Arnie & Jack: Palmer, Nicklaus, and Golf’s Greatest Rivalry
by Ian O’Connor

I think that it would be safe to say that more words have been written about Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus—both individually and combined—than any other golfers in history (even considering Tiger Woods). Given that, it has to be hard for any author to come up with a new angle for a book on either of these men.

In Arnie and Jack, Ian O’Connor tries to explore new territory by focusing on the rivalry between the two golf legends. Aside from some necessary background, It’s a biography only as the lives of the two intersect.

The author’s premise is that each of the two men had what the other wanted. Arnie had the adoration of fans, and the endorsements, but wanted the victories. Jack had the victories, but wanted to be well-liked

It’s an interesting premise, and for the most part, O’Connor backs it up with quotes and other evidence from the principles, their family friends, and associates. I’m normally not a fan of such amateur psychoanalysis, but in this case, it seems to be well founded.

Even casual golf fans know of the Nicklaus-Palmer rivalry, but it might come as a surprise to some just how deep it went. They competed, apparently, in nearly everything. For example, since Arnold had an airplane (which he flew himself), Jack had to have his own plane, and even flirted with taking taking flying lessons himself.

Today, their playing careers over, the two continue to compete through their course design companies and their endorsements.

O’Connor is respectful of his subjects throughout—this is is by no means a hatchet job. But I also thought, that by focusing exclusively on the rivalry, both Palmer and Nicklaus came across as much less attractive figures than in any of the single biographies that I had read.

Among the les flattering aspects of their intertwined lives was the rift between the two that grew through the eighties. There is really no way to describe it other than pettty. Fortunately for golf—and for their own souls—Arnie and Jack seem to have patched things up in more recent years.

I’m going to recommend this book primarily for readers who already know something of the lives of Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. It’s a supplemental book, really, and if read without background knowledge, will give you a somewhat distorted view.

The Rotary Swing
by Chuck Quinton

Grade: B
Teacher’s Comments: A good volume, but much of the philosophy can be found in other books.

Chuck Quinton’s The Rotary Swing is a slender volume with big ideas. A teacher from Windemere, Florida, Quinton believes that his Rotary Swing offers a set of simple fundamentals that can make golf easier and more fun for the masses.

In many ways, the Rotary Swing resembles Jim Hardy’s “One Plane Swing”: There’s the well balanced stance, with the shoulders moving fairly level, and no pronounced tilt. And there is the basic idea of rotating the body, with the arms and hands following the rotation, not initiating it.

Quinton’s approach to learning the swing is somewhat different, however. He begins with the idea of a swing in motion. It’s not until more than halfway through the book that he turns to the issues of grip, ball position and stance.

Golf, he says, is not a series of static positions, but a dynamic motion. “Always Be Turning”—ABT—is his oft repeated mantra.

That make sense to me. My best shots always seem to come when I forget about all those ball, body and club positions and just swing through.

As thin as it is, the book is quite wordy, but Quinton thankfully offers some very good drills to help you “feel” your way through his ideas. It also includes a smattering of photographs.

Production values on the book are not the greatest. The cover just screams “self-published, with its weirdly distorted photos of a guy at the top of his swing. (It’s also an interesting photo, since Quinton has de-emphasized set positions in favor of ABT). The internal photos also are not particularly good, tending toward the dark.

I was intrigued by Quinton’s thoughts. I’ve wasted the last several summers switching back and forth between the more traditional two-plane, and the one-plane swings. Both work for me, but only for little while. Neither has permanently elevated my game.

Chuck Quinton’s Rotary Swing manual has me almost convinced that I should make a permanent switch back to the one plane. It’s simple and powerful. I just wonder how my 46-year-old body will stand up to that motion. I’m very fit and flexible now ... but for how long?

What I really need to do is to find a teacher who can take a look at what I’ve got physically and tell me which one I should pursue. It’s too bad Quinton is in Florida. I have a feeling he could do the job.

Maybe he has a disciple in Michigan ...

The Golfers Game Book: A Manual of Golf Games and Side Bets
by Bridget Logan

The Golfer’s Game Book is a compendium of 238 different golf games, alternate scoring formats, practice exercises and side bets, all compiled into a neat little spiral bound book. Each game has its own little entry describing how to play, and offering variants where appropriate.

Some of the games listed are common. Regular alternate scoring formats are described, such as best ball, alternate shot and match play. So are typical betting formats, such as the Nassau and Calcutta. The Golfers Game Book also described a few less common—but still familiar—ones like the Callaway System for handicapping a match.

But there are also a couple of hundred games that I have never encountered. For example, there’s a golf wordsearch, which is played on a practice green. Low Ball - High Ball is offered as a game played by teams of two, in which low and high balls are counted. Best At Something (aka Garbage, Trash, Goodies, Junk) is a side bet in which players add or subtract points for various categories during a round, such as drives in the fairway and lost balls.

Finding an appropriate game, bet or practice exercise is made easy by a reference chart / table of contents at the beginning of the book. The chart makes it easy to find solo games, games for your and your partner, your threesome, foursome, or larger groups. It also identifies practice games and side bets.

If I have one criticism of the book, it’s that the typesetting and layout are amateurishly done. I rather suspect the entire thing was done in Microsoft Word. But that’s not a deal breaker—just an observation from an old print designer and typesetter.

This is a book that at least one member of every regular foursome should acquire.  The amazing variety of games should ensure that your Saturday morning get-togethers never grow stale.

The Mysterious Montague: A True Tale of Hollywood, Golf, and Armed Robbery

Grade: B
Teacher’s Comments: A good read, as much a true crime story as it is about golf.

There seems to be a natural affinity between golf and mystery literature. Perhaps it’s the mysterious nature of the game itself—how it can seem so easy, and yet be so difficult; how players can find and lose their swings in a matter of moments; and all of the other seeming contradictions.

Golf mysteries from authors such as Roberta Isleib are among my favorite summer reading material. 

In The Mysterious Montague, Leigh Montville takes the golfing mystery to the realm of the real-life crime and trial drama.

The mysterious John Montague first surfaces in Hollywood in 1932 at the Lakeside club, a golfer of prodigious strength and surprisingly deft touch. (The descriptions immediately reminded me of John Daly.) He played with clubs so large no one else could swing them, producing drives of 300, 350 yards.

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.

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.