Customer Reviews:
 Laugh out loud funny May 13, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
My wife bought me this book and kept asking me if I had looked at it yet. Already in the middle of two other golf books - one being instructional I said no, not yet. She insisted that I at least read the first few pages to see if it was something I would like. Well, within 5 minutes of cracking it open I was in stitches and I was hooked. Carl has a wonderful writing style that just sucks you in. As a golf hack who found the sport well after my 20's I especially enjoyed his perspective.
Based on Excerpts in Sports Illustrated - A Hole in One May 12, 2008
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
Sports Illustrated published two excerpts of this book recently - in the Players Championship Special Issue and in the May 12, 2008 regular issue. Although there was some overlap, together the two excerpts paint a hilarious autobiographical picture of the author's attempted return to golf. Laugh-out-loud funny doesn't begin to describe the section of the excerpt in May 12th SI titled "Toad Golf". I have never laughed so hard when reading SI. I'm buying the book, and, hopefully, it will provide as much enjoyment.
 is this the hiaasen we know and love? May 12, 2008
11 out of 16 found this review helpful
Downhill Lie has some very funny parts to it: Hiaasen has a wonderful self-deprecating sense of humor. You'll find tales of toad-wedging: golf practice that consists of chipping toads onto neighbors' houses. You'll find that golf clubs make effective rat bashers. I suspect that the ASPCA wil find some things to offend them here. You'll read about the time he lost a golf cart--it slipped into a pond.
But I founf myself scratching my head in wonderment at times. Hiaasen is not, to be sure, a scratch golfer, but he has a voracious appetite to improve his game--as most golfers do. But we see him resorting to buying things--pendants with wonder powers to hang around your neck (only 75% as effective if kept in your pocket), herbal pills to improve "muscle memory", RadarGolf devices to help you locate lost balls, and the like. I'm at a loss here. Didn't we see Hiaasen regularly poking fun at the people who bought such devices in many of his novels? In Double Whammy, for instance, there's the unforgettable image of a cheap skiff hauled by a garbage truck to a tournament, and fishing with cheap equipment, when everyone else arrives with massive gadgetry--fish radar, gimmicks galore, etc. Hiaasen had always seemed to be fond of satirizing those who shell out large amounts of money for the kinds of devices he happily buys in Downhill Lie. There's almost an element of Eliot Spitzer here.
I would guess that Hiaasen describes parts of perhaps 200 rounds of golf. Some of this is a pleasure and a delight to read. Some of it is, well....have you ever heard a golfer tell you about one of his rounds, shot by shot, hole by hole? It's never actually that bad or that detailed--but there are times when you feel as if half your mind was on other things. This is also an instructive book--if you're lucky, you'll begin to get the idea that spending lots of money--lots and lots of money--will not guarantee that you'll reduce your handicap. Another element of the book, which you should learn in an indirect fashion, is that the crucial thing is that you should enjoy the game: Hiaasen almost seems too driven, that perhaps he should understand that some people are destined to remain 15-18 handicap golfers, and that you can accept your limitations. When I played golf, I had about a 30 handicap: a duck hook or a topped ball--well, so what's new? Enjoy the occasional decent shot. I often played with a colleague who had about a 3 handicap--when he mishit a shot, he'd go into a blue funk for several holes. I think I enjoyed the game more than he did. So the lesson from this book is--have fun, and don't make such a big deal about improving your handicap by 5 strokes. Hiaasen, at least, can make fun of himself--which too many golfers cannot do.
 disappointed May 11, 2008
7 out of 15 found this review helpful
I used to be a huge Hiaasen fan but his last book, Nature Girl, was such a stinker I decided I was through with him. When I saw this I decided to get it for a friend who has just taken up golf. I also have several other friends that golf and thought it'd be a fun gift for them.
It's awful. The writing is amateurish even for Hiaasen. The story is boring (I'm not a golfer but really, how long can he go on about how bad he is at golf?) and, worse, he's not funny; the one thing that we require of Hiaasen.
He also, needlessly and completely out of context,takes shots at the Republican Party, thereby insulting a large part of his market. His total disregard of insulting a major segment of the golfing public is incredible to me. it's so out of place and, again, unnecessary, it's almost laughable. The book is tedious to read and I'm glad to be done with it....save your $$$'s and your time.
"One day you're suckered into self-confidence [by] a few decent shots; the next, you can't hit the green with a sledgehammer." May 11, 2008
23 out of 28 found this review helpful
Returning to golf thirty-two years after he gave it up, Carl Hiaasen, author of hilarious mysteries, shares his struggles to relearn the game of golf and maybe, even, learn to have fun with it. Golf is not a natural "fit" for Hiaasen--"I was just as restless, consumed, unreflective, fatalistic, and emotionally unequipped to play golf in my fifties as I was in my teens," he admits. He starts "on the path to perdition" in November, 2002, when Sports Illustrated asks him to go to Barbados to write a humorous piece about the photo shoot for the swimsuit issue, and he ends up playing golf with his editor during the downtime.
Unfortunately, for Hiaasen, he plays well enough that he decides to play golf (with second-hand clubs) back home with friends, and soon gets caught up in the golf-mania of finding the perfect equipment, reading books by gurus like Bob Rotella, David Leadbetter, and legend Harvey Penick, subscribing to golf magazines, and buying anything that may improve his game--from pendants to wear around his neck (to reduce stress) to capsules of herbal supplements (to improve concentration).
Describing himself as a "reclusive, neurotic, doubt-plagued duffer," he keeps a diary for almost six hundred days, obsessively recording, often in salty language and off-the-wall imagery, the rounds he plays with his friends, including Mike Lupica and CBS's David Feherty. Admitting that he suffers from "Wildly Unrealistic Expectations," he reflects the fears and frustrations of all beginning golfers when he 1) has to play in front of strangers, 2) has to play a new course for the first time, and 3) agrees to play in his first tournament.
On a more universal note, he continues his mockery of politicians for failing to protect the environment in Florida, a theme of many of his mysteries, and he talks about the growth of golf communities and the loss of animal habitats. He reminds the reader, however, that golf courses are not all bad--they could have been "two thousand, zero lot-line houses." Hilarious in his descriptions of his efforts to learn the game, he is also serious about his frustrations with it. He suffers, he tells us from "the most corrosive fundamental of golf, the S*ck Factor." When his wife and seven-year-old son take lessons and love the game, Hiaasen is reminded of his own golf experiences with his father, and despite his "own foolish and overwrought tribulations," he begins to see "warmer days ahead." Perhaps he might grow to love the game and share it with his family. n Mary Whipple
Skin Tight
Native Tongue
Stormy Weather
Basket Case
Skinny Dip
Lucky You
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