WHAT DOES IT TAKE to win a major championship and reach the absolute pinnacle of golf? Through a season of the four tournaments -- the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship -- known collectively as the majors, John Feinstein takes us where the television cameras never go, both off the links and "inside the ropes", as he reveals the special challenges and rituals, the frustrations and exhilaration, that mark the lives and careers of the world's greatest golfers.
Legendary sports writer Dan Jenkins delivers a golf history lesson that is unrivaled in its scope and style. In this seminal collection, Dan Jenkins has selected the funniest and most riveting stories from his epic career as a writer for Sports Illustrated and Golf Digest, where his wry reportage of golf’s most thrilling finishes, historic moments, and heartbreaking collapses brought legions of fans intimately close to the action. All the greatest moments of golf over the last sixty years are here: Jack Nicklaus at Pebble Beach, Arnold Palmer at Cherry Hills, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead at Oakmont, and of course Tiger Woods, just about everywhere. As much about journalism and watching the growth of one of our most cherished sports writers, as it is about the great game of golf, Jenkins at the Majors is a must read for sports fans and golfers alike.
A celebration of three legendary golfers describes how the sport deteriorated into virtual non-existence before the trio revitalized its popularity by setting records while transforming how the game was played and regarded.
It is the tournament that separates champions from mortals. It is the starting point for the careers of future legends and can be the final stop on the down escalator for fading stars. The annual PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament is one of the most grueling competitions in any sport. Every fall, veterans and talented hopefuls sweat through six rounds of hell at Q school, as the tournament is universally known, to get a shot at the PGA Tour, vying for the 30 slots available. The grim reality: If you don't make it through Q school, you're not on the PGA tour. You're out. And those who make it to the sixday finals are the lucky ones: hundreds more players fail to get through the equally grueling first two stages of the event. John Feinstein tells the story of the players who compete for these coveted positions in the 2005 Q school as only he can. With arresting accounts from the players, established winners, rising stars, the defeated, and the endlessly hopeful, America's favorite sportswriter unearths the inside story behind the PGA Tour's brutal all-ornothing competition.
Hank Haney's candid, surprisingly insightful account of his tumultuous six-year journey with Tiger Woods, during which the supremely gifted golfer collected six major championships and rewrote golf history. Hank was one of very few people allowed behind the curtain and observed Tiger in nearly every circumstance. There's never been a book about Tiger that is as intimate and revealing--or as wise about what it takes to coach a star athlete. From 2004 to the spring of 2010, Hank Haney was Tiger Woods's coach, and Tiger was Haney's only client. In that period, Tiger won more than a third of the tournaments he entered and six of his fourteen major titles. Haney felt hugely honored to help Tiger with his swing, and he approached the job with intense absorption and attention to detail. Haney was with Tiger 110 days a year, spoke to him over 200 days a year, and stayed at Tiger's house up to 30 days a year--sometimes affording him more contact with Tiger than either the athlete's agent or caddy. Haney saw his student in nearly every circumstance: in the locker room; on the course; with his wife, Elin; and relaxing with friends. Haney was there through it all, observing how Tiger's public identity sometimes meshed awkwardly with the roles of husband and friend, and how the former child prodigy came to have a conflicted relationship with the game that made him famous.
Kenny Reid has avidly followed golf's majors for more than 30 years. Through the luminescent glow of his television screen, and even, on occasion, from the vantage point of the roped-off boundaries, he has watched the greats of the game stamp their mark in the history books of each of the golf world's premier tournaments. In 2009 he decided to go a step further, decided that it was time to live the dream of all golf enthusiasts - he embarked on a pilgrimage, a 'fan slam', to each of the four majors - the Masters, the US Open, The Open and the PGA Championship - all in a single year. A Major Obsession chronicles this golf fan's odyssey. In an effort to record every detail of the fan's experience at the majors at Bethpage, Augusta, Turnberry and Hazeltine, he experiences excitement, mishaps, surprises and feats of brilliance. Not a golf insider or writer, he records each championship's special feel and ambience from the everyday fan's point of view. The journey takes him to the heart of the spectator experience, comparing and contrasting each championship's highs-and-lows both on and off the course. It mixes the sublime with the ridiculous; the expected with the unexpected. Original, quirky and brilliantly insightful, this fan's-eye account of the best players and tournaments in the world is a must for all lovers of sport and of golf; it is entertainment, travelogue and user manual to the most spectacular golf tournaments in the world.
When his life came to a sudden and tragic end in Ocotber 1999, Payne Stewart was at the top of his game on every level. In June 1999 he secured his place as one of the golfing greats of our time when he putted out for victory in the US open and won a much coveted place on the winning Ryder Cup team.
This reference work is a complete source for the results of each of golf's major tournaments (the Master's Tournament, U.S. Open, British Open Championship, and PGA Championship). Information includes the final position, round-by-round score, and complete major tournament record of every golfer, including those that didn't finish, to have participated in a major. Appendices list all players with possible name variations or for whom there is conflicting data.
This Los Angeles Times bestseller takes a riveting look at the life and times of depression-era golf legend Bobby Jones. In the wake of the stock market crash and the dawn of the Great Depression, a ray of light emerged from the world of sports in the summer of 1930. Bobby Jones, a 28-year-old amateur golfer, mounted a campaign against the record books. In four months, he conquered the British Amateur Championship, the British Open, the United States Open, and finally the United States Amateur Championship, an achievement so extraordinary that writers dubbed it the Grand Slam. No one has ever repeated it. Mark Frost uses a wealth of original research to provide an unprecedented intimate portrait of golf great Bobby Jones. In the tradition of The Greatest Game Ever Played, The Grand Slam blends social history with sports biography, captivating the imagination and engaging the reader. The Grand Slam is a biography not to be missed.
Tiger Woods has called the U.S. Open "the most difficult national championship." With Open, John Feinstein goes behind the scenes to tell for the first time the full story of how the 2002 U.S. Open Championship came into being-how a public course was transformed into one of the most difficult and surprising in the tournament's history, and how the greatest golfers in the world rose to its almost insurmountable challenges. The Black course at the public golf club in Bethpage, New York, has long had a mythic status among golfers. Designed by legendary course architect A. W. Tillinghast in 1936, it is known as a work of genius-with long fairways, gorgeous vistas, and roughs and bunkers that stymie all but the very best golfers. It is a course where any player can compete, but its cult reputation means that golfers often have to camp overnight in the parking lot to get a tee time the next day. The 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black was the first time in history that golf's greatest championship had been held at a true public course. Open is the full drama of that championship, from the moment that officials first considered holding it there until the last putt rolled in at dusk on Sunday. Along the way, John Feinstein reveals the full glory of golf as it's never been explored before. He digs deep to find out what it really takes to make golf's most famous event worthy of the champions who compete in it. He tells the remarkable story of the artisans who transformed the Black from a downtrodden and rough-around-the-edges public course to one that top pros hailed as "unbelievable" and "the toughest par-70 I've ever played in my life." He also tracks the drama of the masters who battled for supremacy at the Black-Tiger Woods, Sergio Garcia, Nick Faldo, Phil Mickelson, Jeff Maggert-to show how true champions respond to the toughest conditions. Open is the story of people who devote their entire lives to golf, both behind the scenes and inside the ropes. Their struggles and exhilarations as they master the monster known as Bethpage Black make for a story every golf lover will want to read again and again.
