As expected, Tiger Woods, who has a home in Corona del Mar, is featured pretty prominently in the 296-page homage to golf that retails for $29.95. There is a great picture of Woods and caddie Steve Williams exchanging clubs in mid-air. Of course the story that Gary Smith wrote that introduced Woods to the world is in the book and is required reading for anyone who has even a passing interest in the game’s best golfer of all time.
Thankfully it is not a book all about Woods, though I feel it doesn’t pay homage enough to the early part of the game. I would have liked to have seen more pictures, stories, etc. from pre-1954.
I understand you are trying to advance the Sports Illustrated brand and want to highlight writers and photographer’s from the magazine, but golf from 1457 to 1912 receives four pages. Old Tom Morris and Young Tom Morris barely get mentioned and they could be the most influential golfers of all time.
The stuff the book does have from the years before Sports Illustrated was published is magnificent. There is a picture of Ben Hogan in 1953 at Carnoustie, a picture from the 1940s of Sam Snead’s nose touching the grass as he contorts to line up a putt.
But those moments are few and the book seems to slip back into self promotion, giving the reader the impression that the magazine was the only one ever to cover the sport.
Granted, having someone like Grantland Rice penning the first golf story ever in the magazine is definitely worthy of the page it occupies, but do I need a supposed profile on Donald Trump that spends the first three lengthy paragraphs as a first-person, “This is what I was supposed to write about?”
Hunter S. Thompson wrote first-person the best and others have been trying to copy him since, mostly failing.
