With tee-off imminent at Gleneagles for the Ryder Cup, here are ten golf-related books and not an albatross among them...
1 Little Red Book, by Harvey Penick
Sub-titled "Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime in Golf", here's everything you need to transform you from a duffer into a birdie-guzzling Tiger.
2 Golf Dreams, by John Updike
Updike was afflicted by golf at the age of 25 and never found a cure. His most famous character, Rabbit Angstrom, suffered from the same complaint. "I am curiously, disproportionately, undeservedly happy on a golf course," Updike once wrote. This collection includes diverse essays, extracts from novels and short stories, including 'Farrell's Caddie', which is set in Scotland and features a guru-like bagman.
3 Golf Stories, Edited by Charles McGrath
Part of the ever-desirable Everyman Library, this collection of stories includes some surprises, not the least of which is 'Winter's Dreams' by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which may not be on a par with Gatsby but is worth a gander. Among the other contributors are Ring Lardner, Stephen Leacock, Ian Rankin and John P. Marquand. Women authors are conspicuous by their absence. Shades of the Royal and Ancient?
4 Preferred Lies, by Andrew Greig
Many golfers may dispute Greig's assertion that "golf isn't life". Coming from what might be called the metaphysical wing of golf writing, he uses rounds in various locations, some exotic (Bathgate), some less so (Bermuda), to muse eloquently. He's a decent golfer but a frustrated one, as indeed is everyone who's ever taken a club in their hands.
5 The Five Red Herrings, by Dorothy L Sayers
Set in gorgeous Galloway, this classic yarn pits Lord Peter Wimsey against the murderer of the artist Sandy Cameron. There are a handful of suspects, one of whom is a golf club secretary. Need we say more?
6 Four Iron in the Soul, by Lawrence Donegan
With a nod to Jean-Paul Sartre, Donegan - musician, hack, hacker - offers an insider's account of the golf tour, as he spends a summer caddying for the pro Ross Drummond. For sadists who like nothing better than to laugh when someone misses a tiddler.
7 Goldfinger, by Ian Fleming
That James Bond was a golfer is one of literature's best kept secrets. In Goldfinger, 007 reveals he has a 9 handicap, as has the eponymous villain. "Many unlikely people play golf," wrote Fleming, "including people who are blind, who have only one arm, or even no legs, and people often wear bizarre clothes to the game". For the record, Goldfinger wore rust-coloured tweeds and "almost" orange shoes. In short, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Ian Poulter.
8 The Clicking of Cuthbert, by PG Wodehouse
There's no doubt that were there to be a Nobel Prize for golfing fiction, Wodehouse would have won it probably annually. These stories, told by the "Oldest Member", reek of the locker room and catch perfectly the insanity that prevails whenever anyone leaves the security of the clubhouse and ventures on to a course.
9 The Caddy Chronicles, by J.J. McClure
A newly divorced Irishman abandons the venal, corporate world for the equal venal one of caddying. The location is St Andrews; the result is pretty funny. The perfect accompaniment to a dram at the 19th tee.
10 Miracle at Medinah, by Oliver Holt
Gripping account of the 2012 Ryder Cup when, Lazarus-like, Europe came back from the dead to defeat the US. Only those who don't understand golf will think the title hyperbolic.
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