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Overview
Michael Bamberger has been writing about golf for Golf Digest and The Philadelphia Inquirer for over twenty years, and for the past ten years has been a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. He has also lived the game as few others have -- from his experience as one of the first white, college-educated caddies in 1985, to hanging out with Arnold Palmer at this year's Masters. This Golfing Life brings together Bamberger's acclaimed, intimate profiles of stars such as Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, and John Daly, as well as the behind-the scenes people who make the game what it is: In his last round of golf before an amputation, Bamberger's high school golf coach John Sifaneck makes his first hole-in-one; Bob Rubin, a Wall Street master-of-the-universe, builds his own golf course -- one so difficult he can't break 100 on it; Howdy Giles, Arnold Palmer's dentist, has ball markers made from Palmer's old fillings; Bruce Edwards continues to caddie for Tom Watson while dying of ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). Bamberger interweaves these stories with his own life in a way that will remind golfers why they love the game.Synopsis
Michael Bamberger, senior writer at Sports Illustrated and author of the highly acclaimed Wonderland, has been writing about golf for twenty years. He has lived the game as few others have—from his experience as one of the first white, college-educated caddies in 1985, to hanging out with Arnold Palmer at the Masters. This Golfing Life brings together Bamberger’s acclaimed, intimate profiles of stars (Tiger, Jack, and Annika to name a few), as well as the behind-the-scenes people who make the game what it is. In his last round of golf before an amputation, Bamberger’s high school golf coach, John Sifaneck, makes his first hole-in-one; John Stark gets Bamberger to relearn the game as a Scotsman; Bob Rubin, a Wall Street master-of-the-universe, builds his own golf course—one so difficult he can’t break 100 on it; Bruce Edwards continues to caddie for Tom Watson while dying of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Bamberger interweaves these stories with his own life in a way that will remind golfers why they love the game.
Kirkus Reviews
The long, short, good and bad of a golf sportswriter's days on the links. Sport's Illustrated's Bamberger knows how to tell a story, and he displays no fear of sentimentality. He has a bag's worth of good tales, with days spent on the links as a caddie, player and reporter. They start, briefly, as he plays his home turf on Long Island, then shift to his improbably fortuitous and short-lived run as Brad Faxon's caddie. Realizing that he would never make a living as a bag-carrier, Bamberger turned to journalism and covered golf from the sidelines. He writes about Arnold Palmer's dentist using his old gold fillings as ball-markers, the imbroglio between Mark McCumber and Greg Norman, discrimination at Augusta and the beauty of playing among the dandelions, boulders and sheep on a sublime, neglected Scottish course. That same course introduces readers to a Scottish master who reminds Bamberger that golf is, in fact, a game. Of what Americans brought to it, the Scot says: "You showed us that there's money in golf. That had never occurred to us. The money has corrupted us, all of us, myself included." It proves an illuminating observation: When Bamberger writes of Jean Van de Velde's costly play on the 18th hole of the British Open, he can understand when the golfer talks first about family and health. Golf got under this author's skin from an early age, and while there's no question of his becoming a touring professional, he loves the game from the inside out, and his facility with a pen lessens his handicap.