Recommended Reads Books (List)

Tiger Woods’s long descent into a personal and professional hell reached bottom in the early hours of Memorial Day in 2017. Woods’s DUI arrest that night came on the heels of a desperate spinal surgery, just weeks after he told close friends he might never play tournament golf again. His mug shot and alarming arrest video were painful to look at and, for Woods, a deep humiliation. The former paragon of discipline now found himself hopelessly lost and out of control, exposed for all the world to see. That episode could have marked the beginning of Tiger’s end. It proved to be the opposite.

Instead of sinking beneath the public disgrace of drug abuse and the private despair of a battered and ailing body, Woods embarked on the long road to redeeming himself. In The Second Life of Tiger Woods, Michael Bamberger, who has covered Woods since the golfer was an amateur, draws upon his deep network of sources inside locker rooms, caddie yards, clubhouses, fitness trailers, and back offices to tell the true and inspiring story of the legend’s return. Packed with new information and graced by insight, Bamberger’s story reveals how this iconic athlete clawed his way back to the top.

For more than a decade, golf was dominated by one galvanizing figure: Eldrick "Tiger" Woods. But as his star has fallen, a new, ambitious generation has stepped up to claim the crown. Once the domain of veterans, golf saw a youth revolution in 2014. In Slaying the Tiger, Shane Ryan introduces us to the volatile, colorful crop of heirs apparent who are storming the barricades of this traditionally old-fashioned sport.

Here are indelibly drawn profiles of the game's young guns: Rory McIlroy, the Northern Irish ace who stepped forward as the game's next superstar; Patrick Reed, a brash, boastful competitor with a warrior's mentality; Dustin Johnson, the brilliant natural talent whose private habits sabotage his potential; and Jason Day, a resilient Aussie whose hardscrabble beginnings make him the Tour's ultimate longshot. Here also is the bumptious Bubba Watson, a devout Christian known for his unsportsmanlike outbursts on the golf course; Keegan Bradley, a flinty New Englander who plays with a colossal chip on his shoulder; twenty-one-year-old Jordan Spieth, a preternaturally mature Texan carrying the hopes of the golf establishment; and Rickie Fowler, the humble California kid striving to make his golf speak louder than his bright orange clothes.

Bound by their talent, each one hungrier than the last, these players will vie over the coming decade for the right to be called the next king of the game. Golf may be slow to change, but in 2014, the wheels were turning at a feverish pace. Slaying the Tiger offers a dynamic snapshot of a rapidly evolving sport.

A funny, heartwarming memoir about saying goodbye to your childhood home, in this case a quirky, one-of-a-kind, family-run miniature golf course in the woods of Wisconsin.

When June Melby was ten years old, her parents decided on a whim to buy the miniature golf course in the small Wisconsin town where they vacationed every summer. Without any business experience or outside employees, the family sets out to open Tom Thumb Miniature Golf to the public. Naturally, there are bumps along the way. In My Family and Other Hazards, Melby recreates all the squabbling, confusion, and ultimately triumph, of one family's quest to build something together, and brings to life the joys of one of America's favorite pastimes. In sharp, funny prose, we get the hazards that taunted players at each hole, and the dedication and hard work that went into each one's creation. All the familiar delights of summer are here - snowcones and popcorn and long days spent with people you love.

The most challenging, most invigorating holes a golfer can tackle. Playing on a links - which is golf the way it should be played - is every golfer's dream. But among serious golfers, there is also controversy. What constitutes a true links course? How many of the world's 30,000 golf courses are links? Which country has the most? Is it possible to build one today? In this beautiful book, George Peper and Malcolm Campbell, two writers who know golf inside and out, answer these questions and provide a concise and entertaining tour of the world's best links courses.

After profiling St. Andrews - the links that is the birthplace of the game - and 50 other classic links in the British Isles, the authors visit the courses in other parts of the world. They also examine how links design has become hot again, thanks to a revival of British-style course architecture and the fact that they're more eco-friendly than traditional courses. Throughout, esteemed golf photographer Iain Lowe's gorgeous images show the world's best 246 links in all their glory.

This book is Palmer’s parting gift to the world - a treasure trove of entertaining anecdotes and timeless wisdom that readers, golfers and non-golfers alike, will celebrate and cherish. No one has won more fans around the world and no player has had a bigger impact on the sport of golf than Arnold Palmer. In fact, Palmer is considered by many to be the most important professional golfer in history, an American icon.

In A Life Well Played, Palmer takes stock of the many experiences of his life, bringing new details and insights to some familiar stories and sharing new ones. This book is for Arnie's Army and all golf fans but it is more than just a golf book; Palmer had tremendous success off the course as well and is most notable for his exemplary sportsmanship and business success, while always giving back to the fans who made it all possible. Gracious, fair, and a true gentleman, "Arnie" was the gold standard of how to conduct yourself in your career, life, and relationships. Perfect for men and women of all ages, his final book offers advice and guidance, sharing personal stories of his career on the course, success in business, and the great relationships that gave meaning to his life.

After winning 6 of the 12 Majors from 2000 to 2002, Tiger Woods struggled in 2003. Four unknown players would seize the day, rising to become champions in his wake. Mike Weir - considered a good golfer but not a great one - triumphed in The Masters, becoming the first Canadian to win a Major. Jim Furyk emerged victorious in the U.S. Open. In the British Open, Ben Curtis became the only player since Francis Ouimet in 1913 to prevail on his first time out, and Shaun Micheel came from nowhere to prevail at the PGA Championship. How does one moment of glory affect the unsung underdog for years to follow?

Feinstein chronicles the champions' ups and downs, giving readers an insider's look into how victory (and defeat) can change players' lives.

In Bad Lies, golf's wittiest observer, photographer Charles Lindsay, celebrates the hazards and pitfalls of the game. Lindsay stakes out the diabolic border territories that encroach on golf courses - moon-crater bunkers, waist-high fescue grass, murky lake bottoms - to capture the unbelievable my-ball-went-where? moments that make the game so infuriating and so addictive for so many.

This hilarious follow-up to Lindsay's popular Lost Balls features inspired and gorgeous color photographs, plus larger-than-life pictures of some of the world's rarest - and oddest - golf balls. Texts include a foreword by outspoken golf commentator Gary McCord, definitions of the game's offbeat terminology, and a meditation on the golf ball and the immortal soul.

The Big Miss is Hank Haney's candid and 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 the very few people allowed behind the curtain. He was with Tiger 110 days a year, spoke to him over 200 days a year, and stayed at his home up to 30 days a year, observing him in nearly every circumstance: at tournaments, on the practice range, over meals, with his wife, Elin, and relaxing with friends.

What Hank soon came to appreciate was that Tiger was one of the most complicated individuals he'd ever met, let alone coached. Although Hank had worked with hundreds of elite golfers and was not easily impressed, there were days watching Tiger on the range when Hank couldn't believe what he was witnessing. On those days, it was impossible to imagine another human playing golf so perfectly.

And yet Tiger is human - and Hank's expert eye was adept at spotting where Tiger's perfection ended and an opportunity for improvement existed. Always haunting Tiger was his fear of “the big miss” - the wildly inaccurate golf shot that can ruin an otherwise solid round - and it was because that type of blunder was sometimes part of Tiger's game that Hank carefully redesigned his swing mechanics.

There's never been a book about Tiger Woods that is as intimate and revealing - or one so wise about what it takes to coach a superstar athlete.

Bill Pennington, author of the beloved and widely read "On Par" golf column for the New York Times, knows how to interpret the experts and pros for the rest of us. For years, he has traveled the globe in search of golf's essentials - those basic principles, those elusive truths (and who are we kidding, any trick or quick fix he can pick up along the way) that will improve anyone's game. He has consulted the world's leading golf instructors as well as countless caddies, groundskeepers, parking lot attendants, and bartenders. He has played rounds with Tiger Woods, Annika Sorenstam, and Justin Timberlake. He has sought the advice of psychiatrists, physicists, economists, zen masters. And on a particularly bad golf outing, he has even discussed the fickleness of golf with a quite helpful raccoon.

On Par captures it all: From equipment and instruction, to the rules and language of golf, to camaraderie and psychology, to the short game/long game debate, Pennington informs and entertains as he gets to the essence of this mercurial game, including golf's holy grail, the hole in one.

Part instruction, part education, part therapy, and shot through with Pennington's trademark wit, this is a book for everyone who has ever felt the game's distinct pull - and slice.

A hilarious and poignant memoir of a Harvard student who comes of age as a caddie on St. Andrews's fabled Old Course.

In the middle of Oliver Horovitz's high school graduation ceremony, his cell phone rang: It was Harvard. He'd been accepted, but he couldn't start for another year.

A caddie since he was twelve and a golfer sporting a 1.8 handicap, Ollie decides to spend his gap year in St. Andrews, Scotland - a town with the U.K.'s highest number of pubs per capita, and home to the Old Course, golf 's most famous eighteen holes - where he enrolls in the St. Andrews Links Trust caddie trainee program. Initially, the notoriously brusque veteran caddies treat Ollie like a bug. But after a year of waking up at 4:30 A.M. every morning and looping two rounds a day, Ollie earns their grudging respect - only to have to pack up and leave for Harvard.

There, Ollie's new classmates are the sons of Albania's UN ambassador, the owner of Heineken, and the CEO of Goldman Sachs. Surrounded by sixth generation legacies, he feels like a fish out of water all over again and can't wait to get back to St. Andrews. Even after graduation, when his college friends rush to Wall Street, Horovitz continues to return each summer to caddie on the Old Course.

A hilarious, irresistible, behind-the-scenes peek at the world's most celebrated golf course - and its equally famous caddie shack - An American Caddie in St. Andrews is certain to not only entertain golfers and fans of St. Andrews but also anyone who dares to remember stumbling into adulthood and finding one's place in the world.

Credited with transforming the short games of world-class golfers like Rory McIlroy, Phil Mickelson, Annika Sorenstam, and Yani Tseng, Dave Stockton is one of the most sought-after coaches in golf. Yet Stockton’s natural abilities are more like the average player’s than those of most tour superstars. Not particularly long off the tee and average in terms of ballstriking, Stockton has won multiple major championships through a willingness to set his ego aside and analyze his game objectively - precisely what make him so effective as an instructor. The hallmark of Stockton’s coaching is the idea that “trying doesn’t work.” He shows students how to get out of their own way and let their subconscious take over.
 
In Own Your Game, Stockton recreates the experience of riding eighteen holes with him at one of his highly sought-after corporate outings. He explains how any player can learn to use his or her mind effectively - both in the microcosm of the shot at hand and in plotting a way through a round. Amateur golfers are tired of trying to imitate the swings of the pros - to mostly disastrous results. Stockton gives players the tools and the freedom to play better with the swing they currently have. Portable, conversational, practical - and complete with a mini-guide to playing business golf with colleagues and clients - Own Your Game shows how players at all levels can master the all-important mental game.

The 1975 Masters Tournament always seemed destined for the record books. A veritable Hall of Fame list of competitors had gathered that spring in Augusta, Georgia, for the game's most famous event, including Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Hale Irwin, Billy Casper, and Sam Snead. The lead-up had been dominated by Lee Elder, the first black golfer ever invited to the exclusive club's tourney. But by the weekend, the tournament turned into a showdown between the three heavyweights of the time: Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, and Tom Weiskopf. Never before had golf's top three players of the moment summoned the best golf of their lives in the same major championship. Their back-and-forth battle would rivet the sporting world and dramatically culminate in one of the greatest finishes in golf history.

In The Magnificent Masters, Gil Capps, a twenty-two-year veteran of the golf industry with NBC Sports and Golf Channel, recaptures hole-by-hole the thrilling drama of this singular event during golf's golden era, from the media-crazed build-up and intertwined careers of the three combatants to the tournament's final dramatic putts that would change the game of golf forever.

Was golf better back in the day?

In Men in Green, Michael Bamberger, who fell for the game as a teenager in its wild Sansabelt-and-persimmon 1970s heyday, goes on a quest to find out. The result is a candid, nostalgic, intimate portrait of golf’s greatest generation - then and now - that readers will cherish.

One night in a Chicago restaurant, drunk on chocolate and with the siren song of the road in his head, Bamberger draws up a list of golf heroes. Nine are living legends, like Arnold and Jack. Nine are secret legends, like Dolphus “Golf Ball” Hull, a windblown tour caddie from Jackson, Mississippi. What they all share is a game that courses through their collective veins like a drug.

Accompanied by a sidekick and friend, a former tour player who is a secret legend himself, Bamberger seeks to locate and get to know these luminaries. All the while, he is hopeful they will answer a certain difficult question: When and where were you happiest?

In their travels, these detectives from the Golf Division uncover life and death, sickness and health, unusual marriages and unlikely friendships, trophies lost and won, comic tales from lives lived on the road, lost loves and second chances, and a cheating scandal that reveals volumes about an icon in their midst. They take us from Arnold Palmer’s private warehouse in Latrobe, Pennsylvania to the twelfth green at Augusta National to a trailer park in Northern California, where an aging tour beauty lives alone with her memories of high times and bright lights. Men in Green time-travels to forgotten places in a lost world.

The first-ever biography of the iconic and beloved golf coach who caddied for Francis Ouimet, played with Ben Hogan, competed against Bobby Jones, shaped Ben Crenshaw, and distilled his golf wisdom into the Little Red Book, granting simplicity to a vexing yet beloved sport.

Millions of people were charmed by the homespun golf advice dispensed in Harvey Penick's Little Red Book, a sports classic that went on to become the best-selling sports book of all time. Yet beyond the Texas golf courses where Penick happily toiled for the better part of eight decades, few people knew the self-made golf pro who coaxed the best out of countless greats Tom Kite, Ben Crenshaw, Betsy Rawls, Mickey Wright all champions who considered Penick their coach and lifelong friend.

In Harvey Penick, Kevin Robbinstells the story of this legendary steward of the game. From his first job as a caddie at age eight to his ascendance to head golf pro at the esteemed Austin Country Club to his playing days when he competed with Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen to his mentorship of some of golf s finest players, Penick studied every nuance of the game. Along the way, he scribbled his observations and anecdotes, tips and tricks, and genuine love of the sport in his little red book, which ultimately became a gift to golfers everywhere.

Part elegy to golf s greatest teacher, part inquiry into his simple, impactful teachings, part history of golf over the past century, Harvey Penick is an exquisitely written sports biography.

The world of golf is at a crossroads. As tech­nological innovations displace traditional philosophies, the golfing community has splintered into two deeply combative factions: the old-school teachers and players who believe in feel, artistry, and imagination, and the technical minded who want to remake the game around data. In Golf’s Holy War, Brett Cyrgalis takes readers inside the heated battle playing out from weekend hackers to PGA Tour pros.

At the Titleist Performance Institute in Oceanside, California, golfers clad in full-body sensors target weaknesses in their biomechanics, while others take part in mental exercises designed to test their brain’s psychological resilience. Meanwhile, coaches like Michael Hebron purge golfers of all technical infor­mation, tapping into the power of intuitive physical learning by playing rudimentary games. From historic St. Andrews to manicured Augusta, experimental com­munes in California to corporatized conferences in Orlando, William James to Ben Hogan to theoretical physics, the factions of the spiritual and technical push to redefine the boundaries of the game. And yet what does it say that Tiger Woods has orchestrated one of the greatest comebacks in sports history without the aid of a formal coach?

But Golf’s Holy War is more than just a book about golf - it’s a story about modern life and how we are torn between resisting and embracing the changes brought about by the advancements of science and technology. It’s also an exploration of historical legacies, the enriching bonds of education, and the many interpretations of reality.

The definitive story of the Ryder Cup--the event that pits the best golfers from America against the best from Europe--exploring the modern history of the tournament that led to the showdown at Whistling Straits in 2021.

The task facing Steve Stricker at the 2021 Ryder Cup was enormous. It was his job, as the American captain, to stare down almost 40 years of Ryder Cup history, break a pattern of home losses that had persisted almost as long, and reverse the tide of European dominance in one of golf's most tense and emotional events. This was the epitome of a must-win, but it was also something more--in the entire 93-year history of the event, no American side had ever faced this kind of pressure. Starting on the morning of September 24, those 12 players competed not just for a Cup, or for pride, but to save the reputation of the U.S. team itself.

The great mystery of the Ryder Cup is that America loses despite having superior individual talent. The European renaissance began in the 1980s, led by the brilliant Tony Jacklin and Seve Ballesteros, and since then, the U.S. has suffered a slew of embarrassing defeats abroad and at home. The signs in 2021 weren't good: Tiger Woods was out after his horrific car crash, Patrick Reed ("Captain America," to his supporters) was hospitalized with double pneumonia weeks before the event, and America had to rely on its rising stars--including Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, who spent most of the year immersed in an escalating feud--to prove their mettle. Meanwhile, the European team had a few major stars of its own, like Jon Rahm, the world no. 1 and the first Spanish player ever to win the U.S. Open, and Rory McIlroy, the four-time major winner. Throw in the complications of a global pandemic, and the stage was set for one of the strangest Ryder Cups ever.

Following the drama in Wisconsin while deconstructing the rich history of the tournament, The Cup They Couldn't Lose tells the story of how the U.S. defeated Europe in record fashion, restored their status as golf's global superpower, and transformed their entire way of thinking in order to truly understand the nature of the Ryder Cup.