The Golden Era of Golf: How America Rose to Dominate the Old Scots Game - Hardcover

Barkow, Al

9780312252380: The Golden Era of Golf: How America Rose to Dominate the Old Scots Game

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312252382 ISBN 13: 9780312252380

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 2000

Until now, no one has made the point directly and unequivocally that the game "invented" by ancient Scots would not have reached its present stature in the world of sports if Americans had never gotten hold of it. Is this to say that Al Barkow is, in this history, being a narrow-minded, American-flag-waving jingoist? Not at all.

In detailing how America expanded on the old Scotsgame, Barkow does not deny that the United States more or less fell into certain advantages that led to its dominion over the game - there is the geography, the luck of not having to endure the physical devastation of two world wars, and a naturally broader economic strength. Still, Barkow also makes it clear that there were, and there remains, certain especially American characteristics - a singular energy and enthusiasm for participation in and observation of games, for melding sports with business, for technological and industrial innovation, and by all means democratic traditions - that turned what had been (and would probably have remained) an insular, parochial past time into a game played by millions around the world. America has been golf's great nurturing force, and Barkow details why and how it happened.

The history of American golf is not exactly a varnished treatment, a mindless glorification full of nationalist ardor, which is in keeping with the author's well-established reputation, developed over the past 37 years as a golf journalist, magazine editor, historian, and television commentator, as someone who looks with a sharp and candid eye at the game. Barkow has points of view and takes positions on affairs and personalities that impact on every aspect of golf.

Is the United States Golf Association, in its restrictions on equipment, playing ostrich to inevitable technological innovation? Hasn't it always? And, hasn't the association always been hypocritical in its definition of amateurism? Was the Ryder Cup ever really a demonstration of pure hands-across-the-sea good fellowship? Why did it take so long for the members of the Augusta National Golf Club to invite a black to play in its vaunted Masters tournament? Barkow was one of the first journalists to research in depth and write about how blacks were excluded from mainstream American golf for most of this century. Here, he expands on an element of history which is intrinsic to the larger American experience and which led to the coming of Tiger Woods.
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How good has television been for golf, and when and by whom did this most powerful of mediums get involved in the game? Is Greg Norman's celebrity (and personal wealth) an example or the result of modern-day image making that gives greater value to impressions of greatness than the reality of actual performance?

Although some curmudgeon emerges in this chronicle of golf, what also comes through, and on a larger note, is the author's passion for the game itself. Its demands on each player's will, determination, and both inherent and developed physical skills are so penetrating, and the satisfaction that comes from just coming close to fulfillment so great, that the manipulations of the golf "operators" - administrators, agents, some of its players, et al - become mere sidebars.

This is golf history with a certain perspective that arises from someone who has lived intimately with the game as a player and writer for at least half the century that is covered, and in particular the last half, on which there is the greater emphasis. It runs the gamut - from feisty, albeit well-considered, criticism to an evocation of the human drama that is finally the most vivid expression of any activity man takes on.

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Review:

What the Scots invented, the Americans perfected--or, at least, the progression from Hagen to Jones to Nelson to Snead to Hogan to Palmer to Nicklaus to Woods comes as close to perfection as the royal and ancient game allows. That Americans have pretty much commanded the links at golf's highest levels for well over a half century is no stunning revelation. Al Barkow's target in The Golden Era of Golf is figuring out why.

This is essentially an absorbing history of the game with a provocative and reasoned point of view. One of golf's veteran analysts, Barkow suggests a whole series of factors that conspired to turn an Old World passion into an American obsession and mold America's best players into dominators on the world stage. As Barkow sees it, the nation's geography has played a big part, as have American competitiveness, character, and spirit, the national love of sports, technological know-how, marketing wizardry, media magic, and business acumen. And so has the national need to create heroes to adore. From Hagen on, a steady stream of charismatic idols has continually captured imaginations and inspired the next generation.

While Barkow's ode is not above criticizing golf's corporate formalities, old fuddy-duddies, social inequities, money mania, and past shames, it's the game itself, he stresses, that in the end keeps invigorating itself. "When you see Tiger Woods... hit a 202-yard five iron from a soft lie in a fairway bunker that gets a mile up in the air then lands softly and stops five feet from the hole on the narrow, water-and-bunker-guarded green of a par-five hole, and you say to yourself, to hell with all the agents and the rules mavens and the other operators around the periphery of the game, a shot like Woods just hit is so beautiful, so pure, so replete with skill, it absorbs and nullifies all the conniving, posturing, the platitudinous palaver of the manipulators." It keeps golf fresh, challenging those who play and those who are about to. --Jeff Silverman

About the Author:

Al Barkow has been the editor-in-chief of Golf and Golf Illustrated magazines, chief writer on the original Shell's Wonderful World of Golf television series, and writer of countless articles on the game for such publications as Sports Illustrated, Golf Digest, The New York Times, Golf Monthly (UK), Golf World, and Travel & Leisure. He has co-authored numerous golf instructional books with professionals that include Ken Venturi, Billy Casper, and Dave Stockton. He has written previous histories of golf, including Golf's Golden Grind: the History of the Tour and Gettin' to the Dance Floor: an Oral History of American Golf, which in 1986 won the first annual United States Golf Association International Golf Book of the Year award. Barkow also appeared for some ten years as a television commentator for Inside the PGA Tour and the Senior PGA Tour programs seen on ESPN. A native of Chicago, he was a member of the Western Illinois University golf team that won the NAIA national championship in 1959 and also competed in the US Amateur Championship in 1971 as well as other national and regional golf competitions. He currently lives in Clifton, New Jersey.

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