Shortlisted for the 2023 Herbert Warren Wind Book AwardPaul Runyan—the Arkansas farm boy who stood five feet, six inches and weighed 130 pounds—shocked the golf world by defeating long and lean, sweet-swinging Sam Snead in the finals of the 1938 PGA Championship, thus earning the nickname “Little Poison.” Runyan did more than beat Snead: he shellacked him as decisively as David toppled mighty Goliath. His resounding victory was so convincing, so dominant, that even...

In October 1960, Omaha Central and Creighton Prep met for what many Nebraskans consider the greatest high school football game ever played. Future NFL Hall of Famer Gale Sayers scored seventy points while leading Central’s powerful offense through its first four games. Prep’s strong defense, on the other hand, allowed only twenty points all season. Legendary coaches patrolled both sidelines, and Prep was aiming for its third straight state championship. The stage was set for a Friday-night...

In 1956, a casual bet between two millionaires eventually pitted two of the greatest golfers of the era -- Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan -- against top amateurs Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi.The year: 1956. Decades have passed since Eddie Lowery came to fame as the ten-year-old caddie to U.S. Open Champion Francis Ouimet. Now a wealthy car dealer and avid supporter of amateur golf, Lowery has just made a bet with fellow millionaire George Coleman. Lowery claims that two...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In Slaying the Tiger, one of today’s boldest young sportswriters spends a season inside the ropes alongside the rising stars who are transforming the game of golf.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 Sla...

After winning 6 of the 12 Majors from 2000 to 2002, Tiger Woods struggled in 2003. Four unknown golf players -- Mike Weir, Jim Furyk, Ben Curtis, and Shaun Micheel -- 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 Fra...

John Feinstein returns to golf and the most crucial tournament of every golfer's life: the PGA Qualifying School.It is the tournament that separates champions from mortals. It is the starting point for the careers of future legends and can be the final stop on the down escalator for fading stars. The annual PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament is one of the most grueling competitions in any sport. Every fall, veterans and talented hopefuls sweat through six rounds of hel...

"Tell me about plumbing, fine. Tell me about carpentry, terrace gardening, the timer on VCRs. Go ahead and explain cellophane. Tell me about all of these things, but don't try to tell me about golf, okay? Golf I know."--Dan JenkinsAfter four decades of covering golf-not to mention "playing scratch from the blues and gambling for my own money when I didn't have any", Dan Jenkins most definitely knows golf. He may, in fact, know the game better than anyone on the planet. Now, his lat...

Go behind the scenes with John Feinstein as he tells for the first time the full story of how the 2002 U.S. Open Championship came into being—how a public course was transformed into one of the most difficult and surprising in the tournament's history, and how the greatest golfers in the world rose to its almost insurmountable challenges.The Black course at the public golf club in Bethpage, New York, has long had a mythic status among golfers. Designed by legendary...

Was there ever a year in golf like 1960?It was the year that the sport and its vivid personalities exploded on the consciousness of the nation, when the past, present, and future of the sport collided. Here was Arnold Palmer, the workingman’s hero, “sweating, chain-smoking, shirt-tail flying”; Ben Hogan, the greatest player of the fifties, a perfectionist battling twin demons of age and nerves; and, making his big-time debut, a crew-cut college kid who seemed to have the makings of...

To mark the anniversary of his historic win at the 1997 Masters, Tiger Woods will for the first time reflect on the record-setting win both on and off the course.In 1997, Tiger Woods was already among the most-watched and closely examined athletes in history. But it wasn't until the Masters Tournament that his career would definitively change forever. Woods, then only 21, won the Masters by a historic 12 shots, which remains the widest margin of victory in the tourn...

Lorne Rubenstein is the preeminent figure in the world of Canadian golf journalism and a member of the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. He has been reporting on golf for more than thirty years, and this is a collection of Rubenstein’s best and favourite pieces from 1993 to 2008, selected from thousands of newspaper, magazine, and Internet articles. In this book, readers will revel in the wide range of subjects, including course design; swing techniques (such as the stack and tilt); famous peopl...

Ben Hogan is up with Jack Nicklaus as one of the greatest golfers of all time. He equalled the record of four US Open wins, once won five out of six major tournaments in one season, and is credited with effectively defining the modern game of golf. James Dodson’s magisterial biography, written by the bestselling author of Final Rounds, is the first to be authorised by Hogan’s family, and reveals the complex character behind a golfer legendary for his inscrutable, steely public persona....