Mark Frost is to golf writing what Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward were to golf....
Some golf books you read and pass along to your friends. Some you keep. This is a Keeper of the first order. Your friends can buy their own...
As with his earlier golf books, "The Grand Slam" and "The Greatest Game Ever Played," Frost can tell a story, a story of people, personalities, a story of drama on and off the golf course, and he brings it all to together in such a warm, affectionate--sometimes critical, but always honest and objective--way that you, the reader, feel you know these people. You care about them. You feel their joy, their pain, their hopes, their dreams and their heartache. You pull for them.
Like the old CBS Televison series, "You Are There," Frost takes you "there", in this case to one of the greatest and most unusual matches ever played, and you, if not in body, then certainly in mind and spirit, are "there"
Great writer, great golfers and a great story makes for a great read which this book is.
One question, however. Given the antipathy Hogan felt for Nelson as their careers diverged--Nelson, once his best friend was not even invited to Hogan's by-invitation funeral--why did Hogan so readily agree to play the match with Nelson as his partner against Venturi and Ward?
If you know the answer or have an opinion, post it as a comment to this review...As Dan Jenkins would say, "Fairways and Greens...Fairways and Greens..." Keep hitting the fairways and the greens...and life will be good.... |