"When Golf was Fun" is a collection of tales from what is known as the "beer and barbecue circuit" of golf tournaments. These tournaments held in small town all across the state of Texas were not only the beginning of the careers of many great golfers but also produced some local legends. It was a time when golf was still a game, not a big business. This collection of 38 stories will entertain and amaze as you read first-hand accounts of some of the greatest exploits in the history of golf. You will read about local golf pros who are unknown outside of their local country club and you will also read about legends like Ben Crenshaw, Bruce Lietzke, Charles Coody, Miller Barber, Ben Hogan and others. Texas has a very rich golf history and much of it is captured in "When Golf was Fun." The late, great beer and barbecue circuit was a bygone era of Texas golf in which many Lone Star legends were born and raised but has since given way to the more civilized and organized golf industry we know today. Much like baseball's barnstorming days, the barbecue circuit was a series of unaffiliated events that brought an extremely high level of golf and excitement to tiny towns like Center and Athens; Quanah and Pampa-places you might otherwise never have known even existed.

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**

Thanks to The Complete Book of Golf Games, if you can't make par, you can at least make a few bucks!

Four little golfers spend a busy day on the course.

Award-winning PGA professionals Linkin and Livingston share a wealth of knowledge that has helped thousands of their students play the best golf of their lives.

For us rabbits the game of golf is a constant battle between fantasy and reality. The great hopes and ambitions that accompany us on the first tee quickly evaporate by a combination of mother nature, gravity and the cruelest of luck. One of the charms of the Great Game is that we are constantly chasing what is, in theory, attainable but in reality highly elusive. It is a perpetual series of occasions for hope. David Feherty summed it up when he said; "Golf can best be defined as an endless series of tragedies obscured by the occasional miracle." It is astonishing how long the occasional miracle can remain in the memory to the total eclipse of all else. Golf is a game whose hook is baited with hope. This book is a compendium of quotes from players who have been similarly troubled by the journey from great hopes to cruel reality. I hope you enjoy their reflections.

A spiritual journey, a lush travelogue, a parable of sports and philosophy—John Updike called this unique novel “a golf classic if any exists in our day.” When an American traveler on his way to India stops to play a round on one of the most beautiful and legendary golf courses in Scotland, he doesn’t know that his game—and his life—are about to change forever. He is introduced to Shivas Irons, a mysterious golf pro whose sublime insights stick with him long after the eighteenth hole. From the first swing of the Scotsman’s club, he realizes he is in for a most extraordinary day. By turns comic, existential, and semiautobiographical, Michael Murphy’s tale traces the arc of twenty-four hours, from a round of golf on the Links of Burningbush to a night fueled by whiskey, wisdom, and wandering—even a sighting of Seamus MacDuff, the holy man who haunts the hole they call Lucifer’s Rug. “Murphy’s book is going to alter many visions,” The New York Times Book Review declared. More than an unforgettable approach to one of the world’s most popular sports, Golf in the Kingdom is a meditation on the power of a game to transform the self.

Dr Bob Rotella is one of the hottest golfing performance consultants in the world today. Unlike other performance consultants, Rotella goes beyond the usual mental aspects of the game and the reliance on specific techniques. In this extraordinary book, and with his clients, he creates an attitude and a mindset about all aspects of the golfer's game, from mental preparation to competition. And, as some of the world's greatest golfers will attest, the results are spectacular. Filled with charming and insightful stories about golf and the golfers Rotella works with, GOLF IS NOT A GAME OF PERFECT will improve the game of even the most casual weekend player.

Discover within these pages the tools and practical techniques to release the golfer you are truly capable of becoming. Understand the power of Focused Attention and how you can improve BOTH your golf swing AND your ability to control yourself and your thinking out on the course. With over 20 years of PRACTICAL experience in the REAL WORLD, Karl Morris shares with you the approach that has worked with golfers at ALL levels from Major Winners to High Handicappers. With a refreshing approach that is neither 'It's all in the mind' nor 'It's all about the swing', you will have the opportunity to create a balance in both your thinking and your technique which will reward you with better scores but, above all, more ENJOYMENT of this great game.

"Golf Foreplay" is the perfect beginner's guide for golf novices who need to know the basic rules, etiquette, and fundamentals of the game (including invaluable dos and don'ts) before they step onto the green.