golf, specifically the effects of the influx of Saudi investment, with a somewhat dreamy-eyed look into the experience of the game as (when?) played in its ancestral homeland, Scotland. While I am myself essentially immune to the more spiritual side, if you will, of the golf experience, I deplore the grotesquely cynical approach that has been taken by the professional players who have taken the Saudi shekel, of which Joel Beall offers a concise examination.
The portions of the book that deal with the current kerfluffle in the men’s professional game are thorough, well presented, and obviously well researched—and while I for one have grown somewhat weary of reading about Saudi Arabia, the PIF, LIV Golf, and the current state of the seemingly unending negotiations between the PGA Tour and the golf-obsessed Saudi money-man Yasir Al-Rumayyan, I found a smile creeping across my face as I read the sections in Chapter 3 in which Beall skewers the LIV Golf membership, their tournament format, and the twisted rationalizations employed by the men who have taken Saudi blood money to participate in these farcical exhibitions; in these opinions we are brothers.
“LIV is a moral crisis masquerading as a golf league.”
– Joel Beall, Playing Dirty
(You will note that I specifically define the affected aspect of the game as men’s professional golf, because for all the bandying about of the well-worn phrase “growing the game” in LIV Golf communications and the scripted diatribes delivered by LIV Golf members, it is only men’s professional golf that is affected. There is no aspect of this issue that has any impact whatsoever on the recreational game of golf as it is played by millions of people all over the world, beyond, perhaps, arguments over post-round drinks.
Not only that, but a clear-eyed assessment of the supposed “rupture” of men’s professional golf can only come to the conclusion that it is a tempest in a teapot, an over-reaction by Jay Monahan and the PGA Tour leadership to the departure of a handful of mostly fading former stars and the pick-up of some unproven newbies who lacked confidence in their abilities to make the grade in the meritocracy-based pro game as it is played on the PGA Tour.)
As for the other side of the coin: the “hie me away to the misty links” portions of the book, well, this is the bread and butter of the folks at Back Nine Press and an area where our viewpoints diverge somewhat (see my review of their 2022 release Swing, Walk, Repeat by Jay Revell.)
Beall hits the reader with this stuff right from the get-go, in the introduction, starting up with the story of an itinerant seeker-after-truth named Hess (“just Hess”) who dabbles in real estate and personal training to support his true purpose in life—playing golf. This side of the book segues into examinations of, among other things: the differences between golf in the United States and in Scotland, caddies, lists of the greatest golf courses in Scotland, descriptions of the aforementioned great courses (and others that didn’t quite make the cut), the joys of and proper ways to conduct a Scottish golf pilgrimage, etc., etc., etc. …
Don’t get me wrong, I would love to take my golf clubs to Scotland. It is, after all, the land of (some of) my ancestors, the origin of my surname, and the birthplace of the game—and I have enough of a sense of history to acknowledge the importance of that last fact. What wears me down is the insistence on attributing an air of mystical importance to the experience, a practice which I attribute to a man with whom I share a hometown—fellow Salinas, California native Michael Murphy, the author of the aforementioned Golf in the Kingdom.
Murphy’s book originated the idea of “golf’s mystical journey”, perhaps as a counterpoint to the aspirational country-club ideal of golf as the game was interpreted when it came to the United States. While golf is an everyman’s game in Scotland, and despite the fact that 75% of the golf courses in this country are open to the public either as daily-fee or municipal facilities, the non-golfing public-at-large in the United States view golf as an elitist, members-only activity for RWMs (Rich White Men). It is an image that has proven to be difficult to shake, and in the wake of the popularity of Michael Murphy’s pretentious little tome, many a golf writer has swung that pendulum to the other extreme, extolling the mystical, soul-healing qualities of this crazy game especially when played in Scotland.
Despite my impatience with tales of healing journeys to the mystical homeland of golf, I recognize the counterpoint comparison that the author is making in this book when he contrasts that side of the game, as pursued and experienced by devoted amateurs, to the cynical and unholy, if you will, pursuit of more money than a person could reasonably want or need, by professional golfers.
In Playing Dirty Joel Beall has, I believe, drawn a thoughtful comparison between two widely disparate aspects of the game of golf, contrasting the pursuit of the pure enjoyment of the game by devoted (if somewhat obsessive?) amateurs with the stubbornly obdurate pursuit of obscene wealth, in total disregard of the moral objections to the source of that wealth, by professional players who have, in many cases, already profited enormously from their ability to play this maddening game at a high level.
This book captures a snapshot of the current landscape of the game of golf which will be appreciated by thoughtful students of the game, and looked to, I think, by future scholars of the history of golf.
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