USA Golfers Encyclopedia is a golfers statistical delight

Used to be, not too long ago, somewhere in time between Babe Ruth and Tiger Woods, baseball was the only sport obsessed with statistics. You know wins, losses, RBI’s, home runs, batting average and a few other miscellaneous, insignificant numerical musings. These were the numbers we all dabbled in as boys with a sports fetish. Then came the computer age and every sport has hitched on to the arithmetical bandwagon.

Golf is no exception. Before the golden age of computers golf was relegated to a few “golf-style box scores” basically listings of who shot what and how much they won. Now the statistical world of golf is a virtual smörgåsbord of numbers squeezed into formulas which analyze every player in every tournament for every shot.

Please permit a couple of examples.

In the “Shot Link” section of the most recent Golf World we read the following about HP Byron Nelson Championship winner Rory Sabbatini’s road to victory: Sabbatini hit 49 greens in regulation and converted 25 birdie chances for a conversion rate of 51.02 percent while the field averaged a mere 30.32 percent. And add to that this statistical information about runner-up Brian Davis: his 21 birdie putts made was a mere seven feet, five inches, the result of hitting 19 approach shots during the week inside 10 feet - tops in the field. And this is just a microscopic sampling of what you can glean from the PGA Tour’s Stats. Or, if you want live, up to the minute coverage of how your favorite player is doing shot-by-shot, hole-by-hole, you can go to Shottracker. Indulge yourself.

Not to be outdone is the ultimate statistic book The USA Golfers Encyclopedia: The Ultimate Guide to Modern Professional Golfers and Tournaments compiled by Sal Johnson, purveyor of the everything-about-golf website golfobserver.com, and Dave Seanor, currently writing for examiner.com and golfobserver.com. The Encyclopedia is a statistical rendering of all golf tournaments and players over the past 50 years. It's a big book to say the least measuring in at 8.5x11 (just in case you want to punch holes and fit it in a notebook) and 1.75 inches thick extending out to 959 pages. Johnson and Seanor put one essential requirement for entry into this statical hall of fame: a minimum of 25 career starts. The remainder of their thinking is explained in Seanor's introduction. Be sure to read it.

Structurally, the volume has two sections: Part One: Player Statistics, A-Z (FYI Aaron to Zokol) and Part Two: Tournament Results, 1958-2008. It's a double dose of statistical heaven. But how interesting is it? How fascinating can nearly 1,000 pages of numbers be? In a word -FUN. For example, I was able to look up the PGA Tour record from the 1980's of my most recent boss. Want to have a little fun with names? How many players named Adams have played on the PGA Tour? It's easy to find in the Encyclopedia!

For the everyday golf fan this volume is fun, fact-filled and fascinating. For the golf writer it is worth its weight in gold.

Just one final request for Johnson and Seanor: this needs to be on disk and searchable.

Feherty apologizes for mixing golf and politics

When golf and politics collide, inevitably someone will hit it out of bounds or shank it deep into the woods. And in this era of political correctness, the scores are rising. Take this year's Northern Trust Open sponsored by XYZ Bank. (We're not naming names here in the interest of excessive name dropping. Whoops! Just notice Northern Trust. Nevermind.) XYZ had just accepted or been encouraged to accept a few wazillion dollars in bailout money. Then as part of their sponsorship of the golf tournament they threw a lavish concert/party for clients and guests who they were trying to impress with all their money. This was the equivalent of hitting two out of bounds in public relations terms.

This whole situation becomes a slippery slope of government regulation and public image. I bet you never thought you would be reading a golf column talking about government regulation unless it was about pesticides and green grass.

The most recent happening involving golf and politics involves of David Feherty of the CBS golf announce team. Feherty opened his mouth – rather pen – and made a crude joke about … well you read it.

From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this though. Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death.

In a sense the switchboards lit up like Tiger had committed a rules infraction during the final round of the Masters. Feherty is lucky he survived the night without the PC Police barging in and making a citizen's arrest.

But it's funny – unfortunately not as in ha-ha funny – that this PC requirement does not extend to all forms of entertainment. Comedienne Wanda Sykes can make a joke about hoping that Rush Limbaugh's kidney's fail in front of every White House correspondent and more cameras than cover a space shuttle launch and the PC police turn their heads and go out for donuts and coffee. But Feherty makes a remark in a magazine that only the writers' mothers read and he's immediately treated as if he signed a wrong scorecard.

Now here's the whole point. Feherty, a golf commentator, was asked to write a column with a political strain to it. That is a recipe for disaster. There are really two people to blame here: Feherty for not proofreading his article for pinhead statements and the editor of “D” Magazine who gave him the assignment without thinking of the literary nuclear bomb that was waiting to detonate.

Jenkins at the Majors is great golf history

Love him or hate him, there's no way to be inattentive to golf writer Dan Jenkins. Jenkins has been following the trials and tribulations on the fairways and greens for nearly sixty years. Regardless of one's appreciation of his body of work – books include Dead Solid Perfect, Semi-Tough, and most recently The Franchise Babe - that longevity alone should earn the reader's respect. Whether or not he “invented the art of golf writing” as claimed by John Feinstein on the jacket is another discussion.

Jenkins' latest volume is Jenkins at the Majors: Sixty years of the World's best golf writing, from Hogan to Tiger. It is collection and re-editing of his essays and press room work from 1951 to 2008. The bottom line on this book is quite simple: If you are a golf fan and have even the slightest interest in the history of the game, you need to read Jenkins at the Majors. It is a massive history lesson presented with the Jenkins' flavor. It is a time travel odyssey from Ben Hogan's victory in 1951 U.S. Open to Tiger Woods' win at the 2008 U.S. Open with 92 other layovers along the way. Unfortunately these 94 majors are less than half of the number (198) that Jenkins has covered.

The history aspect here is important. Whether we care to admit it or not, we are all to some degree interested in the history of the game. It may not reach back fifty or sixty years, but every golfer knows who Tiger Woods is. Our knowledge of the history of the game can always be improved and there is no substitute for getting it first hand.

Jenkins has a knack for catching just the right facts and quotes and then passing them along to his readers. For instance in his essay on Gene Littler's 1961 U.S. Open victory, Jenkins quotes Mike Souchak providing some unintentional prophecy, “I'm winning the Open and I hit a 5-iron 230 yards over the green...Nobody can hit a 5-iron that far!”

This volume also affords us the opportunity to watch Jenkins' literary style evolve over the years. His literary approach is sometimes off beat but always colorful. You'll enjoy some classic Jenkins' lines like the opener concerning the 1966 U.S. Open, “Nobody knows how to cook buffalo, bear and elk meat, so they probably thin Billy Casper eats it raw.”

And that's what makes this book so entertaining – a colorful history lesson from someone who has been there.

Freddie and Me perfect for life's lessons

Occasionally a golf book comes along that has golf at its nerve center, but is not totally about golf. Such is Freddie & Me: Life Lessons from Freddie Bennett, Augusta National's Legendary Caddy Master. Freddie and Me is the tale of one man whose life was directly influenced by Freddie Bennett, long time caddie master at the famed Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters. The story spans approximately thirty years of Tripp Bowden's life from a young boy of about ten to a grown man with a career and family. It is an entertaining and at times an educational journey that we take with Bowden.

Freddie... is Tripp Bowden's first book. Bowden was the first full-time white caddy at Augusta National Golf Club formerly a bastion for white golfers and black caddies. Today, as a direct result of Bennett's mentoring, Bowden is a stable family man and owns an advertising company.

Not every individual who has a dynamic influence on the game of golf is a high profile person securely lodged in the upper echelons of the game. Not every specific agent who has a motivating influence on an individual life is a long on education. Such is the case of Freddie Bennett. In bite-size chapters Bowden gives us snapshots of thirty years of his life and how it was gently guided by Bennett.

There are fun and fascinating stories along the way. Throughout this literary journey we learn how PGA Tour player Charles Howell III got his first set of clubs. We are also let in on the secrets of playing AGNC as part of a chapter in which Freddie takes Bowden through the nuances of each hole as part of his caddie education. But the most fascinating instruction we receive are the Freddie-isms, Bennett's bits of wisdom for life.

Get ready at the end for a few tears or at least a little lump in the throat. Even though you know the inevitable is coming, you still can't control that emotion. Why is that? It's because Bowden has drawn us into his life and thus Freddie's life. He has made us care about the characters. We rejoice in their successes and mourn at their demise.

The question Bowden wants each of us to answer is this: Who is the Freddie in your life?

Make sure you answer and thank him immediately after you finish this book.

Ancestral Links

Each man’s journey in life - and golf - is special and unique. Each step we take or each swing we make is different from the last and peculiar to each one of us. It is only when we pause during the journey and take time to look into the past that we get a true meaning as to who we really are. Each one of us should be required to take time for such reflection somewhere along the passage.

John Garrity has done this and then put it on paper for us to read in his latest volume ANCESTRAL LINKS: A Golf Obsession Spanning Generations. Garrity is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated (still active) and contributor to Golf Magazine. His other books include such titles as Tour Tempo and Tiger 2.0.
With ANCESTRAL LINKS Garrity takes us on a two-part adventure. On a somewhat self-imposed writing sabbatical in Ireland Garrity’s mission is to explore and discover his ancestry, obviously Irish and heavily steeped in golf while simultaneously attempting to conquer the devilish par-4 seventeenth at the Carne Golf Links. It is these two quests that constitute the essence of the book. He skillfully weaves these concurrent pursuits throughout the book by alternating chapters that focus on the goal.

The story of Garrity's search for his paternal ancestral links is skillfully done so as not to bore us with a scavenger hunt for relatives. We can feel his anticipation and his joy as he looks under the leaves of the family tree. Yet at the same time these chapters did not hold my attention as well as those which chronicle his determination to conquer Carne.

So, for the golf fanatic, the real story is the details of his mission to conquer the seventeenth hole at the Carne Golf Links. Carne is located in the town of Belmullet on the northwest coast of Ireland and it is a true links course artfully carved along the coast and through the dunes. Garrity holds the belief that he can play the seventeenth, a long difficult par-4 in 90 strokes. That's playing three balls at a time on six different occasions. He brings us on this odyssey sharing the physical and the emotional. To get a better feel of what he is up against, I recommend that you explore the Carne Golf Links website. http://www.carnegolflinks.com/index.html

I also advocate that you delve into this volume to discover how one golf fanatic satisfies his golf fantasies.

Lincicome produces the shot(s) of the year

I am not one for over reaction to the events of the moment. I try not to be inclined to hyperbole like as soon as a player wins a tournament declaring that he or she is the next super star. Or better yet, let’s say a player has never won an event and she is declared the Messiah of the LPGA Tour. There’s a little too much embellishment there for my taste.

That said, I think the final hole performance by Brittany Lincicome on the 72nd hole of the Kraft-Nabisco may well go into the annuals of golf history as the best golf shots of 2009. That’s right s-h-o-t-s - plural. It was not just the second shot from about 214 yards with a hybrid that produced victory. It was the perfect tee shot that set up the perfect second shot. These came in a very well designed and well executed pair.

Golf Channel analyst Charlie Rhymer was spitting all over himself in his analysis of the second shot divining upon it the unique name “The Shot!” (Really original, Charlie). But I think we need to expand our verbal indulgence for this great finish. It was not just one shot or even two shots that produced an eagle on the 72nd hole of a major championship. Rather it was the entire hole. It was a daring drive over a couple of palm trees at the corner of the dogleg left par five. (The actual length we’ll never know because CBS was somewhat short on information.) Then, faced with a second shot over water to a sloping green, Lincicome executed perfectly and watched the ball take the slope and stop about four feet from the hole. In order for her to have any chance of victory or a playoff, she needed a three or four at worse.

Yes, the second shot was great - probably matched only in recent major history by Karrie Webb’s wedge-out in the same event three years ago - it was the drive that set it up and the four-foot putt that sealed the deal.

Now the bar has been set for all major championships this year, men and women.

Will the Masters produce the same drama?

(Photo courtesty Getty Images)

Golf is life

If you have any doubt that golf emulates life, consider these thoughts about the recently maligned Michael Phelps. Phelps, at the ripe old age of 23, is considered one of the greatest Olympians ever. But the sanitary swim-boy has now run afoul of the ethics and demeanor court of public opinion. Unless you have been trying to extricate yourself from the same pot (pardon the pun) bunker for the past week or so, surely you know of Michael’s experience with a peace pipe. Coupled with a DWI a couple of years back, his “smoking” experience has ruined his relationship with Tony the Tiger and caused a three-month suspension from the U.S. Olympic team. Not only has this cost him a serious amount of cash in a depressed economy, but it has also embarrassed him beyond red in the face and robbed him of his role model image.

Phelps was heading down “Squeaky-Clean Lane,” but somehow took a wrong turn. He is now at a crossroads and can follow the trail of one of two golfers both who have experienced fame and fortune at a young age. Down one path is John Daly. Daly came from last alternate to PGA Champion in the space of four days. His history since that fateful Sunday in August of 1991 is well documented. Obsessive-compulsive comes to mind but it might fall short of being totally descriptive. Michael does not want this lane of the yellow brick trail. It leads to tabloid headlines.

Heading down the other road is Tiger Woods. By the time Tiger was 23 he was already a multiple major championship winner. Granted Tiger had already experienced a lion’s share of fame and fortune, yet he did not permit himself a career-ending episode. Tiger took the high road and has gone on to greater heights. Michael must employ a good scout to assist him in the tracking of the Tiger.