The Caddie Who Played with Hickory
Grade: A
Teacher’s Comments: It’s a good story, but even better in the way it evokes a particular time and place.

With The Caddie Who Played With Hickory, John Coyne returns to the world of the Midlothian Country Club. As in his earlier golf novel, the Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan, the focus is not on the members, but on the caddies, wait staff and other help who keep the place running. It’s a wonderful read, and manages to convey a strong impression of time and place.

The year is 1946, and with that summer comes the news that the legendary Walter Hagen will return to Midlothian to commemorate his 1914 US Open victory at the Club. The game of golf has changed greatly in those thirty years, but for this event, Hagen will return to playing the hickory shafted clubs with which he made his mark.

Hagen’s return offers an opportunity for two caddies at the club: Tom O’Shea, who needs to find a way to get through college; and Harrison Cornell, a mysterious older newcomer who is somehow linked to Hagen’s past. Cornell teaches O’Shea to play with hickory shafted clubs, and together they plot to have him play a match against The Haig.

A terrific writer, Coyne has a particular skill for crafting interesting and believable characters. I think he could write a book about virtually every one of the characters in “Hickory.” Oddly though, for me the least believable character in the book also was one of the two around whom it revolves: Harrison Cornell. Coyne’s other characters might have been people he actually met; Cornell was someone he made up, and never quite got to know.

Coyne obviously is a fan and a player of the game of golf. His descriptions of play and on-course strategies are for me dead on.  He also has apparently played with hickory, for his descriptions of how to play those old shafts are very informative.  I’ve never played with hickory (nor likely ever will), but from Coyne’s descriptions, it seems as though it would be like playing with a graphite shaft that has too much flex.

Another strong theme in the book is one you’d expect—that of class consciousness in the late 1940s and 1950s. O’Shea, the other caddies and the “help” live in an entirely different world from the members. And O’Shea’s interest in one of the members’ daughters presents an interesting thread throughout. Coyne, I am certain has experienced these distinctions himself.

I enjoyed the book so much (and also his first golf book, The Caddy Who Knew Ben Hogan) that I am hoping that Coyne has another “caddy” book in his bag. The first two were so good, that a “trilogy” seems a natural.

First Sunday in April: The Masters
Grade: A

The GolfBlogger is a voracious reader, with an oeuvre that covers a wide range of topics: economics, history, science, medicine (yes, Mrs. GolfBlogger thinks this is weird, too), politics, the classics, science fiction, modern thrillers, and of course, sports. In short, I’ll read practically anything I can get my hands on, typically working through fifty or more books in a year. I just finished Julius Caesar’s Commentaries, and soon will start working on a biography of Thomas Moore.

One thing I’ve noticed in my literary travels is just how rich a body of work has grown up around the sport of golf. From Bernard Darwin, to Bobby Jones, P.G. Wodehouse, Herbert Warren Wind, Feinstein, Dodson, Jenkins and others, golf seems to inspire great writing. I think it’s in the very nature of the game—the way it lays bare our humanity. A round of golf can take a man from the depths of despair to the very heights of joy. It brings out the very worst, and the very best.

And perhaps nothing does it like the Masters at Augusta National. Indeed, with its legendary back nine, Augusta was specifically designed for triumph and disaster.

First Sunday in April: The Masters is a collection of stories, articles and reminisces of that legendary golf tournament. With contributions from professional writers, as well as from players, it is divided into sections: The Tradition, The Personalities, The Course, The Background, The Caddies, The Moments and The Controversies. For any one of these, the editors would have been able to put together enough to fill the book. It had to have been a hard task to choose a five to seven piece representative sample.

I enjoyed each of the pieces in the book—and all the more so because none was particularly long. They were perfectly suited for a few minutes read just before going to sleep. The breadth also was nice in that the book avoided being repetitive. The tone of the pieces range form humorous to serious to sentimental. Again, all welcome changes of pace.

The title of the book has been the bone of some contention in some circles: The first Sunday in April is actually the last day of the Houston Open, and the climax of the Masters is the second. But the book’s editors have a point, I think, in that the Masters is more than a Sunday; it’s a whole week of talk and prediction and preparation which just happens to culminate on the second Sunday. And in choosing such a wide variety of topics

That said, perhaps a better title would have been “One Week In April: The Masters”

A few weeks back, I reviewed The Match, the latest book by The Greatest Game Author David Frost. It recounts a legendary (and mostly unknown) match between the teams of Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, and Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward. It’s a book that I very much enjoyed, even as I found it almost unbelievable.

The story is true, but GolfWorld’s Bo Links is challenging Frost’s reporting of the scores.

But what about the numbers? While score is often secondary to the drama of match play, the numbers in this case are compelling. They are also in conflict. To be sure, the scorecard was bleeding red. In 18 holes the two teams combined for 27 birdies and an eagle. According to Frost, Hogan and Nelson shot a miraculous score of 57—15 under par—to nip Venturi and Ward, 1 up. The difference was Hogan’s holed wedge shot for a 3 at the par-5 10th hole. Only three holes (Nos. 1, 11 and 14) were halved in par. And on the other 15 holes, a black pencil was needed only four times, when Venturi/Ward parred Nos. 3 and 7, and when Hogan/Nelson parred Nos. 4 and 8.

In all the commotion, however, Frost miscounted. If we analyze his account hole-by-hole, Hogan and Nelson shot 58. They turned the front nine in 31 (six under a par of 37). With Hogan’s eagle to open the back nine, the professionals charged to the clubhouse with a closing 27 (eight under a par of 35). Add ‘em up. The total is 58 (14 under), not 57.

Further, Links says, others have different memories of the event. And a couple of newspaper stories written at the time record still another view (although it is not sure whether the reporters witnessed it, or relied on hearsay—more likely the latter).

It doesn’t really bother Frost, though:

While it’s one thing to dispute a press account, quite another when two eyewitnesses—two participants—disagree about what the score was. Nelson says 55, Venturi’s shot-by-shot account adds up to 58. This was the dilemma confronting Frost when telling the story. “It speaks to the instability of memory,” Frost says. “There were things people saw differently. When I found that, I tried to go with the preponderance of the evidence.” Frost says he attempted to track down news accounts but came up empty. He views the manuscript as a living thing, and in later editions of The Match there may be a few corrections.

It’s also fascinating to note that the scene was replayed ten days later, when Venturi and Ward once again teamed up against the pros; this time it was Nelson and Jack Fleck (winner of the previous year’s US Open over Ben Hogan).

Any way you slice it (or hook it), it’s a fascinating story.

Pops and Sunshine
by Dave Andrews

Grade: B+
Teacher’s Comments: An enjoyable evening’s read

In Pops and Sunshine, Dave Andrews has penned an enjoyable evening’s read. Without intending any sort of insult, there’s a sort of NBC Movie of the Week quality to it: nice characters, a storyline packed into four days and a happy ending.

The story revolves around Futures Tour player Lisa Nelson, a poor girl who must win her Tour card in the final tournament of the season or go home to help her recently widowed mother and her brothers. Nelson arrives in New Hampshire early for the tournament and by chance plays a round with Dave Johnston, a longtime member at the club where the tournament is being held. Johnston, a retired wealthy businessman and the club’s best putter, agrees to caddy for Nelson in the upcoming tournament.

Johnston feels a connection with Nelson because she so resembles his own daughter, whom he lost along with his wife in a car accident a few years previous. He takes her under his wing and into his family almost immediately.

I at first thought that the book would end up as a May-September romance, but the love interest in the story is provided by Johnston’s nephew, Rob. And that’s a good thing, because a Dave-Lisa romance would have been creepy, given her resemblance to his daughter.

Villainy in the novel is provided by Shelly Steele, a player whom Nelson must beat to get her Tour card. While competitive and not a particularly nice person, Steel doesn’t do much more than play some mind games and good golf. Her caddy is worse.

The golf is realistic, and it’s apparent—unlike some other “golf” novels I’ve read recently—that Andrews both follows the game and plays it. I also think he’s also been involved in some tournament golf because the ebb and flow have an authentic feel.

With a clean and breezy writing style, Andrews has a good ear for conversation and has created some believable and likable characters. The novel gets a bit schmaltzy at times, but that’s in keeping with the “movie of the week” tone.

I keep coming back to the “movie of the week” not because it’s a bad thing, but because I sincerely believe that Pops and Sunshine would make a good one. No deeper truths about human nature are examined; that’s not what this is about. Pops and Sunshine simply is a nice story about nice people.

Pops and Sunshine apparently is a self-published, self-distributed novel, so you can only get it at http://www.popsandsunshine.com. Be warned, however, that the site has a java doodad that tends to lock up my browser—you may have some trouble getting through.

The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever
by Mark Frost

Grade A
Teacher’s Comments: A good golf book, but short of Frost’s earlier work, The Greatest Game

Mark Frost’s The Greatest Game Ever Played, an account of the legendary 1913 US Open, in which amateur Francis Ouimet beat the great Harry Vardon is one of the best golf books ever written. More than an account of a tournament, it uses the event to cast a light on the era’s problems of social class and distinction. In that, it’s not just a great golf book—it’s simply a great book that has been enjoyed by everyone I’ve shared it with, golfers and non-golfers alike.

The Match in some ways picks up on that story. Years after the Open, Ouimet’s former caddy Eddie Lowry heads west, where he becomes a multi-millionaire car dealer, and a golf patron. In particular, Lowry “sponsors” a collection of outstanding amateurs by giving them jobs at his dealerships. The amateurs, including Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward, work at selling cars in the morning and golf in the afternoon. In this, Lowry skirts a fine line between amateur and professional—a ruse which has tragic consequences later.

Lowry also has become friends with Bing Crosby, and it’s at a party for Crosby’s 1956 Clambake (now the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am) that he makes a bet with fellow millionaire George Coleman: that Venturi and Ward can beat anyone in the world. Coleman takes Lowry up on the bet (the size of which still is unknown) and rounds up his own pair of players: none other than Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan. A private match is scheduled before a practice round of the Crosby Clambake.

It’s a concept so fabulous—so phantasmagorical—that I had, and still have, a hard time believing it. It’s one of those tales that is so outrageous it could only be true. Think about it: a private match between the teams of Hogan and Nelson, and Venturi and Ward to settle a bet made by Francis Ouimet’s caddy.

Even more amazing is that I don’t ever recall reading about it before. The Golf Blogger is very well read on the history of golf, but this was off the radar screen.

I won’t tell you the outcome of The Match, for that would spoil the suspense in the hole-by-hole account. But in truth, it really doesn’t matter. Win or lose, the Match represented the last gasp of the amateur golfer as a contender on golf’s biggest stages. As the book’s subtitle suggests, the Match was a metaphorical “Day The Game of Golf Changed Forever.” Prior to the era of The Match, there still was some hope that a brilliant amateur would return the game to the realm of Bobby Jones and Francis Ouimet. It was rapidly becoming clear, however, that wouldn’t happen.

The bulk of the book covers the match itself, but Frost also offers brief backgrounds on the principals: Lowry, Hogan, Nelson, Venturi and Ward. The material on the first four offered nothing that I haven’t already read in other biographies of those players (although if you have not read their biographies, this book covers the basics well). I was more intrigued by the fate of Harvie Ward, who suffered through a series of difficulties connected to his involvement with Lowry. The background, however, does not equal that of The Greatest Game. And in that, The Match is a somewhat lesser book—and one that may not appeal as much to non-golfers.

I recommend this book wholeheartedly to golfers, and especially to those for whom the names Nelson and Hogan still carry some magic. Fans of The Greatest Game also may find it interesting as a sort of sequel. But I can’t see it reaching the greater reading audience.