Customer Reviews

Golf's Strangest Rounds: Extraordinary but True Stories from over a Century of Golfing History

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Purchased this book for my step dad who is really into golf. He said he loves it! and has found the stories really fascinating. I am really glad he is ennjoying it since the ordering and shipping of the book as a Christmas present was a real cuck up.

Usually I'm sceptical about compilation books but this was a treasure trove. I'd always thought golf was a simple game - after all the ball is tiny and the holes look quite big to me. But not a bit of it - every combination of balls, clubs and holes are here.

Golf has a long history dating back many centuries, long before the first British Open in 1860, but the oldest episode covered in this book dates from 1870. Many strange episodes from then until the new millennium are covered, not just from professional events but also from amateur events, as well as a few novelty events. The book also covers milestones in golf history, one of these being the argument over the format of the golfing event within the 1908 Olympics. The upshot of that argument was that there was no golf in the 1908 Olympics. Featured in the 1904 Olympics, golf has been excluded ever since although it may return eventually.

The selection of episodes, as ever in a book of this type, can be argued about. Bernhard Langer's round featuring his climb up a tree does not get a piece of its own, although it is mentioned during the coverage of a different episode. The Ryder Cup has been full of drama since it became Europe versus the USA, but nothing that happened in these events gets its own piece, although Brookline is mentioned in another episode. However, six near misses by Greg Norman each get separate coverage. A different author might have give less coverage to Greg's misfortunes (maybe combining them into one piece) and more to the Ryder Cup, but there have been so many strange golfing stories that some had to be left out. Indeed, the author admits that his book is primarily made up of British and American stories with a few from Australia, simply because of the volume of stories available. He had no need to look elsewhere even though he is confident that he could have found great stories from elsewhere.

The author also explains three different ways to hole in one and not win a hole, one of which caused a rule change. Now there are only two ways. You can't work them out? Buy the book and find out. Occasionally tragic but mostly funny and always entertaining, this is well up to the standard that I expect from this series.

The title of this book is somewhat misleading as probably only 4 or 5 of the rounds featured are especially "strange". Cross-country golf is not strange, it's just cross-country golf. A spectacular fightback is not that unusual in tournament golf. A golfer being hit by lightning is not unheard of, as being out in the open air in a thunderstorm clutching a metal rod tends to end badly. And the writing is so bad, the "insights" banal and so many stories just peter out, with no further research done and much left unanswered. Lazy, lazy writing. "Golfers were active on Maidenhead Golf Course.." begins one tale, which reads like a newspaper cutting from the 1920s. I took this book on holiday.. and I left it there

My copy had page 237/238 torn right down one edge, I could still read it though.
I feel that I was sold a used rather than new book.
Not as funny as I expected,

Bought as a present so have not read it cover to cover but what I have read I found very amusing. Hope the guy it's a present for thinks the same.

I know nothing about golf, this is a present for a golf mad friend. I bought it along with its companion book on cricket, which I do know about. that one is a good read so I presume this will be OK too. Sorry cannot be more help.