Just a Range Ball in a Box of Titleists

The irreverent golfer and sports commentator offers an entertaining look at the world of professional golf, discussing the PGA Tour, the colorful personalities and legendary golfers, the courses, and the culture of golf. 150,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. Tour.

A popular golfing iconoclast uses (and abuses) his ``unique'' vantage point as tour player and broadcaster to hold forth on all aspects of life on the links. McCord has gained the reputation as the golfing fraternity's wild man, a sort-of Howard Stern of the links, if you will. Currently prohibited from broadcasting at the Masters for an off-color remark he made about the greens at Augusta, his irreverence has gained him many devotees--and almost as many detractors. Here McCord is generous (often to a fault) with his opinions about the game. While his expertise, gained through nearly a quarter-century on the tour as both player and analyst, is practically above reproach, it's his inconsistent approach-- alternately erudite and folksy, sometimes technical, other times emotional--that is wearisome and often downright annoying. A good example of this is his celebration of the booze-soaked exploits of a tour player named J.J. in a chapter lying practically cheek-to-jowl with the cautionary tale--purportedly fictitious--of another player, this time hooked on illicit substances, whose life careened wildly out of control. McCord sounds off on a diversity of topics and his celebrated good humor often shines through, particularly when he's describing the ``ExWives Conflict,'' a tournament pitting former spouses against each other, or analyzing the skills of celebrity players ranging from Gerald Ford to elder shock-rocker Alice Cooper to basketballer Michael Jordan (whose devotion to the game, McCord writes, ``has helped lift golf to new corners of our social map'') to Jack Nicholson, Sly Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger--hapless duffers all. McCord also takes a few much-needed jabs at his sometime television colleague, the pompous, lesbian-bating Englishman, Ben Wright (whom McCord, for once at a loss for words, calls ``the bane of my existence''). It's good to read about someone having fun with (and at the expense of) a leisure time activity that many take too seriously. However, McCord seems too taken with his bad-boy image to bring many readers in on the joke. (First printing of 125,000; first serial to Golf Digest; $100,000 ad/promo; author tour; radio satellite tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

McCord injected new life into the pious world of professional golf commentating when he arrived in the CBS booth more than a decade ago. Whether unabashedly criticizing poor play or flamboyantly inventing his own language (in McCordspeak, "Grow hair, ball" means "Slow down"), McCord has managed to infuriate traditionalists and captivate the average fan. (His image as a maverick was only heightened when he was banned from Augusta National, home of the ever-so-stuffy Masters, for saying that the course's notoriously fast greens must have been "bikini-waxed.") Unfortunately, McCord's nineteenth-hole humor works much better delivered in short bursts on television than it does in print over a full-length book. His stories about his own mediocre career on the PGA Tour or about hanging with the boys at San Luis Rey Downs (his local course, sort of a Tin Cup, California style) are amusing enough, but extended to essay length, they often seem forced, the premises belabored and the punch lines flat. And when he tries to really extend himself--as in a mock Shakespearean version of the "The Globe Open" starring the earl of Palmer--the results are, to use one of McCord's favorite terms, roadkill. Still, as Putnam's 125,000 first printing indicates, there are plenty of golf fans out there, many of whom respond to McCord's irreverence. Expect demand, but most readers will quickly realize that McCord should stick to sound bites. Bill Ott