“The Playing Lesson”, by Michael Bamberger ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ -1/2

A new book from Michael Bamberger is always an occasion to celebrate. The author of classic golf titles such as The Green Road Home, To The Linksland, This Golfing Life, and Men in Green has a unique outlook on the game of golf that is grounded in a depth of experience that you won’t find, I think, in any other writer in the modern game. There are a handful that approach it, including his fellow former-Sports Illustrated colleague and co-author of The Swinger, Alan Shipnuck, but Bamberger’s work has a certain feel, a laidback mellowness, if you will, that I haven’t found anywhere else in my 200-plus-volume collection of books on golf.

The Playing Lesson, the latest from esteemed golf writer Michael Bamberger, is the chronicle of a year embedded in the professional game, as a caddy, a tournament volunteer, and a pro-am participant.

I will admit that I was expecting something a bit different from this book, but that is more a failure of imagination on my part than a shortcoming in execution on the author’s part. The Playing Lesson was billed as the chronicle of a year’s immersion in the world of professional golf, and I was expecting more content relating to actual golf lessons – but Bamberger doesn’t do obvious. Sure, he got some swing tips, and putting lessons (more about that later) along the way, but the real learning experience involved him immersing himself in the myriad aspects of the world of professional golf for a year, learning about much more than just the actual playing of the game.

Not that Bamberger is a newbie to the world of pro golf, not by a long shot. His first book, The Green Road Home (1986), chronicles his start in golf at age 14 and his adventures caddying for an array of professional golfers while also starting his life as a writer. His second, To The Linksland (1992), about his adventures as a traveling caddy on the European Tour (with his very understanding wife in tow) is such a classic that a few years ago used copies were going for $100 or more; many a golfer’s dreams of striking it rich by selling a cherished first edition were trampled when it was re-issued in a 30th Anniversary edition in 2022.

In The Playing Lesson Bamberger takes to the road again, caddying, playing in pro-ams, volunteering at tournaments – essentially sampling the many sides of professional golf. It is somewhat reminiscent of the 1968 George Plimpton book Bogey Man, which chronicles the (mis)adventures of the author, and editor of The Paris Review, as he spends a mere month embedded with the PGA Tour, but Bamberger’s sojourn lasts longer and delves deeper into the many and varied aspects of professional golf.

Even a quick mile-wide/inch-deep synopsis of the ground covered by this book would turn this review into a much longer read than it has any right to be; all I can say is, read it. Michael Bamberger’s prose is smooth and a delight to read, and he gets into so many corners of the game that every golfer will find something interesting, something they can relate to, or something they never knew, in this book. I particularly enjoyed the section on his late afternoon round on the back nine at Pacific Grove Golf Links, a quirky but not-to-be-missed municipal course just down the road from Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill, and Cypress Point. A golf trip to the Monterey Peninsula isn’t complete without a round at Pacific Grove.

As for myself, I would love to spend some time with Michael on a putting green and talk with him about that particularly infuriating aspect of the game. He carries a two-sided putter so that he can putt leftie because he often yips short putts right-handed, a concept that astounds me (and not in a good way.) My technical-side antennae went up at a couple of mentions he made of hooked or sliced putts, and putted balls rolling “end-over-end”; these are the sort of misconceptions that are unfortunately common among golfers, and even many golf instructors, and they’re aching to be laid to rest.

Questions of his dubious beliefs about putting aside – as can be said of pretty much everything he has published[1], The Playing Lesson belongs in every thinking golfer’s bookcase.

[1] I must confess that I didn’t care for his previous book to this one, The Ball in the Air. No knock on his writing; I just couldn’t bring myself to care about the three golfers who are the subject of the book.

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.