Why Golf?: The Mystery of the Game Revisited - Softcover

Cullen, Bob

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743242475 ISBN 13: 9780743242479

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2002

Synopsis

In the grand tradition of such classics as Golf in the Kingdom and Final Rounds comes a brilliant consideration of golf's inimitable and ever-growing popularity.

In 1908, Arnold Haultain wrote a delightful book with a deceptively simple title: The Mystery of Golf. It explores the love affair golfers have with their sport and has been a favorite ever since among connoisseurs and students of the game. Now, more than ninety years later, in a thematic continuation of Haultain's enduring treatise, Bob Cullen has crafted a literate and thoughtful book that chronicles his own quest to uncover the secrets to the spell that golf has cast on millions.

Why golf? Beginning with that essential question, Cullen's fascinating explorations lead readers to a range of exotic and unexpected places of mind, spirit, and geography. Cleverly establishing entirely credible links between seemingly unrelated items -- from the breathtaking prowess of Tiger Woods to the Iranian government's near banning of golf to how a baby's smile is related to our love of golf -- Cullen weaves a rich and amusing tapestry, discussing suck unexpected subjects as Platonic philosophy and the nature of faith. As whimsical and picaresque as it is earnest and intensely personal, Why Golf? does for America's favorite weekend pastime what Peter Mayle did for the south of France and what George Will did for baseball.

About this title

Review:

The simple answer to Bob Cullen's titular question is, of course, "Why not golf?" but when has a duffer ever been satisfied with simplicity when a more complex route presents itself? The nature of the game--and the realization that something is just as likely to go horribly on the next shot as it is to go well--produces a species of adherents wracked with doubt, soul-searching, and self-flagellation, a perfect petri dish for observation, experimentation, and meditation. Smart, witty, irreverent, and insightful, Cullen's personal odyssey into the heart of the enigma is as provocative as it is entertaining.

Cullen begins with a reading of The Mystery of Golf, Arnold Haultain's touchstone 1908 volume, and ends, as Haultain did, with his acceptance that golf's secret can't be found in any one place. Still, like any good afternoon on the links, he winds up in some pretty spectacular, far-flung, and surprising lies--and truths--along the way. Such as the former Imperial Country Club in Teheran. The minds of Bob Rotella and instructors Bob Toski and Paul Runyon. A chapter from The Biophilia Hypothesis by ornithologist Gordon Orians. The Koran. Harbour View, a state-of-the-art track in Virginia, and Li'l Bit o' Heaven, the scruffy old course run by 1955 U.S. Open champ Jack Fleck in Arkansas. The work of 19th-century Scots novelist George MacDonald. And, finally, his own backyard. Eclectic stuff, to be sure.

Haultain remains his caddie throughout; a citation from The Mystery of Golf begins every chapter. "Why is it, let us ask ourselves, that mankind consents to hold prowess in sport in such high esteem?" incites a fascinating contemplation of Tiger Woods as the golfing embodiment of the prisoner who escapes from Plato's cave; it turns wonderfully surreal when Cullen actually confronts Woods with the theory in the press tent following a tournament round. It's just one of the many unexpected and alluring connections that turns Why Golf? (the book) into an irresistible first tee to start searching for the answer to "Why golf?" (the question). --Jeff Silverman

About the Author:

Bob Cullen is an award-winning journalist and critically acclaimed novelist whose work has appeared in Newsweek, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly. He collaborated with Dr. Bob Rotella on four books, beginning with the bestseller Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0743242475
• ISBN 13: 9780743242479
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240