[ARETE] Review, Jeff Silverman, Great American Golf Stories

[Duncan Jamieson]

All,
 Please find below and attached my review of Jeff Silverman, *Great
American Golf Stories*
Thanks,
Duncan

Silverman, Jeff, ed. *Great American Golf Stories*.  Essex, CT: Lyons
Press, 2023. Xiii + 319 pp. ISBN 978-1-4930-7191-3. $18.00 ppb.

Reviewed by Duncan R. Jamieson, Ashland University.

              Born in Lanark, Scotland, Dad grew up playing golf.  He
emigrated to New York in his early twenties, met my mother and they married.
His father-in-law was a golfer as well, but his only child did not
play.  Mother
and Dad raised three sons, and though my two older brothers and I played
sporadically when young, we never took golf up as either an interest or a
passion. Dad played regularly on several favorite clubs in Queens, New York
City, out on Long Island and up In Westchester County.  He generally
managed eighteen holes a weekend shooting in the low to mid-80s.  After he
retired, he enjoyed a parttime job visiting pro shops associated with the
links he regularly played, chatting with the pros while selling them balls,
clubs and other golf accessories and clothing.  When not playing himself,
he enjoyed watching the pros on television, a faithful member of Arnie’s
Army.  He and Mother made annual winter trips to Pinehurst, North Carolina,
where he enjoyed the golf and Mother the reading.  He enjoyed reading
golfing magazines and might have picked up *Great American Golf Stories*
had it been published during his life.

              A former columnist for the *Los Angeles Herald Examiner*,
Silverman has written for the *New York Times* and *Sports Illustrated*, as
well as editing collections on boxing, baseball and several others on golf.
This golf collection includes pieces written between 1890 when golf came to
the United States and 1920 has fiction, newspaper reports, memoirs and a
few “how to” commentaries.  While they all mention golf, a few of the
connections are flimsy at best.  “Winter Dreams,” by F. Scott
Fitzgerald, (*Metropolitan
Magazine* (1922), and an excerpt from *Babbit*, by Sinclair Lewis (1922)
only mention golf in passing.  I wonder if he included them because of the
universal literary fame of the authors.

              While each of the pieces get a brief comment in the
Introduction, along with a little history of the origins of golf and its
move across the pond, there appears to be little thought given to
organization.  Being an historian by trade I might have arranged the
selections in chronological order.  More importantly, I would have liked a
few sentences to begin each entry.  The reader has to rummage through the
Introduction to find any background, and then turn to the end where the
Sources are listed in order of appearance.  Having this readily at hand at
the beginning of each piece, including the original date and place of
publication would provide a bit of context.

              As with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis, many of the
authors will be well known to a variety of readers.  Zane Grey, Grantland
Rice, Max Behr, Walt Lantz, Heywood Braun, Ring Lardner, Walter Hagen and
Damon Runyon are names I recognize.  While all of the pieces are of
interest and valuable in one way or another, I am going to focus on a few
that stand out as the best to me.  If interested in golf stories I
encourage you to take a look at the collection on your own.

John G. Anderson, “The Greatest Golf Finish I Ever Saw” (59-64) is written
as if you’re there watching it with the author.  “Gentlemen, You Can’t Play
Through,” by Charles E. Van Loan (145-170), is a wonderful “gotcha
story.”  “Four
nice old gentlemen, prominent in business circles, church members who
remember it even when they top a tee shot, pillars of society, rich enough
to be carried over the course in palanquins, but too proud to ride, too
dignified to hurry, too meek to argue except among themselves, and too
infernally selfish to stand aside and let the younger men go through”
(145).  The story and especially its end on Third Avenue is delightful.

              Eddie Loos, “Hit the Ball,” (221-226) is an interesting
lesson of a pro working with an amateur who had a perfect practice swing
but who, when it came time to hit the drive, invariably flubbed it.  Through
several conversations followed by thoughtful reflection the pro realized
the problem was a wandering mind.  The fellow allowed thoughts about
everything to run through his mind rather than concentrating solely on
hitting the ball, thus proving golf is as much a mental as a physical
activity.

              Alexa W. Stirling, “Women Handicapped by Men’s Courses”
(227-232) and Marjorie R. S. Trumbull, “The Curse of the Skirt” (215-220)
consider the problems women faced on golf courses designed and built for
men while having to conform to society’s dress codes.  Consider if women
wore knickerbockers while men teed off in the flowing skirts before the
introduction of women’s tees?  Both are interesting pieces that focus on
the constraints and issues faced on the links by the “second sex.”  Overlooking
these issues yet still seeming sexist, “Albion” in “Golf for Women” (15-18)
writes “That the game is admirably adapted for a ladies pastime there can
be no doubt, and it has the advantage of being an amusement in which the
fair sex are not so heavily handicapped as in other games” (17).

              Silverman wisely chose to open the collection with Grantland
Rice’s lyrical piece, “The Other Lure of Golf” (11-14).  After describring
the intense competition that runs throughout the game from beginning to
end, he shifts to point out that “golf happens to be the one competitive
sport for the public at large that offers the lure of the open spaces where
the vision is unbound and where the feet can follow league after league of
open ground” (12).  Rice indicates that no matter the scenery you
prefer—oceans or deserts, plains or mountains, rugged or gentle—his words,
and more importantly golf courses evoke them all.

              These are just a few of the myriad stories of golf.  An
interesting collection from a bygone era.


Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past

Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.
Professor of History
Book Review Editor
*AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature*
Ashland University
Ashland, OH  44805
USA
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