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BOOK REVIEWS (click to go to articles)
The Golf Album by Brandon Ayre
 The praise for The Golf Album by Brandon Ayre since its release in 2001has been loud and deserved. Canadian golf writer Lorne Rubenstein loved it, so did Ayre's acquaintence, folk icon Leonard Cohen. Fifity-year-old Ayre - a Canadian who grew up in Montreal, worked as an ER doctor in New York for the past 22 years and is now physician in Victoria - knows a thing or two about music and golf. Ayre used to be a singer-songwriter many many moons ago and lived in Europe (England and Greece). In 1980, while at McGill Med School, he released an album called "Med School Blues."
 Ayre had more or less given up singing until last year (2001), when a Scottish dentist leaned over towards him at the 19th hole at Victoria, and growled: "When are we gunna get together and play some TUNES?!" (He was a folksinger in Edinburgh many many moons ago, as well.) Ayre didn't really have anything to play him so he started writing golf songs. The first was "My Wife Thinks I'm Gardening." "They subsequently just poured out. I wrote 20 in six months. She then talked me into recording them, which I did in Vancouver with a fellow named Rolf Hennemann producing. (He works regularly with Raffi.) Rolf arranged for an incredible three piece--three absolute pros. The band ended up loving The Golf Album, even though none of them had ever even hit a ball. You can hear the fun we had on the record."
The album features 18 songs, many with Ayre on electric guitar, in what best can be described as "home-town country". Whether it's "Golf Rehab," about his hopeless passion for the game, to "Chilidipper", his anguish over the awful duck hook, to the "Friends we make out here," a lament on the great relationships formed on golf courses, Ayre succeeds in capturing our love of golf. Check out the lyrics and song samples on www.golfalbum.com If you buy one golf album, this is the one.
"golfsongs" by The Divots
 The debut album 'golfsongs' from The Divots is a good listen for anyone who has ever swung, thrown, broken, played air guitar with a golf club …or just plain loves the game. The trio of Dan Lundergan, John Collins and David Bethune offer up nine songs recorded on their Stiff Shaft label at Bad Lie Studios in California and Shag Bag Studios in their home state of Massachusetts.
Golfers will identify with the lament 'Worm Burner', "Hit a worm burner…Oh yeah, it was straight. It bounced at the reds and was well on its way.Hit a worm burner …one guy yelled,it'll play.' Hit a worm burner, rolled 70 yards a away." In the 'The Golf Punk ' - "Guy showed up to play in a faded flannel shirt. Shirts so big, they look just like a shirt,. You know, the style the older felmale members wear." - captures the essence of the unconventional golfer out for the shear joy of the game. My favourite was "Driving to St. Andrews," a story about fulfilling a lifelong dream of playing at the home of golf. It features some nifty solo guitar work by Lundergran who also does most of the vocals.
The tracks balance infuences of rock, punk, country, folk, pop, and of course, alternative. Decide for yourself if the Divots are irreplaceable. Visit www.thedivots.com where excerpts of songs The Golf Punk, Senior Citizen Living and Driver can be heard on mp3. It may be ordered through their webiste for $12 (US) including lyrics and shipping.
BOOK REVIEWS
Daly damns his critics
Since his 1990 Rookie of the Year designation, come-form-nowhere win at the PGA Championship and the British Open, John Daly has become one of the most popular golfers on the PGA Tour. The “Big ‘Un” - he curses, drinks, smokes and eats whatever - has put out another book to help pay the bills for his wives and the gas for his monster caravan trailer.
While most golf books are stiff, formal and dry as a sandtrap, Golf My Own Damn Way: A Real Guy’s Guide to Chopping 10 Strokes Off Your Score will help you play the John Daly way. “The only rules I follow, “says the bad boy of professional golf, “are the rules of golf.”
At 158 pages, this instructional book offers up 62 tips to help reduce your score. He tells you the best way to grip it so you can rip it. Gives you a cure for bunkerphobia. Tells you what golf and sex have in common. Daly tells you how to keep your head out of the game, let your belly lead your hands, listen to your right foot, check your ball position and buy a hybrid club.
This book follows the 2006 bestselling autobiography My Life In and Out of the Rough, but is far more useful for the average duffer trying to break 90 or 100. It succeeds because it’s served 'straight up and in your face.'
Finding a better score
"The Gift: A story about finding a better score in golf and life" by Richard Monette of Banff, Alta. is an intriguing contribution to the world of golf literature. The novel is accurately compared to the movie the “Field of dreams” and actor Kevin Costner’s spiritual quest for all things baseball. In the Gift, the protagonist Irving Pirsig, a high school teacher, becomes a star golfer with the help of spirits of a golf legend.
Monette approaches the novel with a unique background as a corporate performance coach, sports psychology consultant to professional athletes and even one of Canada’s Olympians. This highly readable story aims and succeeds in “recapturing the focus, drive, creativity and open-mindedness of play.”
Published by Innerwarrior Consulting (www.innerwarrior.com) for $19.99. You will also find the first three chapters reprinted on the website.
Shivas Iron Society tees off
For many golfers, the modern golf magazine is an endless parade of repetitive stories about the best driver, the best ball, the top 100 courses, celebrity trivia and golf tips. With this in mind, the Shivas Irons Society has launched The Journal, a veritable treasure of good writing and good tales.
The Carmel, California.-based Shivas Iron Society was organized in 1992 “to explore golf’s beauty and mystery, and to provide opportunities for personal and social transformation.” It’s named after the mystical golf professional who was introduced to us in Michael Murphy’s classic novel, Golf in the Kingdom. The Journal is the latest effort on this non-profit society whose activities include sponsoring at-risk youth in golf endeavours.
The bi-annual journal – a membership is $85 US – typically includes short stories, poems, drawings and full plate reproductions of photos and artwork. It’s goal is to foster and honour high quality and thought-provoking art and literature on golf, it’s history and the contribution of golf to personal development. In short, the quality of The Journal is a tribute to the game. www.shivas.org
Life on the links probed
When the former senior editor of Golf Digest, the publisher of Inside Golf Magazine and the editor of The Calgary Golfer, rave about a new golf book, you gotta listen. This collection of wayward golf columns in One flew over the Caddyshack - a play on the movie classic "One flew over the cookoo's nest" where Jack Nicholson and the crazy take over the insane asylum - offers something to tickle everyone's funny bone.
Humorist Andrew Penner, a CPGA pro in Calgary and freelance writer, has appeared in everything from Scottish Golf to SaskGolfer.com. This collection of 40 columns is grouped into five sections: In love and golf, Tours, In training, Golf and media and Future golf. Sprinkled among the columns are clever illustrations by Ted Martin, a Toronto cartoonist famous for the internationally syndicated Pavlov comic strip.
The wackiness and wonderment of golf are captured well by prairie boy Penner. My favorites include "Choose your partners well," " How to celebrate a birdie" and "Why cheat? Because we can." At $21.95 from Calgary's Falcon Press, it deserves a place on everyone's book shelf and gift list.
Duffer's Debut for the beginner
If you're a new golfer or have just dabbled in it, Duffer's Debut by Ted Ronberg is a dandy beginner's guide and tool for the teaching pro. The retired Ottawa civil engineer and business consultant set out "to eliminate then intimidation or fear that so often is present in those new to the game." While Ronberg is admittedly no golf professional - he took up the game in the mid-1990s and has yet to break 100 - he's managed to lay out the basics in a very non-technical and sympathetic way. It should be mandatory reading before duffers set foot on a course.
Duffer's Debut guides golfers on the playing customs, behavior and etiquette of the game with sections on the fairway, approach shot, green and the 19th hole. He also offers advice on learning the game, playing safely, being ready to play, golfing terms and taking care of the course. The sections on playing efficient golf - tips on speeding up play - and those ideas on playing low stress golf could be heeded by all of us.
Duffer's Debut: An introduction to Golf by Ted Ronberg is published by Morin Ronberg and Associates, soft cover, 113 pages, $17.95. Visit the website at www.duffersdebut.com and you will get a chance to enjoy some of the illustrations by Kieron O'Gorman that are scattered throughout the book.
How Tiger plays golf
 Search Chapters or Amazon.ca or any of the other bookseller and read the book reviews of Tiger Woods: How I Play Golf. They're unanimous. This is a very highly rated glossy table-top book by the world master of the game. Woods teamed up with the authors of Golf Digest to detail his secrets of the game: keys to a great back-swing, the most common mistake in putting, psyching yourself up, practicing, controlling shots, the "knockdown", course management, exercises and more. In its 306 pages, there are dozens-and-dozens of great photos of Tiger and his Nike swoosh logo in action along with stories about his rise to fame and fortune. The book is billed as "personable, charming and instructive" - and well, it is perhaps the ultimate golf lesson. The writing style is casual and non-technical. At $49.95, Tiger Woods, How I Play Golf by Warner Books has found its place as one of the best instructional books on golf.
A Season In Dornach: Golf and Life in the Scottish Highlands
by Lorne Rubenstein
 If you're truly a golf afficiando, you will love this book by Canada's top golf journalist. Lorne Rubenstein has written for the Globe and Mail since 1980, while contributing to golf publications around the world. He's hosted the Acura World of Golf for eight years and authored eight books.
A Season In Dornoch is an affectionate portrait of a place - one of the oldest and most famous links style courses anywhere - and the people who live there. It's a fascinating look at links golf and the spirit and skills it calls forth, and finally, a sensitive memoir of Rubenstein's quest to rekindle his pure love of the game first sparked 23 years ago.
With a foreward by renowned actor Sean Connery, Rubenstein writes about the history of the Highland Clearances, and the friendly and eccentric people who love their town, their golf, andf their single-malkt-whisky. He writes about a summer lived around golf, in a community where golf is king and the golf course is treated as a park where townspeople can stroll in the evenings.
If you're passionate about golf and want to take a peak at what golf should be all about in North America, it's a great read. Available for $34.99 from McClelland and Stewart, 242 pages (2002).
Affection for Northern Links
From playing caddies to aspiring young players, from legends of the game to everyday duffers, Northern Links tells the story of golfers whose passion for the game fuels a nation's obssession.
Sportswriter Brian Kendall of Toronto spent a couple of summers traveling Canada exploring the game that now challenges hockey as Canada's favorite sport. The book includes chapters on golfing legends Marlene Stewart Streit, Canada's top instructor Ben Kern, and the author's long-time hero George Knudson. The readers also meet some of the unsung heroes of Canadian golf: two young pros trying to make their mark on the Canadian Tour, a colorful group of fanatics who get their wintertime fix in a covered dome, and the kids who caddie at the historic Hamilton Golf & Country Club.
My personal favorites were about Steve Johnston, Canada's King of Aces, who has scored an amazing 47 holes-in-one, and "Golf Like an Egyptian," the trials and tribulatations of Chris Miranda managing the Royal Valley Golf Club in Luxor, Egypt. "Midnight Madness," the story of late night golf in Yellowknife, is also a delightful look at this wacky game.
The 12 varied stories about the world of Canadian golf - unfortunately there are none about the passion of prairie golfers - are sure to entertain golf affeciandos.
Northern Links by Brian Kendall, Penguin Books Canada (www.penguinbooks.ca), 264 pages, $34.
The Nature of Golf
Landscape photographer Russell Shoeman of Regina has re-launched his golf book The Nature of Golf: Exploring the Beauty of the Game as fundraiser to help treat children with with leukemia around the world. The distribution of the book will shift focus from individual sales to custom-print partnerships with large corporations.
Requiring five years to complete with co-author Thomas P. Stewart, the elegant coffee-table book takes a grand tour of 18 of North America's favorite golfing destinations. It contains more than 740 full-colour photographs across 440 glossy pages. Complementing the images are 18 insightful essays highlighting the natural and cultural evolution of each golf resort and neighbouring wilderness preserve.
The book features many of the most famous courses in North America and the world including California's Monterey Peninusula, Arizona's Sonoran Desert and Virginia's Blue Ridge. Chateau Whistler Resort in B.C. and Highlands Links in Cape Breton (voted Canada's #1 course in 2001) are also profiled.
Shoeman, an avid golfer and landscape photographer the last 20 years, released the book two years ago to critical acclaim. St. Jude's Children's Research Facility in Memphis, Ten. is the sole beneficiary of the "Healthy greens, healthy kids" fundraising effort. The book is available for $50 Cdn.(GST included) by phoning 1.306.586.4007 or through www.natureofgolf.com.
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