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.

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.

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.