Driving Myself Crazy: Misadventures of a Novice Golfer - Hardcover

Maxwell, Jessica

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553107933 ISBN 13: 9780553107937

Publisher: Bantam, 2000

Synopsis

"Golf!" exclaimed Jessica Maxwell's friend Rande. "I thought golf was for Republicans...and dorks!"

Adventure writer Jessica Maxwell is neither, but she is a woman--and even today golf is primarily a sport for men. In fact, according to an unverifiable legend, the very name of the game comes from the words "Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden."  But Jessica loves a challenge, and when she decided to invade this male-dominated territory, she plunged in headfirst, the same way she learned how to ski and fly fish--two very demanding sports she took up in her early thirties after a life as a confirmed "non-jockette." Surely golf couldn't be that much more difficult...could it?

Breezy and offbeat, Driving Myself Crazy is Jessica's first-person account of her golfing education--the teachers, the theories, the mistakes and misadventures, and the confidence she feels once her game begins to improve.

In this irreverent memoir, we get a front-row seat as Jessica struggles to learn golf's etiquette, customs, and rules of engagement--from her first comical attempts to simply hit the damn ball, to the ultimate sign of arrival as a bona fide woman golfer... a complete set of Nancy Lopez clubs!  

Among those who help Jessica master the game are Peter Croker, a revolutionary teaching pro from Australia, and Cindy Swift Jones, his partner and putting guru, as well as Peggy Kirk Bell, a seventy-seven-year-old legend and one of the most famous figures in the history of women's golf, and the queen of golf herself, Nancy Lopez. We also meet a gallery of other vivid characters from the fairways and greens, including the handsome "golf stalker" Graham, a man of mystery, wisdom and uncanny timing.

Along the way, Jessica also visits some of the most beautiful golf courses in the country: the Robert Trent Jones Trail in Alabama, considered by many to be the world's finest public golf facility; the scenic Whitefish Lake Club in rugged Montana; and the stylish Pine Needles course in Pinehurst, North Carolina.  

Celebrating the sport one pro claims is 80 percent physical for beginners and 85 percent mental once you know what you're doing, Driving Myself Crazy, is an engaging and often hilarious account of one woman whose obsession carried her across the globe and led her to discover that despite all the frustration, golf--played right--is a beautiful game.

About this title

Review:

In Driving Myself Crazy, Jessica Maxwell documents how she learned to play golf and why. Her narration of learning the game, from her first piece of instruction ("The point is not to think... just hit the ball") to her first visit to the driving range, is hilarious. Both novices and experienced golfers with any memory of starting out will relate to her tales of that hapless feeling of "the early days of rookiedom. The utter ignorance of all protocol, etiquette, and nomenclature, not to mention fundamental mechanics." Maxwell mixes the business of golf with pure pleasure; a description of her trip to Scotland to tour eight ladies' golf clubs provides the setting for a discussion of the history--and herstory--of golf. Nearly all of the clubs she visited were founded in the Victorian age, when it seemed easier to play (in whalebone corsets and full skirts, of course) in their own clubs than battle the men for entrance into theirs. These tales are interspersed between loving, almost gushing descriptions of the golf courses she visits in Oregon, Montana, Alabama, and North Carolina: "What especially drew my eye [to Sandpines in Oregon] was its palomino palette of ivory and wheat, the creaminess of vast rhomboids of sand, the feathery gold of its beach grasses. All of it kept fresh by its vivid fairways and greens, and the blueberry summer sky." Maxwell clearly loves to be surrounded by nature, even the carefully choreographed nature of a golf course. Reading about golf--even in a book as charming as this--is only second best to actually playing. Golfers may find themselves dropping the book and grabbing their clubs. --Suzanne Sexton

From the Back Cover:

"As entertaining, lyrical, and amusing as she is inquisitive, exuberant, and daring, Jessica Maxwell is the Empress Tizzie Izzie of adventure writing."
--Tom Robbins

"When the fly-fishing instructors' hectoring fades away and the inevitable big fish is duly subdued, and the wiggling, jiggling, and tiggling is over and done, this rookie's sweet discovery is the same as that of every fly fisher I respect: it was never about the fish; it was about the joy."
--David James Duncan, author of River Teeth

"La Femme Jessica lurches from one improbable, hilarious, and outrageous adventure to the next in a style she herself calls 'girl gonzo stuff.' No one does it better."
--Tim Cahill

"It's the irreverance that Maxwell brings to her sojourn that gives her memoir its zip, and it's that same irreference that makes us believers when the game's magic finally takes hold of her.... Deserves a place on every golf shelf."

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0553107933
• ISBN 13: 9780553107937
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240