Match Made in Heaven

That’s the question Elliott Goodman hears in the OR as he’s about to have emergency surgery following a heart attack. But it isn’t Elliott’s surgeon who’s asking. It’s God. As in the Almighty. And God has a wager for Elliott. He challenges him to an eighteen-hole golf match. If Elliott wins, he is saved; if he loses…So begins this witty, insightful, and very funny novel about golf and life and the lessons learned from both.

To be fair (isn’t He always?), God sends down eighteen legendary opponents to play against Elliott and hopefully teach him a few tricks along the way. From Leonardo da Vinci (nice clubs) to Marilyn Monroe (nice…everything), Babe Ruth (pass the hot dogs), Abraham Lincoln (cheater!), and fourteen other luminaries, including Moses, John Lennon, Joan of Arc, Picasso, W.C. Fields, Socrates, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Beethoven, Gandhi, and Shakespeare, Elliott squares off against some of the most extraordinary people who’ve ever lived. As shots are analyzed, balls enter bunkers, and Freud drives the cart (control freak), Elliott has a chance to examine his life and his form, to see what he can correct or improve before facing his ultimate adversary.

Bighearted and delightfully original, Bob Mitchell’s Match Made in Heaven is a grand celebration of golf and a profound parable of traveling our own personal fairways in a game where no effort is wasted, and every failure is just another chance to try again.

Kirkus Reviews

Tuesdays with Morrie meets Caddyshack: A 50-year-old Everyman plays miracle golf with history's biggest cheeses-Moses to Joan of Arc to T.S. Eliot-in this whimsical debut novel. Atop a gurney, heading toward Boston Mass General OR, Elliott Goodman is in trouble. He just knows it: He's having a heart attack! As non-religious Goodman, a professor of comparative literature and a good-enough husband and dad to two kids, finds himself praying, who should appear in the "flesh" but God Himself, in a burgundy golf shirt and tan Dockers. Entreated for mercy, Yahweh offers a deal: Win 18 holes of golf and you'll get your life back. Plucky Goodman agrees, and hits the links. The ever-merciful God sends humans to play against him. But what humans! First up is Leonardo Da Vinci, playing with gnarly wood clubs (it was Mona Lisa Man, we learn, not some nameless Scot, who invented the putter). W.C. Fields is next, and Mitchell brilliantly captures the great comic's word-zest; Fields sputters surreally like a drunken thesaurus. As Goodman goes mano-a-mano with John Lennon (whose game is all about love), Freud, the Mahatma, Edgar Allan Poe, Socrates and illustrious others, he learns lots about golf, but even more about, natch, himself. Chockful of notable quotables from the heavy-hitters of all time, this is a kind of greatest-hits of the world's wisdom traditions-each aphorism served up entertainingly. A wholly charming hole-in-one.

Bob Mitchell is a dedicated sports fanatic and the author of seven nonfiction books. He studied at Williams, Columbia, and Harvard, where he received a Ph.D. in French and Comparative Literature. He was a French professor for eleven years at Harvard, Purdue, and Ohio State; served as a creative director at a number of New York ad agencies; and spent a year in Tel Aviv as a special consultant on commercial film writing and production. He lives in Santa Barbara, California, with his wife, Susan.