| ![Match, The [Frost]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511TdiZTPcL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Author: Mark Frost
Publisher: Hyperion
Category: EBooks
List Price: $18.95
Buy New: $9.99
You Save: $8.96 (47%)
Rating:  65 reviews
Sales Rank: 207
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
ASIN: B000Y2R0F2
Publication Date: November 6, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
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| Customer Reviews:
 Golf story telling at its best June 26, 2008
Frost's trilogy is must reading for every golf nut. The Match is much shorter than his finest work, The Greatest Game Ever Played, and his essential biography of Bobby Jones, The Grand Slam, but it is nonetheless a gripping, page turning tale of 18 holes played by four of golf's outstanding personalities on one of the nation's most beguiling courses, Cypress Point CC. Historical facts concering the men and the state of the game of golf in that era are accurately and entertainingly woven into the story of a single match. Each stroke in the match is described, while concise biographies of each character are woven throughout. Frost is a master at transporting you to 1954 and the Monterrey Peninsula, you can see the ocean, feel the breeze, and smell the fresh cut grass. I especially appreciated the thoroughly researched afterward which included a short history of the Monterrey Peninsula and Cypress Point CC in particular, as well as the bios of the players following the Match. Read this book if you love the game.
The Match June 23, 2008
Another great book by Mark Frost. The Match ranks right up there with Mr Frosts other book "The Greatest Game Ever Played".This book gives wonderful historical perspective on golf in the Monteray Bay area.
 one of the unknown riches of golf history June 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Those of us who love golf- its traditions and history, will ove this true story of a match that was arranged as a wager, and turned out to be one of the best of all time
 Eh, June 13, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
A quick read, good golf book, didn't really capture me, but held me enough to finish it.
A Magazine Article Padded to Book Length June 11, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
If I had read "The Match..." before I read Mark Frost's other golf-related books ("The Greatest Game Ever Played" and "The Grand Slam: Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf") I would have missed out on a couple of really good reads - because I would never have picked up another of his books.
The main substance of this book - the story of a unique, one-time golf match between two aging masters of the professional game (Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson) and two up-and-coming young amateurs (Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward) at one of the most beautiful, and exclusive, golf courses in the country, Cypress Point, on California's Monterey Peninsula - would have made a good magazine article. In order to tease it out to book length, however, Frost intersperses biographical chapters on the lives of the four participants, as well as the two instigators of the match, Eddie Lowery (Francis Ouimet's then-pint-sized caddy for his improbable 1913 US Open victory over Englishmen Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, 40-odd years later a successful Bay Area businessman and supporter of amateur golf) and George Coleman, a wealthy California business figure. It's mostly blatant, and superfluous, padding - the material on Hogan has been better chronicled elsewhere, with a lighter touch, by more skilled writers (Curt Sampson comes to mind...) and the dirt-digging on Eddie Lowery's business dealings and troubles with the amateur golf establishment border on the sordid.
Frost's florid writing style in this book is off-putting and sensationalistic; he leaves no superlative unturned, and must have worn out his thesaurus in the search for more and better adjectives the further he got along in the story. His chapters on Hogan are fawning and overly-sentimental, reminiscent of James Dodson's saccharine 2004 biography of the man (no surprise that Frost singles out Dodson for mention in his Oscar show-length thank you's).
One thing that Frost never pays off on is the title's tagline: "The Day The Game of Golf Changed Forever". How can event that was witnessed by a relative handful of people, a private golf match with no title or championship significance, be said to have changed the game of golf forever? The match did occur at a cusp in the sport, as golf was changing from a pastime of the wealthy, in which amateur sportsmen were held in higher esteem than the professional practitioners of the sport, to the Arnold Palmer-inspired pastime of suburban professionals and blue-collar workers, when TV and its attendant influx of money made it a national sensation that provided a viable, even lucrative, living for the touring professionals in the game - but none of those changes hinged on, or were precipitated by "The Match".
Razor out the biographical padding, leaving only the chapters on the match itself and the afterword on the history of the course (but my enjoyment of that portion of the book may be attributable to local interest, as I was born and raised just inland of the Monterey Peninsula, in the Salinas Valley) and you'll have an enjoyable lunchtime read; and if you're ready to immerse yourself in more of the early history of the game, pick up "The Greatest Game Ever Played" and "The Grand Slam: Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf" - they are much better books.
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