<div dir="ltr"><div>All,</div><div> Please find below and attached my review of Jeff Silverman, <i>Great American Golf Stories</i></div><div>Thanks, <br></div><div>Duncan</div><div><br></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Silverman, Jeff, ed. <i>Great
American Golf Stories</i>.<span> </span>Essex, CT:
Lyons Press, 2023. Xiii + 319 pp. ISBN 978-1-4930-7191-3. $18.00 ppb.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Reviewed by Duncan R. Jamieson,
Ashland University.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span> </span>Born
in Lanark, Scotland, Dad grew up playing golf.<span>
</span>He emigrated to New York in his early twenties, met my mother and they
married.<span> </span>His father-in-law was a golfer
as well, but his only child did not play. <span> </span>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.<span> </span>He generally managed eighteen
holes a weekend shooting in the low to mid-80s.<span>
</span>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.<span> </span>When not playing himself, he enjoyed watching
the pros on television, a faithful member of Arnie’s Army.<span> </span>He and Mother made annual winter trips to
Pinehurst, North Carolina, where he enjoyed the golf and Mother the
reading.<span> </span>He enjoyed reading golfing
magazines and might have picked up <i>Great American Golf Stories</i> had it
been published during his life.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span> </span>A
former columnist for the <i>Los Angeles Herald Examiner</i>, Silverman has
written for the <i>New York Times</i> and <i>Sports Illustrated</i>, as well as
editing collections on boxing, baseball and several others on golf.<span> </span>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.<span> </span>While they all mention golf, a few of the
connections are flimsy at best. <span> </span>“Winter
Dreams,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, (<i>Metropolitan Magazine</i> (1922), and an
excerpt from <i>Babbit</i>, by Sinclair Lewis (1922) only mention golf in
passing.<span> </span>I wonder if he included them because
of the universal literary fame of the authors.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span> </span>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.<span>
</span>Being an historian by trade I might have arranged the selections in
chronological order.<span> </span>More importantly, I
would have liked a few sentences to begin each entry.<span> </span>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.<span>
</span>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. <span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span> </span>As
with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis, many of the authors will be well
known to a variety of readers.<span> </span>Zane
Grey, Grantland Rice, Max Behr, Walt Lantz, Heywood Braun, Ring Lardner, Walter
Hagen and Damon Runyon are names I recognize.<span>
</span>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.<span> </span>If interested in golf stories I encourage you
to take a look at the collection on your own.<span>
</span><span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">John G. Anderson,
“The Greatest Golf Finish I Ever Saw” (59-64) is written as if you’re there
watching it with the author.<span> </span>“Gentlemen,
You Can’t Play Through,” by Charles E. Van Loan (145-170), is a wonderful
“gotcha story.”<span> </span>“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). <span> </span>The story and especially its end on Third
Avenue is delightful.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span> </span>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.<span>
</span>Through several conversations followed by thoughtful reflection the pro
realized the problem was a wandering mind.<span>
</span>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.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span> </span>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.<span> </span>Consider if women wore
knickerbockers while men teed off in the flowing skirts before the introduction
of women’s tees?<span> </span>Both are interesting
pieces that focus on the constraints and issues faced on the links by the
“second sex.”<span> </span>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).<span>
</span><span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span> </span>Silverman
wisely chose to open the collection with Grantland Rice’s lyrical piece, “The
Other Lure of Golf” (11-14).<span> </span>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).<span> </span>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.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span> </span>These
are just a few of the myriad stories of golf.<span>
</span>An interesting collection from a bygone era.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span> </span></p>
</div><div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past<br><br>Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.<br>Professor of History<br>Book Review Editor<br><i>AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature</i><br>Ashland University<br>Ashland, OH 44805<br>USA<br></div></div></div></div>