A thoughtful, holistic approach to improving one’s swing.
In this debut guide, former insurance agent Brown teaches readers to rely on feel and instinct to improve their golf games.
Every golfer could do with a few pointers, and in this book, the author provides a fairly simple one: Get out of your own way. Many golfers employ methods that run counter to their intuition, he says, leading to blown shots and missed putts. “The only instruction in this book,” he writes in his preface, “involves establishing the foundations of an effective grip and posture,” because poor ones “work in opposition to the golfer’s natural instincts.” Brown underwent brain surgery and radiation treatment at age 12, which resulted in him having to overcome physical limitations, such as decreased energy and compromised vision and hearing. His advice here is rooted in this experience, and he advocates for turning off one’s conscious mind and allowing the subconscious to take control while golfing. By tapping into this “kinesthetic intelligence,” he says, a golfer can “feel” his way through every aspect of the game, from driving to putting. Mixing discussions of mindfulness and visualization with practical instructions on how to hold and swing a club (complete with detailed illustrations by Hillman), Brown walks readers through the required steps to gain a more intimate connection with the sport. The book is a quick read at just over 100 pages, which include 40 exercises meant to help awaken a golfer’s instincts. Brown has a simple, direct prose style that makes it easy for the reader to follow: “Placement of the hands on the golf grip is the nerve center of the swing. The hands transmit sensations and information to and from the body/mind.” Although the author’s take may seem a little radical for the fairly conservative culture of golf, he presents it in a way that will make sense to readers. Brown isn’t saying that golfers should throw out conventional instructions. Rather, he offers an additional element to golf practice—one that ensures the golfer is fully aware of his or her body and motion. His rather Zenlike method should appeal to those who approach the game looking for relaxation.
A thoughtful, holistic approach to improving one’s swing.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9987719-0-8
Page Count: 115
Publisher: Keep It Simple Golf Media
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading...
A maddening, well-constructed tale of medical discovery and corporate coverup, set in morgues, laboratories, courtrooms, and football fields.
Nigeria-born Bennet Omalu is perhaps an unlikely hero, a medical doctor board-certified in four areas of pathology, “anatomic, clinical, forensic, and neuropathology,” and a well-rounded specialist in death. When his boss, celebrity examiner Cyril Wecht (“in the autopsy business, Wecht was a rock star”), got into trouble for various specimens of publicity-hound overreach, Omalu was there to offer patient, stoical support. The student did not surpass the teacher in flashiness, but Omalu was a rock star all his own in studying the brain to determine a cause of death. Laskas’ (Creative Writing/Univ. of Pittsburgh; Hidden America, 2012, etc.) main topic is the horrific injuries wrought to the brains and bodies of football players on the field. Omalu’s study of the unfortunate brain of Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster, who died in 2002 at 50 of a supposed heart attack, brought new attention to the trauma of concussion. Laskas trades in sportwriter-ese, all staccato delivery full of tough guy–isms and sports clichés: “He had played for fifteen seasons, a warrior’s warrior; he played in more games—two hundred twenty—than any other player in Steelers history. Undersized, tough, a big, burly white guy—a Pittsburgh kind of guy—the heart of the best team in history.” A little of that goes a long way, but Laskas, a Pittsburgher who first wrote of Omalu and his studies in a story in GQ, does sturdy work in keeping up with a grim story that the NFL most definitely did not want to see aired—not in Omalu’s professional publications in medical journals, nor, reportedly, on the big screen in the Will Smith vehicle based on this book.
Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading it.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8757-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
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