“Playing Dirty”, by Joel Beall – a “compare-and-contrast” examination of the current state of the game of golf ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆

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.

Tom Coyne’s “A Course Called Scotland” charts a physical and metaphysical journey around the Home of Golf ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Tom Coyne is the author of the novel A Gentleman’s Game, and two previous non-fiction books – Paper Tiger, about a year spent pursuing a plus-number handicap and a toehold in professional golf; and A Course Called Ireland, which chronicles a journey, on foot, around the coast of Ireland, playing every course that he encountered along the way. Now he has returned with another book about another journey through golf, this time in the ancestral land of the game, Scotland. The book is A Course Called Scotland.

It would not be unfair to say that Tom Coyne is obsessed with golf, though in that characteristic he is far from alone. Where he stands out is in acting on his obsession, and then bringing us all along for the ride through his words. His lofty goal, this time around, was to play his way around the links courses of Scotland, 111 rounds of golf in 57 days, logging 36 and often 54 holes per day – and on one memorable occasion, 72 – on a quest for the Secret of Golf, and incidentally, a chance at qualifying for the 2015 Open Championship at St Andrews.

He expanded his quest beyond Scotland in order to tick off all of the courses in the Open Championship rota, six of which are in England, and shoehorned in some non-rota tracks in the south – in Cornwall and Wales – before heading north. Accompanied along the way, for a few rounds here and there, by a rotating cast of friends and strangers-who-became-friends, Coyne pursues his quest for golf’s secret through a string of well-known, not-so-well-known, and virtually unknown links courses – always links, or at least coastal, courses – in fair weather and in foul, under sunny skies and through wind and rain (of course, this is Scotland, after all), carding scores ranging from 82 to 62 (full disclosure: it was a par-62 course.)

The book chronicles not only the physical journey, but also a spiritual or metaphysical journey as Coyne, who strikes me as a restless soul, sought to find a match between his inner feelings for the game and their outward manifestation. I think that he found it, in the end, with little pushes along the way from his playing companions, and the serendipity that is an inevitable part of epic quests of this kind.

Coyne is candid, along the way, about his up-and-down relationship with the game of golf, and about other issues. A promising player as a teen, he self-destructed during a tryout for his college golf team, then, in his late twenties pushed himself to achieve the pinnacle of his game on a quest to make it through PGA Tour Qualifying School (a quest chronicled in his 2006 book, Paper Tiger). A couple of years later he undertook a four-month-long walking journey around the coast of Ireland playing links courses along the way (see his 2009 book, A Course Called Ireland) and in the interval between that journey/book and this one, lost his golf game, and almost lost his life as an addiction to alcohol overtook his addiction to golf.

There is a somber moment or two in the book when the latter subject comes up, but they pass with a quiet solemnity followed by a light-hearted comment as the conversation returns to golf.

The cavalcade of playing companions who joined the author along the way is a fascinating cross-section of people with the time, spare cash, and inclination to take part in this eccentric journey. My favorites among them are Paddy the Caddie, an ex-pat Philadelphian who lives in Kinsale, Ireland, and who featured in A Course Called Ireland; and Garth, a Philly local, new to the game but newly married into a golf-mad family, who accompanied Coyne along the stretch from Aberdeen to Inverness. Garth of the 38.4 handicap, who greeted every day on the trip with, “Guess what, Tom? We get to golf today.” Garth, who broke 100 for the first time on his last round of the trip and proudly texted his wife back home to report the feat – only to have his 2-handicap brother-in-law ask him what he shot on the back  nine.

The variety of courses that Coyne pegged-up on ran the gamut from the near-holy ground of St Andrews Old Course itself to literal sheep tracks in the outer islands – places that in my mind’s eye I pictured as looking something like Luke Skywalker’s refuge in the Star Wars re-boots. He had the good grace to be unimpressed by the two courses he played which are owned by the current POTUS – or as he is known in my household: “He Who Must Not Be Named”–  both the travesty which he has foisted upon the Aberdeen coast in a formerly protected dune-lands preserve, and the unfortunate Turnberry, which he has befouled with the vulgar trappings of his other properties – outré fountains, a faux crest, and his name writ large, and first, at every opportunity.

The heart and soul of this book, however, is Coyne’s running commentary about the sights, sounds, and experiences of his golf vision-quest, and his inner monologue as he flirts with the highs and lows of the game; swings that sometimes rival the amplitude of the Highland hillsides and valleys that he encounters. Golf is a game that can beat you down, if you let it, with lost golf balls and missed birdie (or par) putts, and in the next moment lift your spirits at the sight of the soaring flight of a golf ball fairly singing its way to a brilliant position on a distant green, and Coyne has a gift for describing all of those highs and lows. (My only niggling complaint about his prose is the constant use of “golf” as a verb – a Midwestern, and I suppose, Philadelphia, usage that grates on my California ears.)

Coyne communicates that range of experiences and emotions beautifully in this jewel of a book, and never better than in the ultimate culmination of his journey – which I will not describe any more than I would give away the ending of a much-anticipated movie.

Buy this book; read this book. And even if you never make your own pilgrimage to the ancestral home of the game we love (and in my case, the literal home of my ancestors) you will get a glimpse, a wee taste, of the beating heart, and maybe the secret, of the game of golf.