From Barnes & Noble
“I want to entertain people,” golf commentator David Feherty has said. “If I can’t make them laugh, I want to make them smile.” In A Nasty Bit of Rough, former PGA pro Feherty keeps his promise, delivering a robust novel about a zany golf club.
Dan Jenkins
...a pure delight...Every golf nut will love this book.
Gary McCord
Work on your abs before reading [this], because your stomach is going to get a workout from laughing out loud.
Steven Pressfield
If you don't laugh out loud at least once in every chapter, I will personally confiscate your splatterguard niblick.
Troon McAllister
If you're one of those people who think golf is a religion, prepare for some seriously funny blasphemy.
Publishers Weekly
This first novel by broadcaster and Golf Magazine columnist Feherty is a totally silly, completely unbelievable tall tale that succeeds more often than it fails because of the vibrancy of the voice and the straightforwardness of the telling. Scrought's Wood is the world's oldest and strangest golf course, so venerable it makes St. Andrew's look like a teenager. The membership has dwindled to nine, and the club, buried deep in Scottish gorse and heather, is virtually unknown to the outside world. Every 50 years, led by its owner and chairman Sir Richard Gusset ("Uncle Dickie"), its members compete in a golf match against the McGregor clan, a rough and ready gaggle of Scottish hillbillies, the prize being the petrified middle finger of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland. Scrought's Wood, using very devious tactics, wins "The Digit," as it is known, only to have it stolen back by the McGregors while the old duffers are reveling in their victory. Scrought's Wood's members are gleefully eccentric, plagued by hilarious ailments, defects and unmentionable afflictions. When the outside world insists they allow a woman to join the club, one of the old-timers has a sex change operation. It would be awfully easy to dismiss this novel as trivial and inane, for many of the jokes are painfully set-up groaners, while others miss the mark entirely. Overall, one is often reminded of smirking teenage boys talking about sex. But there is a cheerfulness and a spit-in-the-face-of-authority aura about it that makes it the Naked Gun of golf literature. (Mar.) Forecast: Feherty, a former professional golfer, is a popular CBS commentator with a ready-made following; many will recognize Scrought's Wood from its appearances in the pages of Golf Magazine. His author tour engagements should be well attended, and he's a natural for radio and TV interviews. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A new publisher of commercial fiction offers an amusing debut novel, presumably the first in a series, by a Golf Magazine columnist and golfcaster for CBS-TV's PGA coverage. At 17, the gifted Feherty gave up a future in opera, turned golf pro, went on the European Tour and played on the European Ryder Cup Team in 1991 before retiring in 1997. The story at hand features members of the fictional, quite madcap Scrought's Wood Golf Club in Northumberland (near the village of Scroughtly) and especially Major General (ret.) Sir Richard Gussett, better known as Uncle Dickie in Feherty's ongoing "Sidespin" column for Golf. The tale poses a question, Can golf be fun?-and seems to answer that, yes, even for Tiger Woods there's often a nasty bit of rough. Feherty's focus is on the petrified but prestigious middle finger of St. Andrew, patron saint of Scotland and thus of golf itself. The Scrought greens, hidden in a moor, lies smack into rough so treacherous that the entire course is barely visible from the air. And now Uncle Dickie must crush (if only by a single stroke) the roaring rival McGregor Clan of Tay for the St. Andrew Finger. A terrific little debut book about golf. First serial to Golf Digest; author tour
