Hole By Hole
It's about golf.
Hole By Hole
It's about golf.
The Virtual Bookstore
Reviews
|
The
Long Drive Bible: Let’s clear one thing up right away. I am not a long hitter. Oh, there are occasions—such as a few 270 to 290-yard run-outs, on the dry, hardened fairways of Myrtle Beach resort courses, such as Farmstead or Tigers Eye. Those are the distinct exceptions. On my own course, with its soft, almost cushiony Bermuda grass fairways, I hit my drives between 200 to 220 yards--at the most. So when world long-drive champion Sean Fister’s publicists sent me his new how-to book, I thought it was a nice opportunity to learn how guys like him can hit the ball the way I just can’t, but that view into another world was all I expected. What a pleasant surprise. With his self-effacing tone, Fister’s advice has already helped my game in only a few short weeks. I’m not hitting the ball a lot longer, but my tee shots are definitely going straighter, and with more consistent distance. Fister and I are very different in some fundamental ways that also help explain why he hits it so much farther. He’s 6 foot 5 inches and 245 pounds of former Olympic-hopeful pole-vaulting muscle mass. He’s got me by about 9 inches and 80 pounds, and no one ever suggested I should run college cross country or track at an elite level. He also has a clubhead swing speed somewhere above 150 mph, while mine hovers around 95. Even so, Fister readily admits that his book is not aimed at helping me make up for the disparity in our physical makeup, by trying to teach me how to swing out of my shoes on every tee box. Instead, Fister carefully lays out all the different elements of his approach to driving the ball, so that the reader understands how better results come from matching today’s equipment to better techniques. The most useful part of the book is Chapter 3, “The 10 Commandments of Distance.” In earlier chapters, Fister details how he came to golf from other sports. He decided that he really liked hitting the ball as far as possible, and began keeping detailed notes from his practice sessions on what worked and didn’t work, as he built up his long-hitting resume. Based on those notes, Fister outlines in this Chapter his approach to the fundamentals of a good golf swing. As he admits, very few of us will ever match his ability to generate awe-inspiring swing speed through the hitting area. On the other hand, following these tips with whatever speed you can put on the driver should still pay off nicely. Fister also describes how the long-drive competitions are held, and the kinds of mental and physical preparations that he feels are necessary for good performance. These chapters are also helpful, in that it’s easy to appreciate that his approach to these contests is also transferable to your own level of competition, be it with your regular foursome or in the club championship. He’s also pretty blunt about the physical toll that long-drive hitting has put on his body. It’s not a medical history that most of us would readily accept as the price of competitive success. For professional athletes such as Fister, however, putting up with the pain is just part of the bargain. It’s an old adage that you can’t judge a book by its cover. This book is one of the newest examples of that worthy piece of advice. Both long and short hitters can benefit from this informative, helpful guide to better golf. Review date: June 21, 2008 |
Hole By Hole's Recommendation For:
The
Long Drive Bible
|
|
|
|
Review By Tom Dorsel, Ph.D. I’m a firm believer in recycling. I’m happy to report that Golf Illustrated columnist Dr. Tom Dorsel agrees with me. Dorsel may not be quite as avid as our family is about putting our newspapers, plastic, and aluminum cans in the bins that help restore these materials to another use. However, he was obviously not averse to reprinting his useful golf psychology tips from the last dozen years or so in this handy collection. It’s the sort of thing I do on a regular basis for my golf column, where these book reviews make an appearance in newsprint in addition to their web presence here at Hole By Hole. I applaud his efforts at running these articles again in book form, and not just for the sake of recycling. If a writer truly believes that he’s contributing something useful to the field in which he’s operating, he should do what he can to widen his potential audience. With all due respect to Golf Illustrated and other golf magazines, however, not a lot of golfers will search the library stacks for the back issues. In fact, younger golfers may not fully appreciate it, but there’s a huge amount of good golf stuff that will never be available through Google or some other Internet search engine—because it first appeared in print, and never made it into a digital format. In addition, Dorsel’s potential audience has likely changed significantly since some of these articles first appeared, thanks to the inexorable effects of demographics. Why not give the newcomers a chance to benefit from Dorsel’s wisdom? And there’s a lot here that should help a lot of golfers, not only newcomers, but also those with several years of potentially frustrating experience. Dorsel’s overall focus is to remind golfers of what a difficult, challenging game they’ve decided to play. That being the case, its players should therefore understand the emotional, tactical, and thinking problems that provide so much of the game’s appeal. It sounds a bit contradictory, but his point is that to have the most fun with golf, one needs to be serious about it. In several essays he emphasizes the fact that real improvement comes with presenting the player with frequent opportunities to test their mettle against the course and other players, under tournament or near-tournament conditions. A steady stream of hit-and-giggle options such as scramble events won’t be nearly as helpful. Dorsel gives several examples from his own and others’ experience of how to tackle the best that the game can give out. Perhaps his best advice, repeated in many different ways in the course of these fifty essays, is to accept the notion of incremental, gradual progress, all the while focusing on the process of playing and not the particular results of given shot or round. As experienced golfers know, but don’t always appreciate, it really helps to care a lot about a given shot, until it’s made--and then it’s best to not care at all about what happens after the ball leaves the clubface. Dorsel accepts that this is far easier to accept in theory than in practice, but he also provides several different strategies to make this primary lesson stick. The book also helps golfers with some of the social aspects of the game, in addition to the highly individual process of playing it. For example, I wish I’d read the segment on playing with partners before I competed in a recent alternate shot format event. I would have been a bit easier on myself, after a few instances of leaving my playing companion with less-than-perfect situations. This is a well-done compilation, and should be deeply appreciated by the many readers who will benefit from its advice. Review Date: May 11, 2007 |
Hole
By Hole's Recommendation For:
|
|
|
Just
Hit It: The National Golf Foundation recently reported that in the United States, more golf courses closed than the number of new golf courses opened for business in 2007. The prior year’s numbers weren’t much better, either. There are other signs that all is not well with the sport. In recent years I’ve heard several club professionals mutter about the rate at which golf club makers change models, especially for high-end items such as drivers. The constant turnover of inventory makes it harder to sell the stuff. Golfers hesitate to commit to a $400-500 investment in their game if they think something better is just about to come out on the market. If you look at the handicap lists kept by golf courses, however, the new equipment doesn’t have a significant effect on the members’ overall performance. The country is not exactly being flooded by hordes of scratch golfers. In one respect, there’s a simple explanation. Like all other sporting goods manufacturers, golf club makers don’t really sell equipment—they sell hope. And as Frank Thomas explains in his common sense-filled book, hope can help for a while, but inevitably most golfers see their games return to their old ways. Thomas is the former Technical Director of the United States Golf Association, a position he held for many years after his prior work as a Shakespeare Sporting Goods design engineer. In his USGA position, he dealt with hundreds of clubs and balls, trying to make sure that the inventors and manufacturers met the organization’s technical (and not so technical) standards. This work sometimes landed Thomas in litigation, including the dispute between Ping Golf and the USGA about clubface grooves. (He gives the readers his side of that controversy, which though allegedly settled is still a matter of significant debate.) Thomas is one of those rare folks who are technically adept and yet able to explain what’s going on in easily comprehended terms for those not so fortunate. This is very handy for folks who hear the term Optimal Distance Standard for golf balls, or MOI for club design, and feel their head hurt at the same time. The best chapter in his book is titled “Three Innovations that Changed the Game.” He describes the whys and hows of cavity-back, investment cast irons, the now-ubiquitous clubs for which Karsten Solheim of Ping was among the early proponents. It’s one of the best explanations why most amateur golfers should keep these clubs in their bags, and avoid any contact with the muscle-back forged blades the professionals use. Thomas then discusses the development of graphite shafts, in which he himself played a leading role. While it’s hard to argue that these shafts represent an equivalent leap in shaft technology as that presented when steel replaced hickory, the change has nonetheless been widely accepted and beneficial for many, many golfers. The last major innovation deals with the new drivers. Thomas explains the connection between cavity back iron design and the methods used to mirror that same kind of forgiveness in the longest club in the golfer’s bag. As Thomas notes, if golfers simply make sure they incorporate all of these elements in their clubs, they’ll be hard-pressed to buy a better game with anything else. He’s less impressed with golf balls, although he properly credits ball makers with significant improvements in quality control, compared to their wobbly efforts of 40 or more years ago. Some balls are clearly better for amateurs than others, but as with other equipment issues, Thomas stresses that most of us can’t create the swing conditions to take advantage of some highly touted features, or are simply too erratic to consistently benefit from the extra cost. The best part of this book, however, is the calm, steady voice he uses in trying to temper golfers’ enthusiasm for the next new thing. He’s clearly not against innovation. Nonetheless, he’s aware of the long term risks to golf of having folks believing that only a major investment in equipment can improve their game. High cost is a real barrier to bringing new players into the sport, and without those new entrants, it will be ever harder to keep clubs operating for their current members. Hope is a very good thing to have, but acceptance may often be better for you in the long run. Review date: April 6, 2008 |
Hole
By Hole's Recommendation For:
|
|
|
|
|
First Sunday in April: Golf book publishers focus on three primary seasons as they try to appeal to folks buying books about their own favorite sport or for their golf-nut relative or friend. Father’s Day and Christmas time are two of them. The Masters Tournament, first major men’s golf tournament held each spring, is the other one. Given that pattern, it’s perfectly understandable that a few weeks ago, the folks at Sterling Publishing sent out review copies of this newest entry in the long written record about Augusta National Golf Club, and the little ol’ tournament they hold there. For this edition, however, there are no new insights into the 70-year history of the Masters. That’s because this is a collection of some of the best of what’s already been written about it. With an introduction by PGA Tour veteran Brad Faxon, and a Foreward by former Golf Digest Senior Editor Don Wade, the unnamed editors cobbled together a wide variety of pieces from books, magazines, newspapers, and the Internet. The mix includes some of the most well known Masters stories involving the greats of the game, including recent victors such as Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, but also some of the early winners, such as Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan. It also features pieces that touch upon other distinctive elements of the golf course and tournament that millions of television viewers watch each year. Many of these selections will be familiar to book-loving golfers who keep a fairly extensive library. There’s an essay by Herbert Warren Wind, perhaps the dean of American golf writers. The ironic counterweight to Wind, longtime golf writer Dan Jenkins, also has an article reprinted here. Mark O’Meara’s popular victory in the 1998 Masters is recounted, using a chapter in John Feinstein’s The Majors. Passages from the semi-autobiographies of Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus also make an appearance. Rick Reilly’s brutally funny attempt to caddie for 1963 Masters Champion Tommy Aaron, first told in Who’s Your Caddy?, is a welcome addition to the collection. On the other hand, what I particularly like about this lengthy anthology are the pieces that might not have been selected, if the editors had assumed they should only reproduce what would be acceptable to the late Clifford Roberts, the autocratic co-founder of Augusta National. Roberts’ role in running the golf course and the Tournament is a frequent mention in many of the pieces, as one might expect. Nonetheless, I was impressed that the editors ran a moving segment about Roberts that first appeared in Curt Sampson’s The Masters: Golf, Money and Power in Augusta Georgia. That book is a respectful but clear-eyed assessment of the event and the people who played a central role in Augusta National’s creation and management. Nonetheless, it would never be confused with an official, "authorized" history. I also liked two short essays that dealt with the recent Martha Burk controversy, an odd attempt to further the cause of feminism, as I’ve written about previously. Susan Reimer came back to sportswriting to cover this sideshow. She came away from the experience with a terrific perspective on some of the folks affected by the tournament. The editors also ran a great short piece by Bill Sammons of ESPN.com, in which he explains the extremely basic appeal of a mens-only recreational outlet. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend reading this book straight through, especially during Masters Week. That would be a bit much, even for devout fans of Augusta National. On the other hand, it’s a very good collection on a single, well-covered topic. It may also help inspire its readers to check out the lengthy publishing credits pages in the back of the book, and buy some copies of the original source materials. And that would be well worth the effort. Review date: April 6, 2008 |
Hole
By Hole's Recommendation For:
|
|
|
| Have any
comments on the Reviews? Just send us an e-mail! If you're looking for golf books we haven't reviewed yet, click on this image:
Member |
Links to Hole
By Hole Web Pages |
© Frederick Schranck 2000-2008
