Buy now to get the main key ideas from Rick Reilly's So Help Me Golf Sportswriter Rick Reilly has loved golf since he was a child. In So Help Me Golf (2022), Reilly shares his love for the game through a collection of fascinating anecdotes and fun facts about its most famous players, addicts, and courses. He looks back humorously at his own experiences, too. Reilly captures not only the essence of the game, but also the way it connects and inspires people.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 At the Irish seaside course Lahinch, a child made a hole in one on the blind par 3, 155-yard fifth. The bartender did nothing about it.

A beloved New York Times bestselling author and golf aficionado shares his insatiable curiosity, trademark sense of humor, and vast knowledge of the game in this cavalcade of original pieces about why we love the sport, now featuring three additional new pieces. This is the book Rick Reilly has been writing in the back of his head since he fell in love with the game of golf at eleven years old. He unpacks and explores all of the wonderful, maddening, heart-melting, heart-breaking, cool, and captivating things about golf that make the game so utterly addictive. We meet the PGA Tour player who robbed banks by night to pay his motel bills, the golf club maker who takes weekly psychedelic trips, and the caddy who kept his loop even after an 11-year prison stint. We learn how a man on his third heart nearly won the U.S. Open, how a Vietnam POW saved his life playing 18 holes a day in his tiny cell, and about the course that's absolutely free. Reilly mines all of the game’s quirky traditions—from the shot of bourbon you take before you tee off at Peyton Manning’s course, to the way the starter at St. Andrews announces to your group (and the hundreds of tourists watching), “You’re on the first tee, gentlemen.” He means that quite literally: St. Andrews has the first tee ever invented. We’ll visit the eighteen most unforgettable holes around the world (Reilly has played them all), including the hole in Indonesia where the biggest hazard is monkeys, the one in the Caribbean that's underwater, and the one in South Africa that requires a shot over a pit of alligators; not to mention Reilly’s attempt to play the most mini-golf holes in one day. Reilly expounds on all the great figures in the game, from Phil Mickelson to Bobby Jones to the simple reason Jack Nicklaus is better than Tiger Woods. He explains why we should stop hating Bryson DeChambeau unless we hate genius, the greatest upset in women’s golf history, and why Ernie Els throws away every ball that makes a birdie. Plus all the Greg Norman stories Reilly has never been able to tell before, and the great fun of being Jim Nantz. Connecting it all will be the story of Reilly’s own personal journey through the game, especially as it connects to his tumultuous relationship with his father, and how the two eventually reconciled through golf. This is Reilly’s valentine to golf, a cornucopia of stories that no golfer will want to be without. **The Sports Librarian’s Best of 2022 – Sports Books**

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Reilly pokes more holes in Trump's claims than there are sand traps on all of his courses combined. It is by turns amusing and alarming."-- The New Yorker "Golf is the spine of this shocking, wildly humorous book, but humanity is its flesh and spirit." -- Chicago Sun-Times "Every one of Trump's most disgusting qualities surfaces in golf." -- The Ringer An outrageous indictment of Donald Trump's appalling behavior when it comes to golf -- on and off the green -- and what it reveals about his character. Donald Trump loves golf. He loves to play it, buy it, build it, and operate it. He owns 14 courses around the world and runs another five, all of which he insists are the best on the planet. He also claims he's a 3 handicap, almost never loses, and has won an astonishing 18 club championships. How much of all that is true? Almost none of it, acclaimed sportswriter Rick Reilly reveals in this unsparing look at Trump in the world of golf. Based on Reilly's own experiences with Trump as well as interviews with over 100 golf pros, amateurs, developers, and caddies, Commander in Cheat is a startling and at times hilarious indictment of Trump and his golf game. You'll learn how Trump cheats (sometimes with the help of his caddies and Secret Service agents), lies about his scores (the "Trump Bump"), tells whoppers about the rank of his courses and their worth (declaring that every one of them is worth $50 million), and tramples the etiquette of the game (driving on greens doesn't help). Trump doesn't brag so much, though, about the golf contractors he stiffs, the course neighbors he intimidates, or the way his golf decisions wind up infecting his political ones. For Trump, it's always about winning. To do it, he uses the tricks he picked up from the hustlers at the public course where he learned the game as a college kid, and then polished as one of the most bombastic businessmen of our time. As Reilly writes, "Golf is like bicycle shorts. It reveals a lot about a man." Commander in Cheat "paints a side-splitting portrait of a congenital cheater" (Esquire), revealing all kinds of unsightly truths Trump has been hiding.

When a group of middle-class buddies obsessed with golf set up a bet to see who can finagle their way onto the nearby private course, their friendship is tested in ways they had never expected in this humorous novel from Rick Reilly, one of America’s most popular sportswriters. Missing Links is the story of four middle class buddies who live outside of Boston and for years have been 1) utterly obsessed with golf and 2) a regular foursome at Ponkaquoque Municipal Course and Deli, not so fondly known as Ponky, the single worst golf course in America. Just adjacent to these municipal links lies the Mayflower Country Club, the most exclusive private course in all of Boston and a major needle in their collective sides. Frustrated by the Mayflower's finely manicured greens and snooty members, three of Ponky's finest and most courageous—Two Down, Dannie, and Stick—set up a bet: $1,000.00 apiece, and the first man to somehow finagle his way on to the Mayflower course takes all. Lying, cheating, and forgery are encouraged, to put it mildly, and with the constant heckling and rare aid of Chunkin' Charlie, Hoover, and Bluto--a few more of Ponky's elite--the games begin. One of the three will eventually play the Mayflower's course, but their friendships--and everything else--will change as various truths unravel and the old Ponky starts looking like the home they never should have left.

A beloved New York Times bestselling author and golf aficionado shares his insatiable curiosity, trademark sense of humor, and vast knowledge of the game in this cavalcade of original pieces about why we love the sport, now featuring three additional new pieces. This is the book Rick Reilly has been writing in the back of his head since he fell in love with the game of golf at eleven years old. He unpacks and explores all of the wonderful, maddening, heart-melting, heart-breaking, cool, and captivating things about golf that make the game so utterly addictive. We meet the PGA Tour player who robbed banks by night to pay his motel bills, the golf club maker who takes weekly psychedelic trips, and the caddy who kept his loop even after an 11-year prison stint. We learn how a man on his third heart nearly won the U.S. Open, how a Vietnam POW saved his life playing 18 holes a day in his tiny cell, and about the course that's absolutely free. Reilly mines all of the game’s quirky traditions—from the shot of bourbon you take before you tee off at Peyton Manning’s course, to the way the starter at St. Andrews announces to your group (and the hundreds of tourists watching), “You’re on the first tee, gentlemen.” He means that quite literally: St. Andrews has the first tee ever invented. We’ll visit the eighteen most unforgettable holes around the world (Reilly has played them all), including the hole in Indonesia where the biggest hazard is monkeys, the one in the Caribbean that's underwater, and the one in South Africa that requires a shot over a pit of alligators; not to mention Reilly’s attempt to play the most mini-golf holes in one day. Reilly expounds on all the great figures in the game, from Phil Mickelson to Bobby Jones to the simple reason Jack Nicklaus is better than Tiger Woods. He explains why we should stop hating Bryson DeChambeau unless we hate genius, the greatest upset in women’s golf history, and why Ernie Els throws away every ball that makes a birdie. Plus all the Greg Norman stories Reilly has never been able to tell before, and the great fun of being Jim Nantz. Connecting it all will be the story of Reilly’s own personal journey through the game, especially as it connects to his tumultuous relationship with his father, and how the two eventually reconciled through golf. This is Reilly’s valentine to golf, a cornucopia of stories that no golfer will want to be without. **The Sports Librarian’s Best of 2022 – Sports Books**

The funniest and most popular sportswriter in America abandons his desk to caddy for some of the world’s most famous golfers—and some celebrity duffers—with hilarious results in this New York Times bestseller. Who knows a golfer best? Who’s with them every minute of every round, hears their muttering, knows whether they cheat? Their caddies, of course. So sportswriter Rick Reilly figured that he could learn a lot about the players and their game by caddying, even though he had absolutely no idea how to do it. Amazingly, some of the best golfers in the world—including Jack Nicklaus, David Duval, Tom Lehman, John Daly, Jill McGill of the LPGA tour, and Casey Martin—agreed to let Reilly carry their bags at actual PGA and LPGA Tour events. To round out his portrait of the golfing life, Reilly also persuaded Deepak Chopra and Donald Trump to take him on as a caddy, accompanied the four highest-rolling golf hustlers in Las Vegas around the course, and carried the bag for a blind golfer. Between his hilarious descriptions of his own ineptitude as a caddy and his insight into what makes the greats of golf so great, Reilly’s wicked wit and an expert’s eye provide readers with the next best thing to a great round of golf.

The most popular sports columnist in America puts his life (and dignity) on the line in search of the most absurd sporting event on the planet. What is the stupidest sport in the world? Not content to pontificate from the sidelines, Rick Reilly set out on a global journey—with stops in Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Denmark, England, and even a maximum security prison at Angola, Louisiana—to discover the answer to this enduring question. From the physically and mentally taxing sport of chess boxing to the psychological battlefield that is the rock-paper-scissors championship, to the underground world of illegal jart throwing, to several competitions that involve nudity, Reilly, in his valiant quest, subjected himself to both bodily danger and abject humiliation (or, in the case of ferret legging, both). These fringe sports offer their participants a chance to earn a few bucks and achieve the eternal glory that is winning—even when the victory in question might strike some as pointless, like the ability to sit in an oven-hot sauna for the longest time. It's debatable whether these sports push the body or just human idiocy to the outermost limits, but one thing is for sure: Sports in Hell is laugh-out-loud hilarious and will deliver plenty of unabashed fun.

In the last 15 years as a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, Reilly has covered every aspect of the sporting life, from tennis moms to Lakers-obsessed Jack Nicholson. This collection presents the best of Reilly: unforgettable sporting moments, favorite columns, and unpublished pieces.

A memoir of recovery by a Scottish novelist, poet, and golfer describes how he nearly lost his life before a last-ditch operation, his inspiration to resume playing golf after three decades, and his visits to courses on the Orkney Islands and St. Andrews.