Driving Myself Crazy: Misadventures of a Novice Golfer | 
 enlarge | Author: Jessica Maxwell
Publisher: Bantam
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
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Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 2689642
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 0553107933
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780553107937
ASIN: 0553107933
Publication Date: June 6, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Publisher: BantamDate of Publication: 2000Binding: Hard CoverCondition: Very GoodDescription: 0553107933 A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. Dust Jacket has some edgewear present. 2000 Bantam Hard Cover
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amazon.com
In Driving Myself Crazy, Jessica Maxwell documents how she learned to play golf and why. Her narration of learning the game, from her first piece of instruction ("The point is not to think... just hit the ball") to her first visit to the driving range, is hilarious. Both novices and experienced golfers with any memory of starting out will relate to her tales of that hapless feeling of "the early days of rookiedom. The utter ignorance of all protocol, etiquette, and nomenclature, not to mention fundamental mechanics." Maxwell mixes the business of golf with pure pleasure; a description of her trip to Scotland to tour eight ladies' golf clubs provides the setting for a discussion of the history--and herstory--of golf. Nearly all of the clubs she visited were founded in the Victorian age, when it seemed easier to play (in whalebone corsets and full skirts, of course) in their own clubs than battle the men for entrance into theirs. These tales are interspersed between loving, almost gushing descriptions of the golf courses she visits in Oregon, Montana, Alabama, and North Carolina: "What especially drew my eye [to Sandpines in Oregon] was its palomino palette of ivory and wheat, the creaminess of vast rhomboids of sand, the feathery gold of its beach grasses. All of it kept fresh by its vivid fairways and greens, and the blueberry summer sky." Maxwell clearly loves to be surrounded by nature, even the carefully choreographed nature of a golf course. Reading about golf--even in a book as charming as this--is only second best to actually playing. Golfers may find themselves dropping the book and grabbing their clubs. --Suzanne Sexton
Product Description
"Golf!" exclaimed Jessica Maxwell's friend Rande. "I thought golf was for Republicans...and dorks!"
Adventure writer Jessica Maxwell is neither, but she is a woman--and even today golf is primarily a sport for men. In fact, according to an unverifiable legend, the very name of the game comes from the words "Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden."But Jessica loves a challenge, and when she decided to invade this male-dominated territory, she plunged in headfirst, the same way she learned how to ski and fly fish--two very demanding sports she took up in her early thirties after a life as a confirmed "non-jockette." Surely golf couldn't be that much more difficult...could it?
Breezy and offbeat, Driving Myself Crazy is Jessica's first-person account of her golfing education--the teachers, the theories, the mistakes and misadventures, and the confidence she feels once her game begins to improve.
In this irreverent memoir, we get a front-row seat as Jessica struggles to learn golf's etiquette, customs, and rules of engagement--from her first comical attempts to simply hit the damn ball, to the ultimate sign of arrival as a bona fide woman golfer... a complete set of Nancy Lopez clubs!
Among those who help Jessica master the game are Peter Croker, a revolutionary teaching pro from Australia, and Cindy Swift Jones, his partner and putting guru, as well as Peggy Kirk Bell, a seventy-seven-year-old legend and one of the most famous figures in the history of women's golf, and the queen of golf herself, Nancy Lopez. We also meet a gallery of other vivid characters from the fairways and greens, including the handsome "golf stalker" Graham, a man of mystery, wisdom and uncanny timing.
Along the way, Jessica also visits some of the most beautiful golf courses in the country: the Robert Trent Jones Trail in Alabama, considered by many to be the world's finest public golf facility; the scenic Whitefish Lake Club in rugged Montana; and the stylish Pine Needles course in Pinehurst, North Carolina.
Celebrating the sport one pro claims is 80 percent physical for beginners and 85 percent mental once you know what you're doing, Driving Myself Crazy, is an engaging and often hilarious account of one woman whose obsession carried her across the globe and led her to discover that despite all the frustration, golf--played right--is a beautiful game.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 I'm glad all new women golfers aren't this stupid! May 1, 2006
Being brand new to the sport of golfing, I saw this book and figured it'd be a perfect read. A woman's take on learning a man dominated sport. However, this author seems to mistake stupidity for humor. I'm not sure if she was just trying to get laughs in the book about her over the top ignorance, or was genuinely that much of a space cadet. In any case, the humor fell short (aside from a couple chuckles). And as for a novice experience, most novices don't get the chance to waltz around the country (for that matter, the globe) in order to try out golf pro lessons from all over. And fortunately, if we do get some good lessons in, we don't act like complete morons in the process. The side story of a blossoming romance, also leaves the reader to think the author must be in a state of idioacy as she is head over heels falling for someone who will spend a ton of money specifically not to have them seen together in public. Doesn't any one find this a bad judgement call?
In any case, I finished the book basically to see if she ever lost the flighty ditz persona, but nope, it didn't happen. I actually reccomend no guys read this book in hopes you don't think all new women golfers are like Jessica Maxwell.
Trust Your Swing. June 5, 2001
A very funny book about golf (a sport I have recently taken up) and life (which I took up 63 years ago). I heard the author speak at the Sacramento Bee Book club. Funny and a nice person as well.
 Former and Future (?) Golfer May 4, 2001
As a "former" golfer, I found Driving Myself Crazy to be a delightful romp detailing the frustrations and yearnings of a novice golfer. No, DMC is not the "War and Peace" of sports, nor an instruction book designed to guide one to a zero handicap, as some reviewers apparently wanted.DMC is, nonetheless, filled with excellent tips from some incredible instructors that stick with you due to Ms. Maxwell's prose. After being hauled back out on the links at a college reunion, following what was essentially a 25 year hiatus, I was fortunately able to fall back on some of those tips. The "hot dog bun" grip tip in particular allowed me to regain some of the "Glory Days" for at least a few holes and not make a complete fool of myself in front of old friends. I recommend Driving Myself Crazy as an entertaining look at golf and its quirks, written the way golf should be approached, with a loose attitude that has fun at its core.
A refreshing approach to a game taken far too seriously April 28, 2001
As a fan of Jessica Maxwell's excellent nature and travel writing I was initially appalled to learn that she would be exploring the "dark side" by covering that most leisurely of leisure sports, golf. I mean, fly fishing on wild rivers was one thing, but the manicured world of country clubs and automatic ball washers?However, after reading Driving Myself Crazy and recommending it to a few friends and family members (including two newly addicted woman golfers) I have to agree with other reviewers (save one, the anonymous "Reader from Eugene" who seems to have a bone to pick and takes this absurd game far too seriously) that Maxwell has hit a home run with this one. Oops, wrong sport... but I suppose that's next on her list?
Look long and hard, there's no one better than Jessica April 18, 2001
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that genius consists of the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at once, and in the case of the art of golf and the art of humorous, lyrical writing, Jessica Maxwell has achieved the merging of these heretofore polar opposites. Driving Myself Crazy is not only a work of comic genius, but a testimonial to the raw nerve it takes to enter an arena in which you have never set even a tentative foot, and walk from the 19th hole, head held high, nine iron unbent. Of all the women writers out there Jessica Maxwell is the one who walks her talk, and what she puts so skillfully and wisely to the page as well. I say wisely because within her humor, within her ability to ask us to laugh AT her, not just with her, there are perceptions so keen and uncommon in their depth that to dismiss her prose as anything less than the work of a visionary is unfair. This is a book that only Maxwell could write, and one that if read on all its levels brings the reader closer to that magical porthole through which she sees the world, and all the games of the world, for what they truly are: pasttimes that show not necessarily our strength as humans,but our often comic vulnerabilities.
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