An intriguing tale, capably written, but lacking a greater sense of significance, either to golf or to professional sports...
The latest from novelist and golf writer Frost (The Grand Slam: Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf, 2004, etc.) examines a historic match, when legendary professionals Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson squared off against top amateurs Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi.
The author ably demonstrates how the golf landscape of 1956 differed significantly from the golf world most fans would recognize today. In the first half of the century, professional golfers were seen as more blue-collar athletes, men who had been forced to become pros to pay the mortgage. Thus, they were unable to enjoy the life of the more dignified and respectable amateur, who more likely could claim blue-blood roots and not be forced to sully the dignity of the great game for money. Frost relates how Hogan used his keen intensity and near-religious devotion to hone his skills to the point at which he was among the game’s greatest. Nelson, similarly, was a self-made man who was forced to live on a shoestring before rising to the game’s elite ranks. At the same time, the amateur circuit was not viewed as the preface to the pros, but its own entity, composed of some of the game’s most adept talents. In 1956, a pair of millionaires, Eddie Lowery and George Coleman, made a wager on who would emerge as golf’s greatest—the top amateurs (and Lowery employees) Ward and Venturi, or any pair of professionals that Coleman could assemble. Coleman, never a man to shrink from a wager, was able to tempt two of the game’s greatest champions, and the match was set. While Frost does an excellent job relating the histories of the men who played the game and the conditions of the course, wrapping each chapter in vibrant and descriptive prose, there was actually little at stake in the match. Unlike the author’s previous book on golf, which chronicled a paradigm shift in what kind of player could become champion, there was little more than bragging rights riding on the outcome of this fabled match. Hogan and Nelson were able to squeeze out a one-stroke victory, but the result was not nearly as dramatic as the book’s subtitle implies.
An intriguing tale, capably written, but lacking a greater sense of significance, either to golf or to professional sports in general.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4013-0278-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.
NBA legends Bird and Johnson, fierce rivals during their playing days, team up on a mutual career retrospective.
With megastars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and international superstars like China’s Yao Ming pushing it to ever-greater heights of popularity today, it’s difficult to imagine the NBA in 1979, when financial problems, drug scandals and racial issues threatened to destroy the fledgling league. Fortunately, that year marked the coming of two young saviors—one a flashy, charismatic African-American and the other a cocky, blond, self-described “hick.” Arriving fresh off a showdown in the NCAA championship game in which Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans defeated Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores—still the highest-rated college basketball game ever—the duo changed the course of history not just for the league, but the sport itself. While the pair’s on-court accomplishments have been exhaustively chronicled, the narrative hook here is unprecedented insight and commentary from the stars themselves on their unique relationship, a compelling mixture of bitter rivalry and mutual admiration. This snapshot of their respective careers delves with varying degrees of depth into the lives of each man and their on- and off-court achievements, including the historic championship games between Johnson’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics, their trailblazing endorsement deals and Johnson’s stunning announcement in 1991 that he had tested positive for HIV. Ironically, this nostalgic chronicle about the two men who, along with Michael Jordan, turned more fans onto NBA basketball than any other players, will likely appeal primarily to a narrow cross-section of readers: Bird/Magic fans and hardcore hoop-heads.
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-547-22547-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.
A basketball legend reflects on his life in the game and a life lived in the “nightmare of endlessly repetitive and constant pain, agony, and guilt.”
Walton (Nothing but Net, 1994, etc.) begins this memoir on the floor—literally: “I have been living on the floor for most of the last two and a half years, unable to move.” In 2008, he suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse. “My spine will no longer hold me,” he writes. Thirty-seven orthopedic injuries, stemming from the fact that he had malformed feet, led to an endless string of stress fractures. As he notes, Walton is “the most injured athlete in the history of sports.” Over the years, he had ground his lower extremities “down to dust.” Walton’s memoir is two interwoven stories. The first is about his lifelong love of basketball, the second, his lifelong battle with injuries and pain. He had his first operation when he was 14, for a knee hurt in a basketball game. As he chronicles his distinguished career in the game, from high school to college to the NBA, he punctuates that story with a parallel one that chronicles at each juncture the injuries he suffered and overcame until he could no longer play, eventually turning to a successful broadcasting career (which helped his stuttering problem). Thanks to successful experimental spinal fusion surgery, he’s now pain-free. And then there’s the music he loves, especially the Grateful Dead’s; it accompanies both stories like a soundtrack playing off in the distance. Walton tends to get long-winded at times, but that won’t be news to anyone who watches his broadcasts, and those who have been afflicted with lifelong injuries will find the book uplifting and inspirational. Basketball fans will relish Walton’s acumen and insights into the game as well as his stories about players, coaches (especially John Wooden), and games, all told in Walton’s fervent, witty style.
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1686-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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