The Story of Golf in Oklahoma chronicles the links history of the Sooner state, from championships to courses to personalities. Previously unpublished material includes numerous color and black-and-white photographs, layouts of Oklahoma courses, and detailed appendices documenting the dates, locations, champions, and winning scores of every Oklahoma Open as well as of other prominent golf championship played in Oklahoma.
The Walk-On Method features 31 underdog athletes who parlayed their college experience into habits that led to career and business success. While each walk-on's individual path is unique, the mindset, skills, and behaviors they developed and the post-college outcomes they achieved are similarly remarkable. These athletes applied The Walk-On Method first to college football, basketball, rowing, golf, or track & field, and then they parlayed that behavior pattern into success in business ownership, engineering, coaching, law, finance, broadcasting, medicine, insurance, film, management, education, banking, acting, and ministry. These former walk-ons were behaving subconsciously, unaware that scrambling to make a college sports team and fighting to keep their roster spot was foundational to their life's work. Going the extra mile in their profession is second nature, and they wonder why others don't take that same (and seemingly obvious) path. Most people don't realize they're in control of their career trajectory. When we read about a successful person, their accomplishments are often painted as a one-in-a-billion anomaly, a lightning strike of genius or opportunity. This book destroys those myths one walk-on success story at a time and reveals this important reality: your professional success is within your control. Ordinary people will accomplish extraordinary feats when their energy is properly channeled. The Walk-On Method To Career & Business Success shows you how through inspiring stories and the proven five-step Walk-On Method.
Golf has been called the greatest of all games, but it has also been derided by none other than Mark Twain as nothing more than a good walk spoiled. Traditional teaching holds that golf originated in Scotland around the 15th century. However, there is historical evidence of games similar to golf being played in the low countries of Europe back in the 13th century. Over the many centuries of golf's evolution, the balls used have changed greatly, as have the clubs, the holes, the courses, and the entire game itself. The Historical Dictionary of Golf presents a comprehensive history of the game through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, photos, and over 300 cross-referenced dictionary entries on places, teams, terminology, and people, including Arnold Palmer, Greg Norman, Lee Trevino, Jack Nicklaus, Annika Sörenstam, Lorena Ochoa, Phil Mickelson, and, of course, Tiger Woods. Appendixes of the members of the World Golf Hall of Fame, the Major Championships of Golf, the International Team Events, and the Professional Tour Awards are also included.
“Through this wonderful book, frustrated golfers can learn to swing like Moe [Norman] and improve their games.” —Anthony Robbins, #1 New York Times–bestselling author The mysterious and reclusive genius Moe Norman is acknowledged as the best ball-striker in the history of golf by many of the game’s greats. The Single Plane Golf Swing: Play Better Golf the Moe Norman Way reveals the secrets of the swing that enabled him to hit the ball solidly with unerring accuracy and consistency—every time. Norman’s simple, efficient, and easily understood Single Plane Swing has improved the games of thousands of golfers. Golf professional Todd Graves, known as “Little Moe” and regarded as the world authority on Norman’s swing, comprehensively teaches readers the mechanics, drills, and feelings of the Single Plane Swing that Moe called “The Feeling of Greatness.” Graves shares Norman’s brilliant insights and liberating approach to the game and demonstrates why the conventional “tour” swing is too complex and frustrating for the majority of amateurs. Illustrated with more than 300 photographs and written with Tim O’Connor, Norman’s biographer, the book also engagingly tells Norman’s bittersweet life story and explores the teacher-student bond forged between Norman and his protégé Graves. “One of golf’s greatest untold stories, Moe Norman’s life illustrated a simple and powerful truth: greatness is built from practicing the right swing in the right way. In this book, Todd Graves has given us a blueprint for that swing, for those practice habits, and most of all for a process that builds success.” —Dan Coyle, New York Times-bestselling author of The Culture Code
A brilliant, kaleidoscopic narrative of Oklahoma City—a great American story of civics, basketball, and destiny, from award-winning journalist Sam Anderson NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Chicago Tribune • San Francisco Chronicle • The Economist • Deadspin Oklahoma City was born from chaos. It was founded in a bizarre but momentous “Land Run” in 1889, when thousands of people lined up along the borders of Oklahoma Territory and rushed in at noon to stake their claims. Since then, it has been a city torn between the wild energy that drives its outsized ambitions, and the forces of order that seek sustainable progress. Nowhere was this dynamic better realized than in the drama of the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team’s 2012-13 season, when the Thunder’s brilliant general manager, Sam Presti, ignited a firestorm by trading future superstar James Harden just days before the first game. Presti’s all-in gamble on “the Process”—the patient, methodical management style that dictated the trade as the team’s best hope for long-term greatness—kicked off a pivotal year in the city’s history, one that would include pitched battles over urban planning, a series of cataclysmic tornadoes, and the frenzied hope that an NBA championship might finally deliver the glory of which the city had always dreamed. Boom Town announces the arrival of an exciting literary voice. Sam Anderson, former book critic for New York magazine and now a staff writer at the New York Times magazine, unfolds an idiosyncratic mix of American history, sports reporting, urban studies, gonzo memoir, and much more to tell the strange but compelling story of an American city whose unique mix of geography and history make it a fascinating microcosm of the democratic experiment. Filled with characters ranging from NBA superstars Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook; to Flaming Lips oddball frontman Wayne Coyne; to legendary Great Plains meteorologist Gary England; to Stanley Draper, Oklahoma City's would-be Robert Moses; to civil rights activist Clara Luper; to the citizens and public servants who survived the notorious 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building, Boom Town offers a remarkable look at the urban tapestry woven from control and chaos, sports and civics.
From the award-winning journalist and coach: a biography of “the ‘Rain Man’ of golf. It’s a character drama. It’s an underdog story” (Barry Morrow, Academy Award–winning screenwriter). Documentary now in production! In The Feeling of Greatness, second edition, golf coach Tim O’Connor updates his previous biography of the late great, Canadian golfer Moe Norman, who was famous for introducing the single plane golf swing. This edition includes new anecdotes about Moe both on and off the course by golfers, journalists, friends, and family, and offers a more in-depth portrait of the man and golfer, especially in the last years of his life. O’Connor shares with readers his personal and professional friendships with Moe along the way. Some twenty years later, from a distanced perspective, O’Connor sets the record straight about Norman, promotes his legacy as the legendary golfer he was, and reflects on life lessons learned from their association over the years. Praise for Moe Norman and The Feeling of Greatness “Only two players have ever owned their swings: Moe Norman and Ben Hogan.” —Tiger Woods “Well-written and meticulously researched.” —James McCarten, PGATour.com “Tim O’Connor has helped us better understand one of golf’s most intriguing and disturbing members.” —Hal Quinn, The Financial Post
Earl Woods, the father of young Eldrick "Tiger" Woods, was widely ridiculed in 1996 when, in an article anointing his son as Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year, he likened Tiger's potential impact to that of a messiah. This unseemly proclamation appeared to embody all the worst elements of the dreaded sports-parent who seeks financial windfall and personal validation by pushing his child to excel on the diamond, the gridiron, the court, or the fairways. But in light of all we know now about Tiger Woods, David Owen asks in The Chosen One, who is to say that it wasn't Tiger's transcendent greatness all along that induced his father to guide him, rather than the father pushing the son? Not since the dawn of competitive tournament golf has anyone distanced himself from the rest of the world the way Tiger has. He is the best there is at nearly every aspect of the game: the longest driver, the strongest iron player, the most creative around the greens, and so sharp a clutch putter that when he putts well the tournament is over, and when he putts badly he often wins anyway. He is a breakthrough athlete in a sport remarkably resistant to them; in every tournament, Tiger has to beat a hundred-plus competitors, any of whom can take away a title with a four-day hot streak. When Michael Jordan won all his back-to-back championships, each night he only had to beat one team. Tiger is also a breakthrough athlete as one of the first true multicultural icons. There are African-American, Asian, Native American, and Caucasian elements to his roots; he carries with him parts of so many ethnicities that he not only shatters stereotypes but renders the whole notion of racial classification irrelevant. It is ironic that such an athlete would emerge in golf, America's most tradition-bound and racially insensitive sport. In The Chosen One, gifted essayist David Owen ponders the social, economic, and athletic implications of this amazing young man. We are only beginning to see all the ways that Tiger Woods might reshape the world. Owen's thoughtful, incisive, elegant, and provocative work examines this phenomenon unlike any the fields of play have ever seen, in a book that will stand alongside John McPhee's A Sense of Where You Are (about Princeton forward Bill Bradley) among the classic works of sports philosophy.
College golf is the breeding ground for the PGA, and the sport’s overlooked chapter. And in 1995 college golf saw its ultimate showdown. At the NCAA championship, a freshman who would become the sport’s biggest icon stood on the green in a sudden-death playoff that would settle the score in a tense and heated rivalry. Would Tiger Woods sink the putt? Based on exhaustive reporting and interviews, The Last Putt tells the story of an epic rivalry that encapsulated the changing face of the game. On one side was Oklahoma State, a true golfing dynasty featuring the young bloods of a privileged golf family and a coach whose winning record and reputation for toughness made him a mythical figure. On the other side was Stanford, born of the creative recruiting of an unforgettable group of players: Notah Begay (golf ’s first prominent Native American), Casey Martin (who broke down barriers by playing with a severe disability), and Tiger Woods. A stirring ensemble tale of young men carving out their futures on and off the course, The Last Putt makes for compelling, stroke-for-stroke reading down to the last putt.
