Golf University


Book Description

In Golf University, Scott Weems offers comprehensive advice to excelling on the golf course that takes readers beyond traditional tips on putting and driving. Divided into four academic years, this book incorporates the disciplines of physics, math, medicine, sociology, geology, economics, and more to help golfers maximize their success and have the most fun. Some of the many lessons that Weems offers include: Achieving maximum efficiency in the golf swing, meaning no loss of kinetic energy from club to ball, would require a driver 72 feet long. And a club the same weight as the ball. Twelve percent of business executives rate golf as more important than sex. Players shot half a stroke higher when paired with Tiger Woods in his prime. The effect was even worse on the final day of competition. Putting against the direction of the grain (i.e., opposite the most recent mowing) leaves the ball 15 percent shorter than putting in the opposite direction. Closing your eyes occasionally while putting will leave your ball almost 10 percent closer to the pin. And more! Golf University uses a mixture of research, interviews, and Weems’s own experiences as a scientist and golfer to introduce readers to the latest discoveries in the sport.




Golf in America


Book Description

An inclusive narrative of golf's history and popularity in the United States




Game of Privilege


Book Description

This groundbreaking history of African Americans and golf explores the role of race, class, and public space in golf course development, the stories of individual black golfers during the age of segregation, the legal battle to integrate public golf courses, and the little-known history of the United Golfers Association (UGA)--a black golf tour that operated from 1925 to 1975. Lane Demas charts how African Americans nationwide organized social campaigns, filed lawsuits, and went to jail in order to desegregate courses; he also provides dramatic stories of golfers who boldly confronted wider segregation more broadly in their local communities. As national civil rights organizations debated golf’s symbolism and whether or not to pursue the game’s integration, black players and caddies took matters into their own hands and helped shape its subculture, while UGA participants forged one of the most durable black sporting organizations in American history as they fought to join the white Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA). From George F. Grant’s invention of the golf tee in 1899 to the dominance of superstar Tiger Woods in the 1990s, this revelatory and comprehensive work challenges stereotypes and indeed the fundamental story of race and golf in American culture.




Golf and Philosophy


Book Description

Reflections on the game and getting through life’s hazards and roughs. In a game where players are expected to call their own penalties and scoring the least points leads to victory, decorum takes precedence over showmanship and philosophical questions become par for the course. Few other sports are as suited for ethical and metaphysical examination as golf. It is a game defined by dichotomies—relaxing, yet frustrating, social, yet solitary—and between these extremes there is room for much philosophical inquiry. In Golf and Philosophy: Lessons from the Links, a clubhouse full of skilled contributors tee off on a range of philosophical topics within the framework of the fairway. The book’s chapters are arranged in the style of an eighteen-hole golf course, with the front nine exploring ethical matters of rationality and social civility in a world of moral hazards and roughs. The back nine pries even deeper, slicing into matters of the metaphysical, including chapters on mysticism, idealism, identity, and meaning. Taken together, the collection examines the intellectual nature of this beloved pastime, considering the many nuances of a sport that requires high levels of concentration, patience, and consistency, as well as upstanding character. Golf and Philosophy celebrates the joys and complexities of the game, demonstrating that golf has much to teach both its spectators and participants about modern life. “Any volume built on the premise that if Aristotle and Plato were still here they’d likely be ardent golfers is apt to tickle a few brain cells.” ―Golf Magazine




Good Walks


Book Description

This book celebrates the beauty, tradition, and variety of golf across the Carolinas, featuring eighteen beloved courses as experienced by the walking golfer. One of golf's earliest appeals was its health-giving benefits, with players walking some four miles over varied terrain, making stamina and endurance an important part of the sport. Most recreational players today choose motorized carts. But Lee Pace believes that the slower pace and on-the-ground view associated with walking gives one an opportunity to savor the experience, understand the nuances of course design and landscape architecture, and appreciate the small touches that make our region's best clubs and courses special. The Carolinas are a cradle for the game in the United States, making walking its courses an ideal way to connect past and present. Attractively illustrated with full-color photography, each essay tells the story of a course and how it is experienced on foot. Guiding readers around fabled courses like Pinehurst No. 2 and new classics like Kiawah Island's Ocean Course, private clubs and municipal courses, resort destinations and urban gems, Pace reflects on legendary course architects, famous tournaments, notable players, ties between the game's founders and the Carolinas, and more. Whether you're a committed traditionalist or new to the game, this book will inspire you to slow down and enjoy the best of what golf has to offer.




Golf Illustrated


Book Description







The Keys to the Effortless Golf Swing


Book Description

The biggest paradox in golf is that the harder you try to hit the ball, the worse you do so. In The Keys to the Effortless Golf Swing, Michael McTeigue offers you a simple system of sequential body movements that produces a true swinging motion with every club in the bag. The result is increased distance and greater accuracy for all sizes, shapes, and ages of golfers for a minimum investment in learning time. The clarity and simplicity of McTeigue's frill-free approach to the golf swing leads the reader to a new experience of power and effortlessness. He truly shows how to build a swing you can trust and keep for life. If you love golf but have never played to your potential, here is a book that you will quickly come to treasure. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Most golf instruction books are written by famous performers about how they personally swing the club, and there's no doubt the better ones can be helpful-especially if you share the author's athleticism, ambition, appetite for work, and opportunities for practice and play. This book was written by a very bright but at the time "unfamous" young teacher whose daily bread depended on delivering permanently decent-to-good golf games to averagely endowed people with no interest in becoming slaves to the sport. He became so successful at that in his immediate community that his pupils demanded he put the system on paper for their constant reference and reminder. He called the result The Keys to the Effortless Golf Swing, and sent it to a number of star players, one of whom passed it on to me. After one quick reading I believed that the book would help so many other existing and would-be golfers to such an extent that it just had to be made available nationally. Jim McQueen, one of the world's top golf artists and a former professional, fully shared those sentiments and agreed to do the illustrations, and the nation's leading golf book publisher became an enthusiastic third party. The key to Michael McTeigue's success with his thousands of pupils of all sizes, shapes, ages, and ability levels in California, and the beauty of this book, is the clarity and simplicity and the supremely logical sequentiality of its approach to the golf swing. Follow the easily mastered steps or "keys" in the recommended order and with a reasonable degree of patience, and in a remarkably short time, you will be experiencing entirely new sensations of both accurate striking and effortless power. Encouraged by those-and the accompanying evaporation of confusion-you will persist with these simple and clear-cut moves until they become thoroughly muscle-memorized. At that point, you will be swinging the golf club effectively and with total confidence on every shot entirely by feel, which is the closest you or anyone else will ever come to golf's "secret" (ask any champion if you doubt that). Gone forever at long last will be the Band-Aids and the gimmicks and all that frustrating stumbling from one fruitless theory to another. If you love golf and want to play better for a lot less effort, then forget Michael McTeigue's fame quotient and work with this little gem of a book. It could make you as big a fan of his as all those happy pupils for whom he originally wrote it. Ken Bowden May 1985 A former editorial director of Golf Digest magazine, Ken Bowden has co-authored more than a dozen golf instruction books, seven of them with Jack Nicklaus.




Annual Meeting


Book Description