Langer’s charge at PURE Insurance event is narrowly derailed; K.J. Choi notches first senior win

Pebble Beach, CA – 9/26/2021

While the 2021 European Ryder Cup team were hanging on grimly and putting on brave faces back in Wisconsin at Herb Kohler’s “Monster on Lake Michigan”, Whistling Straits, on the final day of the 2021 Ryder Cup, a former European Ryder Cup stalwart was out on the West Coast making a bid for a victory at a much more hospitable venue – Pebble Beach Golf Links – in the PGA Tour Champions event, the 2021 PURE Insurance Championship (AKA The First Tee Open).

“The PURE Insurance Championship Impacting The First Tee”, to give it its full name, is a low-key event that should be on every Central California golf fan’s go-and-see list. With free admission, small crowds, and a September schedule slot that pretty much guarantees good weather, this event is the best way to watch golf at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

The last three years have seen the event butting up against the PGA Tour’s season opener in Napa in 2019, the rescheduled U.S. Open in 2020, and this year, the Ryder Cup — a PGA Tour Champions event is a hard sell against that kind of competition.

Speaking of the Ryder Cup, the 2021 PURE Insurance event saw a former European Ryder Cup stalwart, Bernhard Langer, in the thick of things, even while his former team were taking an historic drubbing at Whistling Straits, going down 19–9 in the most lopsided result in modern-day Ryder Cup history.

Following a first-round 71 with a six-under 66 on Saturday, Langer came into the final round trailing leader K.J. Choi by two strokes. Choi, who was chasing his first PGA Tour Champions win, opened with rounds of 67 and 68, ultimately posting a final round 68 to cement his first win on the senior tour. That “two stroke” number figured strongly in the final result, both as Choi’s final margin of victory over T-2 finishers Langer and fellow countryman Alex Cejka, and as the value of the biggest stumble of Langer's round.

After starting the final round with a two-stroke deficit, Langer fell further behind Choi through the opening nine, going out in three-under 33 with birdies on holes 1, 5 and 6, while Choi went out in 31 with a birdie on 2 and a string of four more on holes 5 through 8. At Hole #10, the 437-yard par-four that marks the farthest point of the course, his drive came afoul of the left-side fairway bunker complex and he could do no better than coming out to the primary rough with his second shot, from which he took two more shots to get to the green and one-putt for a double-bogey six.

After playing to a birdie on the deceptively difficult par-four eleventh hole on the strength of a beautifully placed approach to five feet below the hole, and two-putting for par on the par-three twelfth, Langer again came to grief at the 403-yard par-four thirteenth hole.

With the hole located in the new “annex” to the green in the back right that is so tempting, and testing, Langer fired his approach shot right at the flag, but couldn’t hold the green. The ball skipped off the back of the putting surface and rolled through the closely mown area before coming to rest just inside the main cut of rough. A delicate chip into the closely mown upslope still carried enough speed to roll out on the down-sloping green to about 12 feet below the hole, but his superbly paced uphill putt performed a 90º lip-out and came to rest two inches from the hole, resulting in a hard-fought bogey that dropped him further off of Choi’s pace.

Fighting back over the remaining five holes, Langer made up another stroke with a birdie on the long, tough par-five 14th hole, shooting from 130 yards out to perfect position on the dining-room-table-sized flat area on the right side of the putting surface that is a traditional Sunday hole location, rolling in a dead-straight six-foot putt for a four

Putting out for par on #15 (and though he could not have known it, just as Collin Morikawa was finishing up with a tie on the 18th hole to clinch the Ryder Cup for the United States), Langer followed up with another par on 16 after his 30+ foot uphill birdie putt drifted right to miss by a bare two inches.

A laser-like approach shot to six feet or so above the traditional back-left flag on the par-three 7th hole led to a welcome birdie for Langer, who then ran into a little bit of trouble off the tee on Pebble’s iconic par-five closing hole. Though Langer, not being a notable long-ball hitter off the tee, would not be expected to go for the 18th green in two, his tee shot’s placement took away any possibility.

Coming to rest toward the right side of the fairway and well clear of the bunker complex, Langer’s ball was nevertheless dead blocked by the remaining fairway tree about 35 yards ahead. While this second shot from that location was a conundrum that might have stumped a lesser player, Langer solved it with a stunning 180-yard stinger that went under the canopy on the right side of the tree, shaping itself along the right-hand curve of the fairway’s edge and never rising higher than perhaps a dozen feet off of the ground.

Langer’s second shot on #18 today might be the best shot seen and noted by the fewest people in the history of this golf hole.

Following his second shot with a well-placed 130-yard pop to the green, the Münchener rolled in the birdie putt from above the hole to finish with a four-under 68 and a three-round total of 205, 11 under par.

In the meantime, leader K. J. Choi was holding onto, but not extending, his lead. Choi ultimately finished his round with a back-nine 37, bookmarking a bogey on 14 with matching sets of four pars before and after to finish at 13-under and clinch his first win on the PGA Tour Champions.

In terms of Bernhard Langer’s round, the difference between him racking up his 42nd senior-tour win (to equal his 42 European Tour wins) and K. J. Choi notching his first came down to the double-bogey on 10, and the bogey on 13 – a fairway bunker and a lipped-out putt. This shows that, even on the 50-plus circuit, the talent pool is deep and the competition is still fierce.

Ben Hogan owns a unique Ryder Cup record that may never be equaled

While the eyes of the golf world are focused on the Ryder Cup this week, I thought that it would be fun to pull away from the drama of the current year’s events to take a look at some Ryder Cup history, and ask a question. What constitutes the “best” record in the Ryder Cup? Is it the most wins, or the most points scored over time? Or is it a perfect record, unblemished by losses, or even halves? And if it is the latter, who has achieved such a record?

Well, I can tell you that only one man has, and I’m willing to bet that most golfers, if asked who that man was, would guess and toss out names like Nicklaus, Palmer, or Woods from the American side; or Faldo, Ballesteros, or Montgomerie from the GBI/European side—but they’d be wrong.

That man is Ben Hogan.

Ben Hogan at the 1967 Ryder Cup awards ceremony
Credit: PGA of America via Getty Images    Copyright: PGA of America

Hogan is not a name that comes up much in conversations about the Ryder Cup these days, but it should. The American players who are most strongly associated with the biennial competition include Jack Nicklaus, Paul Azinger, and Phil Mickelson; on the GBI/European side you’ll hear about Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Colin Montgomerie, and Ian Poulter. Ben Hogan didn’t play in as many Ryder Cups as those big names, or score as many points, but he has one distinction that none of the rest of them can match: he was undefeated, both as a player and as a captain.

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The 1947 Ryder Cup marked the return of the event to the world stage for the first time since 1937, and Ben Hogan’s first appearance in the event, as a playing captain—he remains the only man to have been chosen to captain the American squad without having played on a previous team. Foursomes and singles were the only matches that were contested in those days, and Hogan played in only one match, teaming up with good friend Jimmy Demaret in a foursomes match against Jimmy Adams and Max Faulkner, defeating the GBI duo 2-up.

Played at Portland Golf Club, in Portland, Oregon, the 1947 event was marked by controversy that came at playing captain Hogan from both sides. First, American player Vic Ghezzi, perhaps disgruntled by the serial disappointment of having been selected for three consecutive Ryder Cups that were cancelled by the war—19391, 1941, and 1943—complained that he had been discriminated against by Hogan when the captain eliminated from consideration for qualification the results of several invitational events in which Ghezzi had finished well.[i]

Second, Ghezzi also accused Hogan of pressuring tournaments to ease restrictions on the alteration of grooves on wedges, an infraction that Ghezzi had been accused of earlier that year, an accusation that was reported in the press. It is possible that these reports encouraged GBI captain Henry Cotton in alleging that the Americans were using clubs with illegal grooves. This accusation came to naught when Captain Hogan allowed the Americans’ clubs to be inspected, and all were found to be legal and conforming.

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Hogan’s next appearance in the Ryder Cup came in 1949 as a non-playing captain—the youngest, to this day, in the history of the event. Just seven-and-a-half months after the February, 1949 head-on collision with a Greyhound bus that had come close to claiming his life, Hogan led a nine-man team consisting of four veterans; Sam Snead, Jimmy Demaret, Lloyd Mangrum, and Dutch Harrison, and five rookies; Skip Alexander, Bob Hamilton, Chick Harbert, Clayton Heafner, and Johnny Palmer, against a 10-man GBI squad of eight veterans and two rookies.

The event was again marked by some controversy, on two counts: First, Hogan reopened old wounds from the 1947 Ryder Cup when he leveled charges, on the night before play was to begin, that some of the British players were using irons with grooves that were deeper than were allowed by the rules. Unlike Henry Cotton’s accusation in 1947, the charges were found to have some merit: Jock Ballantyne, the head pro of the host club, Ganton Golf Club in Yorkshire, reportedly stayed up half the night grinding the faces of several sets of clubs to bring the grooves into conformance.

Second, the U.S. team brought along their own provisions, including fresh butter and eggs, half a dozen Virginia hams, thirty pounds of bacon, and some six hundred pounds of Texas sirloin steaks, to a United Kingdom that was still subject to wartime food rationing. The furor surrounding this culinary affront died down when Hogan offered to share the American bounty with the host team.

This was still in the era of foursomes and singles matches only, and while the GBI squad led 3-1 at the end of the Friday foursomes, the U.S. team rallied back in the Saturday singles, winning six of the eight matches to post an overall winning record of 7 and 5.

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Hogan returned to Ryder Cup play in 1951 as a team member. Though thankfully unmarked by controversy, the 1951 event did score an oddity— play was split between Friday (foursomes) and Sunday (singles) so that participants and spectators (presumably) could attend a college football game on Saturday in nearby Chapel Hill, where home team North Carolina hosted the visiting Tennessee Volunteers.

The U.S. team went out to a 3–1 lead in the Friday foursome matches, Hogan and good friend Jimmy Demaret teaming up once again and defeating the GBI duo of Fred Day and Ken Bousfield, 5 & 4.

Despite their strong play on Friday (the three matches they won went 5 & 3, 5 & 4, 5 & 4), the American Ryder Cup squad stayed in Pinehurst and practiced on Saturday, while the visiting GBI squad attended the American football game (and likely wondered at the name, given that only one member of the team ever touches the ball with his foot.) The visiting team, Tennessee, won in a rout, 27–0, but any hopes of foreshadowing for the GBI Ryder Cup squad was crushed during Sunday’s singles matches.

The U.S. team dominated the Sunday singles, 6-1-1, adding 6½ points to their Friday total for a 9½–2½ trouncing of the GBI squad. Hogan, playing in his first, and only, Ryder Cup singles match, defeated Britain’s Charlie Ward 3 & 2. It was to be the last Ryder Cup point he ever scored.

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Hogan didn’t return to the Ryder Cup until 1967, when he took the U.S. squad down the road to Champions Golf Club in Houston, Texas as a non-playing captain.

Not taking it any easier on his team than he ever had on himself, Hogan imposed a 10:30 pm. curfew and early practice sessions on his squad of five veterans and five rookies.

It was evident, however, that Hogan had confidence in his team. At the opening night dinner, after GBI squad captain Dai Rees, a loquacious Welshman, waxed lyrical (and overlong) about the virtues of each of his players in his introductory remarks, Hogan kept his speech short and sweet. After introducing each player by name only, and with his entire team standing, Hogan said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the U.S. Ryder Cup Team—the finest golfers in the world.” 

There was noticeable friction between Hogan and one of his players, though: Arnold Palmer. The two had always had a frosty relationship, and a couple of incidents during the 1967 Ryder Cup only deepened the permafrost.

In an interesting move that would form the basis of the one question I would most like to ask Mr Hogan, given the chance, he opted for his team to play the smaller (1.62-inch diameter) British ball, as was the option in those days.[ii] The decision to play the smaller ball led to a bit of internal controversy between Hogan and Palmer. Details of the exchange vary, but allegedly when Palmer, who had obviously forgotten to practice with the 1.62-inch ball, asked Hogan if he had brought any, Hogan snapped back, “Did you remember to bring your clubs?”[iii]

Of course, it probably hadn’t helped things that Palmer had shown up a couple of days late for practice rounds, and then took a few members of the GBI squad up for a ride in the Rockwell Jet Commander aircraft that he had bought the year before.[iv] After climbing to 8,000 feet and rolling the aircraft, Palmer circled dangerously low over the golf course on final approach before landing. Billy Casper was on the course at the time, and later recalled that when Palmer flew over in the jet, with his wheels down, he was so low that, “I could have hit a wedge over that plane.” Tournament host and Champions Club co-founder Jimmy Demaret quipped, “The only time I’ve ever seen a plane fly under the eaves of a clubhouse.”[v]

The stunt earned Palmer a letter of severe reprimand from the Federal Aviation Administration, and a rebuke from Hogan.

After Palmer and partner Gardner Dickinson won their Friday foursomes matches 2 & 1 over the Anglo/Irish duo of Peter Alliss and Christy O’Connor in the morning, and 5 & 4 over another Anglo/Irish pairing, Malcolm Gregson and Hugh Boyle in the afternoon, Palmer was sat out in the morning for the Saturday fourball (better-ball) matches, a 1963 addition to the Ryder Cup format. This is often seen as a slight against Palmer, who agreed in public with his captain’s decision, and later admitted in private that he was a bit tired.[vi] Julius Boros, who had 14 PGA Tour wins to his credit by this time, and two U.S. Open wins (1952, 1963) also sat out Saturday morning after playing morning and afternoon on Friday.

Saturday afternoon saw the two rested players, Palmer and Boros, paired up against Scotsman George Will and Irishman Hugh Boyle in a hard-fought match. The American pair were 4-down at the turn, and battled back to a 1-up win that was the closest U.S. victory of the afternoon.

The Sunday singles matches were dominated by Captain Hogan’s American players 5–3 in the morning and 5½ –2½ in the afternoon, for an overall score of USA–23 ½, GBI–8 ½.

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Ben Hogan’s record of three Ryder Cup wins doesn’t sound too impressive compared to the points totals toted up by some modern-day players, but his opportunities to rack up points was limited by the war years, and by the fact that his Ryder Cup playing days came before the addition of a day of fourball matches between foursome and singles. In one category, though, he stands out above all others: he is the only man whose Ryder Cup record, both as a player and a captain, has that pair of zeroes after the win count: 3–0–0. 

Ben Hogan – undefeated.

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[i] Dodson, James; Ben Hogan: An American Life, pg. 213

[ii] The Montreal Gazette; October 20, 1967 

[iii] Sampson, Curt; Hogan, pg. 229

[iv] https://www.arnoldpalmer.com/aviation

[v] Dodson, James; Ben Hogan: An American Life, pg. 475

[vi] Feherty, David & Frank, James A.; David Feherty’s Totally Subjective History of the Ryder Cup, pg. 146

If You Can’t Play Golf, Read About It – A Recommended-Reading List of Golf-Related Books

In this time of shelter-in-place and social distancing, with people turning to indoor pursuits as their chosen outdoor pursuits are, largely, curtailed for the duration of the health emergency, “Top 10” lists of movies to TV shows to watch, or books to read, are flourishing. Since I publish two blogs, one on golf and another on books, what is more appropriate than for me to publish a golf-book reading list of my own? Here then, in no particular order, is my personal rundown of golf books that I have found to be especially rewarding to read, with a brief description of each.

Let’s start with the man who started it all for me, Dan Jenkins:

Dead Solid Perfect, by Dan Jenkins
This is the book that was my introduction to Dan Jenkins’ work, and to golf writing in general. Dead Solid Perfect was recommended to me by the father of a girl I was dating, years ago, with this caveat, “Don’t read it anywhere where laughing out loud will bother other people.” I went out and bought a copy, and read it straight through over a weekend. It lived up to its billing.

A bit raunchy in parts (though not a patch on Jenkins’ big football-based bestseller, Semi-Tough), and far from politically correct at any time, DSP relates the adventures of Fort Worth-based pro golfer Kenny Lee Puckett—growing up in Fort Worth, pursuing life and love on the pro golf circuit, and making a run at the U.S. Open title. (If the name sounds familiar, Semi-Tough’s pro football player protagonist Billy Clyde Puckett is Kenny Lee’s nephew.)

DSP is the genre-defining grandaddy of all golf novels; no golf-reading list can be considered complete if it does not include this book.

More by Dan Jenkins:

NOVELS
The Money-Whipped Steer-Job Three-Jack Give-Up Artist: Winner by two lengths for the “longest title in my bookcase” prize, this book is kind of Dead Solid Perfect, Pt II. Published in 2001, just shy of 40 years after the publication of Dead Solid Perfect, Jenkins revisits familiar territory with another Fort Worth-based pro golfer, Bobby Joe Grooves, who is on a quest for a spot on the U.S. Ryder Cup squad.

Slim and None: Bobby Joe Grooves is back in this 2005 sequel, with a new girl friend, and a new quest—a major championship title and membership in an exclusive club: major winners aged 44 and over.

The Franchise Babe: Jenkins switches gears in this 2008 novel—instead of a pro golfer from Fort Worth, his protagonist is a golf writer from Fort Worth who has jumped the fence from the PGA Tour to cover an up-and-coming young LPGA star. Predictable, maybe; but also funny in Dan’s resolutely non-PC manner. Look for a cameo appearance by a thinly disguised Ron Sirak, a good friend of Dan’s who has worked the LPGA beat for years.

NON-FICTION
The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate: The classic, must-read collection of golf essays, some real, some fictional. Dan’s second book, written in 1970, contains the single best comic essay on golf ever written, “The Glory Game”.

Fairways and Greens: This 1994 collection of Dan’s writing is divided into two sections: essays on the (then) current-day game, and a “nostalgia” section, heavy on the Hogan (of course!) Also contains a reprint of “The Glory Game” re-titled as “The Glory Game at Goat Hills”.

Unplayable Lies: Another collection of essays, published in 2015. Half existing works that had appeared previously in Golf Digest or Golf World (in some cases slightly updated or reworked for the book), the other half new work, written specifically for this book.

Jenkins at the Majors: Another collection of Dan’s work, 94 of the brilliant, written-on-deadline pieces on golf’s majors, written for the Fort Worth Press, Dallas Times Herald, Sports Illustrated, and Golf Digest that he turned in during his career as a newspaperman and magazine writer—during which he covered 232 majors—arranged chronologically and chosen for the historical significance of the particular event.

Mr Hogan, The Man I Knew, by Kris Tschetter
This 2010 volume by LPGA player Kris Tschetter is unique in the Hogan bibliography, relating as it does how South Dakota-native Tschetter became acquainted with Hogan while she was on the golf team at Texas Christian University in Forth Worth. She and her older brother, Mike, who also played golf for TCU, were gifted junior memberships at Shady Oaks Golf Club—Hogan’s golf hangout in his retirement years—by their parents. Hogan noticed Kris for her diligent practice sessions (one of his trademarks) and they became sometime practice partners. Kris and Mr Hogan remained close for the remainder of his life, and her stories of their time together and his surrogate-grandfather role in her life are heart-warming and genuine.

I haven’t conducted a formal count, but Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer have to be running neck-and-neck in the number of books that have been written about them, Palmer because he was so open and charismatic, and Hogan because he was pretty much the opposite (or at least perceived that way), so this book is important for the depiction of a side of Ben Hogan that few knew existed.

For more on Ben Hogan, I recommend two fine (though very different) biographies, Hogan, by Curt Sampson, and Ben Hogan: An American Life, by James Dodson; also Grown at Glen Garden, by Jeff Miller, about Hogan, Byron Nelson and the Fort Worth golf course where they both grew into the game; and Miracle at Merion, by David Barrett, which relates the story of Hogan’s comeback from a near-fatal 1949 automobile collision, leading to the much-lauded 1950 U.S. Open victory at Merion Golf Club, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Men in Green, by Michael Bamberger

This 2015 book by (now-former) Sports Illustrated writer Bamberger is a delightful road trip around the United States to connect with some legends of the game of golf, both well-known and little-known/unknown. The names involved run the gamut from Arnold Palmer to Dolphus Hull. It is full of Bamberger’s wry observations and enlivened by his deep knowledge of and love for the game of golf. (The talks he had with Arnold Palmer are themselves worth the price of the book.)

More by Michael Bamberger: 

The Green Road Home: Bamberger’s first book, published in 1986, is about the six months he spent caddying in the PGA Tour the previous year, at the age of 24. Twenty-three tournaments, including the British Open and the PGA Championship. Caddying for a disparate array of players such as Al Geiberger, George Archer, Brad Faxon, and Steve Elkington. It is a great look at a bygone time in pro golf, and the beginning of the career of one of the best writers in the game of golf today.

To The Linksland: Six years after The Green Road Home, Bamberger and his adventurous and very understanding wife, Christine, left their office jobs—he a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, she a New York ad executive—to see the other side of golf: Scotland, the Continent, and the European Tour. It is an adventurous travelogue, and a journey to the heart and soul of the most soulful game in the world.

This Golfing Life: A stirring retrospective, published in 2005, looking back at twenty years in golf, from caddying in his twenties to reporting for the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he covered golf part-time, before moving on (and up) to Sports Illustrated.

Bud, Sweat, and Tees, by Alan Shipnuck

Former Sports Illustrated writer, now wielding a pen for Golf.com, my fellow Salinas, California native Shipnuck can always be counted on to find a quirky story among the goings-on in the world of professional golf. This book, which follows PGA Tour pro Rich Beem’s early career, from his 1999 rookie season to his early (and ultimate) peak as the 2002 PGA Championship winner, is a great example. It’s a crazy ride from Beem’s stint as a minimum wage cellphone salesman, to hooking into the wilder side of life on the PGA Tour accompanied by his equally hard-living caddie Steve Duplantis.

More by Alan Shipnuck:

Swinging From My Heels – Shipnuck collaborated with San Jose, California native Christina Kim on this inside look at the 2009 LPGA Tour. Kim, the youngest LPGA player in history to reach one million dollars in career earnings—back when a million bucks was still a lot of money—has never been one to pull a punch, and this no-holds-look at a season on the distaff Tour raised some eyebrows when it came out in 2010.

The Battle for Augusta National: Hootie, Martha, and the Masters of the Universe – The first book by Shipnuck explored the Hootie Johnson/Martha Burke controversy that affected the 2003 Masters golf tournament.

The Swinger—A collaboration with (then-)fellow SI scribe Michael Bamberger, this roman-á-clef novel is thinly-disguised run at the infamous trials and tribulations of Tiger Woods.

The Greatest Game Ever Played, by Mark Frost

The inspiring story of Francis Ouimet, the 21-year-old American amateur golfer who defeated two titans of golf, England’s Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, to take the 1913 U.S. Open title. The account of how Ouimet, accompanied by his 10-year-old caddie, Eddie Lowery, took down these two giants of the game in a nerve-wracking playoff at The Country Club, in Brookline, Massachusetts, is a sports story for the ages.

More by Mark Frost:

The Grand Slam: Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf – No name in American golf resonates more strongly throughout the game than that of Bobby Jones. Frost delves deeply into the life of this American sporting icon in this well-received 2004 biography.

The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever – Though I have always felt that the event doesn’t live up to the billing of the subtitle, this book about a private match at Cypress Point Golf Club in 1956 between two of the top professional golfers of the era, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead, and two top local amateurs, Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward, is an engrossing read, with plenty of infill back-story on the participants, as well as the instigators of this fabled confrontation, San Francisco auto dealer and amateur golf supporter Eddie Lowery (yes, that Eddie Lowery) and Oklahoma oil and cattle millionaire George Coleman.

A Course Called Ireland, by Tom Coyne

An eccentric golf-centric travelogue, in which Coyne, an associate professor of English at a small Midwestern college, explores his Irish heritage by walking around the perimeter of Ireland in sixteen weeks, playing every golf course that he comes across (60, eventually). He doesn’t miss many pubs along the way, either.

More from Tom Coyne:

A Course Called Scotland – Coyne’s fourth book, this 2018 volume is something of a followup to his 2009’s A Course Called Ireland. Also a golf-centric travelogue, this time around Coyne plays all of the links courses in Scotland (and a few notable ones in England and Wales) on his way to an attempt to qualify for the Open Championship at Bruntsfield Links in Edinburgh.

Paper Tiger – Coyne’s first “golf quest” book, this 2006 effort is about a year spent attempting to qualify for the PGA Tour. Funny and poignant by turns, it is an exploration of a secret desire harbored by many good-but-not-quite-good-enough recreational golfers.

A Gentleman’s Game – Coyne’s first book, and only novel, about a talented high school golfer and his clashes with his father, a self-made businessman who is envious of his son’s talent and the entry it gives the boy into the rarified social circles of the local country club.

Arnie, Seve, and a Fleck of Golf History, by Bill Fields

Subtitled Heroes, Underdogs, Courses, and Championships, this 2011 volume by Bill Fields, a former senior editor at Golf World magazine, a compendium of his columns from a 30-year golf-writing career, is a condensed master course in “How to write about golf”. The best golf writing isn’t about the score or who won, or what clubs they used—it’s about the people in the game, winners or also-rans, and their journeys to achievement. Fields is a master at identifying and illuminating the essence of the story he’s telling, with tremendous empathy for the people involved, and he has a poetic flair for a well-turned phrase that makes his prose a joy to read.

The Longest Shot—Jack Fleck, Ben Hogan, and Pro Golf’s Greatest Upset at the 1955 U.S. Open, by Neil Sagebiel
I had the pleasure of meeting author Neil Sagebiel at the 2012 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. I was there covering the event for my then-media outlet, Examiner.com, and Neil was there for this book. The victory, in an 18-hole playoff, that unknown muni-course pro Jack Fleck scored over Ben Hogan, one of the brightest stars in golf’s firmament at the time, was truthfully one of the biggest upsets in golf history. Sagebiel delves deeply into the background of Fleck, who was something of a character, and a minor player of the sort who inhabited the fringes of the professional game in those days. It is a well-balanced look at a great moment in sports history, and the only one that I have read which does not approach the story from the standpoint of “Wouldn’t it have been better if Hogan had won?”

Also from Neil Sagebiel:

Draw in the Dunes–The 1969 Ryder Cup and the Finish That Shocked the World. Just about any golf fan is aware of the finish of the 1969 Ryder Cup, when Jack Nicklaus conceded a putt to Britain’s Tony Jacklin – a concession that resulted in the first tie in the history of the competition (while allowing the U.S. squad, as defending champions, to keep the cup.) The reactions at the time ranged the gamut, from U.S. Captain Sam Snead’s self-righteous indignation to frank relief on the part of many on the GBI squad. In this book Neil brought a significant moment in golf history to life, combining the results of exhaustive research and extensive interviews with his prodigious storytelling talent to paint a complete, and very satisfying portrait of a complex series of events. 

The Story of Golf in Fifty Holes, by Tony Dear
Tony Dear, a British golf writer living in the Seattle area, explores the history of golf in unique fashion in this 2015 book, ticking off fifty significant events in the history of the game, in chronological order, by looking at the golf holes where they happened. I have met and played golf with Tony on a couple of occasions, and found him to be a knowledgeable and erudite scholar of the game, qualities which this book puts on display superbly. I think that any golf fan with an interest in the history of the game will find this book to be very interesting (though I do hope that Tony will revise his selection for #50 if he ever publishes an updated edition.)

Pebble Beach and the Forgotten Men, by Jerry Stewart

We have all heard the story of Phil Mickelson’s maternal grandfather, Al Santos, a poor kid growing up in Monterey, California, son of a Portuguese fisherman, who at age 13 became one of the first caddies at the newly opened Pebble Beach Golf Links. Well, in this 2005 book by Jerry Stewart, then a sportswriter for the Monterey County Herald (and now Communications Manager for the Northern California Golf Association) you will read some great stories about, and told by, many of the other caddies – a colorful bunch, to be sure – that have paced the fairways and greens of Pebble Beach over the years.

Jerry is another local guy, born and raised in Salinas like myself, and a good friend whom I first met in the media center for the Champions Tour’s First Tee Championship tournament at Pebble Beach. In Pebble Beach and the Forgotten Men he has put together a great collection of the kind of stories that are usually heard over libations in the Men’s Grill after a round of golf. It’s a fun read for anyone who has been fascinated by the long history of one of America’s greatest golf courses, and a lot cheaper than buying a round of drinks for the bar.

Book review: “The Prodigy”, by John Feinstein ⭐⭐⭐-1/2

I have been aware of John Feinstein’s writing, especially his golf writing, for many years; in fact, his 1996 chronicle of a season on the PGA Tour, A Good Walk Spoiled, was my introduction to non-fiction reading about professional golf. Though I have concentrated on his golf writing, Feinstein has written several well-regarded books on basketball, baseball, and football—and I have only recently learned that he has also authored a series of sports-related YA (young adult) novels, including the recent release, The Prodigy, the first of his books for younger readers on the subject of golf.

The Prodigy is the new YA sports novel from John Feinstein—his first that is set in the world of golf.

The Prodigy is the somewhat fanciful tale of a 17-year-old golf phenom named Frank Baker, a nice kid from a small town in Connecticut who has amazing golf skills. The book is set in the recent past—2017 and early 2018, to be exact—and we pick up the story when Frank is preparing to play in the 2017 U.S. Amateur at Riviera Country Club, in the upscale Los Angeles-area city of Pacific Palisades.

Frank is being raised by his father, Tom, a divorced single parent who is a freelance stock trader—and a full-time golf dad. Frank is looking forward to playing college golf, and given his record, which includes making it to the semifinals of the U.S. Amateur the previous year at the age of 16, he is assured of a multitude of offers, from the best programs in the country. His father, on the other hand, has his eyes on a different prize.

Frank’s prowess on the golf course has attracted attention from more than just college coaches; agents and equipment company reps have shown interest, and the book’s story arc is built around the conflict that arises when Frank’s dad gets too cozy with an agent from a big sports-representation firm. Frank is under pressure from his dad and the agent to forgo a college career and turn pro. The pressure gets more intense when the youngster earns a spot in the field at the 2018 Masters, heating up even more when Frank shows that he can keep up with the big boys on one of the biggest stages in the game of golf.

There are two people in Frank’s corner in all of the drama surrounding his college / pro dilemma: his swing coach, Slugger Johnson—the head pro at Frank’s home course; and Slugger’s longtime friend and college golf teammate, Keith Forman, a former low-level pro golfer turned golf writer. Forman’s involvement raises journalistic dilemmas for him as he finds himself becoming part of Frank’s story—even coming into conflict with Frank’s father and the ever-present agent—and not just a dispassionate observer who is reporting the story.

Feinstein creates an air of conflict that the Keith Forman character has to work through, describing a number of rather hostile encounters between Forman and tournament volunteers and security personnel, even citing a USGA training session for marshals in which media-badge holders are singled out as untrustworthy (based on a real experience of Feinstein’s—I guess I had better watch my P’s and Q’s the next time I’m at a USGA event on a media credential!)

The conflict between Frank (with Slugger and Keith in his corner), and his dad and the agent, along with his extraordinary play at one of the most high-profile golf tournaments in the world, are the main factors that combine to bring the action to a dramatic conclusion at the 2018 Masters.

One thing you can be sure of in a John Feinstein book is the insider’s touch. Feinstein knows everybody in the game, from players to agents, equipment reps, media folks, and officials and functionaries from the USGA and the PGA Tour. This knowledge is on full display in The Prodigy, to the extent that it starts to feel like rather gratuitous name-dropping. Players, including big names like Phil Mickelson, Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, and Justin Thomas, not only have cameos, they play significant roles in the story, interacting with Frank and the other characters.

And it’s not just players, though they are the most recognizable names. Some of the other real-life names that are dropped include golf media personalities from TV, print journalists, and behind-the-scenes folks from the USGA and the technical side of broadcasting. As for the agents and equipment reps, they get the same short shrift that Florida real-estate developers get in a Carl Hiaasen novel—and I wonder how many of them are still going to be speaking to Feinstein after reading this book.

For the golf-knowledgeable teen audience at which this book is aimed, the big-name golfers who are mentioned will be well-known figures, and those readers might get a kick out of reading a story in which these stars of the PGA Tour interact with a teenaged golfer, even if the conversations and situations feel awkward and contrived—which they do.

The inclusion of real people from golf broadcasting, such as Joe Buck, Paul Azinger, Brandel Chamblee, and Holly Sonders, will pique the interest of young readers who watch golf on TV, but the use of the real names of people from the behind-the-scenes operations, and from the print-media world, will go right over the heads of the young reading audience (and many older readers, too…). On the other hand, readers and reviewers who actually know these people (and I know, or at least have met, a few of them) will find it odd to see in print a fictionalized version of a known person. This aspect of the book rings false with me, and seems rather pointless, all things considered.

Other aspects of the story are also rather uneven. While the overall “voice” of the book has a decided YA tenor, it wanders back and forth between over-explaining simple aspects of the game, as if catering to non-golfers, and using shorthand references that only a reader who is well-versed in the game will understand.

There are curious (and admittedly, mostly minor) lapses that will bother the knowledgeable golfer (or maybe just golf writers who are also editors…). For instance, when setting the scene for the section of the book in which Frank is playing in the 2017 U.S. Amateur, at Riviera Country Club, Feinstein describes the club’s location as being “…a few miles east of the Pacific Ocean…”, but Riviera’s westernmost border lies a scant mile or so from the beach. (Yeah, it’s a nit, but it caught my eye because I specifically checked it for a column I did a few years ago about Ben Hogan’s history at Riviera.) 

Another little faux pas that caught my attention was a misquote of the tagline from the USGA’s pace-of-play campaign of a couple of years back (a line borrowed from a scene in Caddyshack), which is cited as “While we’re still young”, rather than the correct line, which is just “While we’re young.” There are a few other instances like that scattered throughout the book—small things, but noticeable to the knowledgeable, and attentive, reader.

One thread that runs through the latter part of the story, and one which I relished, is a series of subtle, and not-so-subtle, digs at Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters—and their fussy rules and regulations, which are capriciously enacted and vigorously enforced, such as their insistence on referring to spectators on the grounds of the club as “patrons”, a ban on cellphones on the grounds (which Frank is gently but firmly admonished for joking about in an interview), and the use of the terms “first nine” and “second nine” instead of “front nine” and “back nine”. The Keith Forman character is characterized as “…(knowing) he was privileged to cover the Masters and (that) he was in a place any golf fan would kill to be, but the atmosphere of the place—the entitlement of it all—made him feel a bit squeamish.” I’m with Keith on that one.

All in all, while The Prodigy is an engaging read, especially for young golf fans, the overall scenario—which I cannot fully describe without introducing spoilers—is a little over-the-top, and the scenes which involve real-life people from the golf world feel forced and unrealistic. These things might not matter to, or be noticed by, the intended teenage audience, but adult readers, especially those with a bit of familiarity with the personalities involved, will squirm a little over some of those passages.

Book review: “The First Major –The Inside Story of the 2016 Ryder Cup”, by John Feinstein ☆☆☆☆ ½☆

A new book from New York Times bestselling author John Feinstein is always a treat. He is a sports journalist non pareil, as erudite and knowledgeable – across a wide spectrum of sports, not just golf – as he is prolific, and his latest “The First Major: The Inside Story of the 2016 Ryder Cup” is his 28th non-fiction sports book.

Feinstein has written about all the major sports that define America’s sporting life, from pro tennis to NFL football. Even if you don’t read sports books, you may know his work from his time at Sports Illustrated, or his current stints at the Washington Post and Golf Digest – or you may hear him on the radio on Sirius XM, or see him on television on the Golf Channel. In fact, if you are an American sports fan, of any stripe, this introductory paragraph is probably a waste of my time, because you already know his work.

The upshot of this recitation of Feinstein’s bona fides is that he is a sports journalist that professional athletes know and trust, and getting the best stories, the inside dope, requires the ability to get athletes to talk to you. John has that ability, and it certainly shows in his latest effort.

The 2016 Ryder Cup, which was played at the self-styled Hazeltine National Golf Club, near Chaska, Minnesota – a suburb of Minneapolis, was a watershed moment in the history of that storied event. It was the year that the United States stopped a European squad that had dominated the event with three wins in a row, from 2010 through 2014 – the third time in recent decades that the U.S. team had stopped a European run of victories at three. The first time was in 1991, after European victories in 1985, 1987, and 1989; then again in 2008, after the Euro squad took top honors in 2002, 2004, and 2006.

The 2016 event was notable for the wild swirl of events in the world of golf that led up to it, not the least of which was the rancorous atmosphere of the previous Ryder Cup, the 2014 event in which the venerable elder statesman Tom Watson was brought back to try and repeat his 1993 success as Ryder Cup skipper.

A clash of styles and a lack of communication – not to mention something of an uprising in the ranks, led by another respected figure in U.S. Ryder cup history, Phil Mickelson, doomed Watson’s leadership in 2014. The U.S. golf establishment – meaning the PGA of America, which runs the event for the red, white, and blue – wanted to wash away the bad taste that was left by the 2014 loss, and to that end they formed a Ryder Cup “task force” – a committee, widely derided by the European players and media – which was supposed to solve the Americans’ Ryder Cup problems.

Feinstein lays out the background, both recent and historical, that underpins the 2016 Ryder Cup, then digs into the personalities and near-term events which defined that contest, including the task force, and the selection of Davis Love III as U.S. captain, for a repeat performance after his stint as U.S. skipper in the agonizing 2012 loss at Medinah, which was controversial.

One headline-grabber was the social media clash between then-PGA President Ted Bishop and Euro Ryder Cup stalwart Ian Poulter, a schoolyard-worthy spat that resulted in Bishop’s unceremonious ouster for a series of childish remarks leveled at Poulter; another, coming much closer to the event, was the heated, and totally spontaneous, on-air spat between Golf Channel analysts Brandel Chamblee and David Duval over the relative importance of leadership and individual play.

During the event, one of the big stories was the play of Patrick Reed, both as a partner with his temperamentally polar opposite Jordan Spieth, and solo, as the man who took down the boisterous, and boastful, Rory McIlroy of the Euro squad in Sunday singles.

Another social-media-based dust-up occurring before and during  play was the attention-seeking U.S.-bashing promulgated by PJ Willett, the schoolteacher older brother of then-reigning Master champion Danny Willett. The elder Willett brother teed off on American fans in an article for a British sports publication, and in a series of posts on Twitter, guaranteeing a raucous reception by the bottom 10% of American fans.

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The strength of Feinstein’s work, and this book is no exception, is the time and effort he puts into interviews, and the wealth of material he obtains by doing so. No sound bites or quickly tossed-off aphorisms are to be found here – everyone involved in the event talked to him, some at length (with one exception – U.S. vice captain Tiger Woods. No surprise there.)

I will admit that I am not a huge fan of the Ryder Cup. It has become, in my opinion, an overblown, over-amped biennial hype-fest, owing its notoriety more to rancor than to great golf – but Feinstein’s writing drew me in. His research is so thorough and his insights so telling and precise that even though he was writing about an event which I have come to dislike over the last few years, I couldn’t put the book down.

Reading closely with a critical eye will turn up errors and shortcomings in almost any book, especially one on a subject in which I have an interest, and a certain store of knowledge (if I say so myself…)

I could have done without quite so much background on the head pro and superintendent of Hazeltine. They deserve to be mentioned, of course, but the pages of background on these two men started to wear thin – and to feel, frankly, like word-count padding.

More seriously, it was a little bit disappointing to see some pretty shocking errors in the text. First and foremost was a rather egregious misquoting of Ben Crenshaw’s iconic, well-known, and oft-quoted conclusion to his Saturday-night press conference at the 1999 Ryder Cup at The Country Club, Brookline, Massachusetts: “I’m gonna leave y’all with one thought, them I’m gonna leave. I’m a big believer in fate. I have a good feeling about this. That’s all I’m gonna tell ya.” – which Feinstein styled as “I’m gonna leave y’all with this: I’m a big believer in fate. I have a feeling about this.”

In a section about Davis Love II, the well-liked father of 2012/2016 Ryder Cup skipper Davis Love III, Feinstein casually mentions that the elder Love had played with Harvey Penick, then dismissed Penick as the cowriter of what is considered one of the game’s holy texts, Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book, a rather glaring mischaracterization of one of American golf’s most revered figures. 

These two errors, along with a host of lesser faux pas that should have been caught by a good copy editor, left a bit of tarnish on the otherwise gleaming aspect of the book, and took a half-star off of my assessment.

Regardless, if you love golf, and good golf writing, this book deserves a spot in your bookshelf. Buy it for yourself, or since the holidays are upon us as of this writing, put it on your Christmas list, golf lovers, and keep your fingers crossed.