Skip to footer

6 golf books: Swing into spring with these new titles

Here are a handful of new books that golfers may reach for between rounds.

4. "Golf’s Forgotten Legends & Unforgettable Controversies," by Jeff Gold

  • By Ross Atkin Contributor

This compact volume covers a lot of ground. On one hand, it profiles some of game’s past greats who seldom are mentioned anymore (Willie Anderson, Tommy Armour, et. al.). On the other hand, author Jeff Gold turns his attention to describing some of the most memorable blunders, disqualifications, scandals, and controversies in pro golf.

Here’s an excerpt from “Golf’s Forgotten Legends & Unforgettable Controversies”:

“Besides his bent left elbow, [Harry] Vardon owed his success largely to an upright swing method that drastically changed the shape of the golf shot. The traditional style was to drive the ball as hard as possible, at a low trajectory, maximizing distance but giving up control where the ball would come to rest. Vardon, by contrast, hit the ball high in the air so it would land more softly and stop much more quickly, with less bouncing and rolling. This, with an adjustment in his stance, enabled him to land the ball closer to the flagstick than golfers using the traditional method. Modern-day golfers like Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods copied that aspect of Vardon’s technique – neither were shabby golfers.”

4 of 6
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.