A passionate, informed guide to the bellwether season that now can be seen as a turning point for golf, on the road out of...
From Pulitzer Prize–winner D'Antonio (Tin Cup Dreams, 2000, etc.), an enjoyable memory ride through the golf calendar of 1972, when Jack Nicklaus made a stab at the Slam.
It was a banner year in golf for a number of reasons, but the most important was that four of the game's greatest players—Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, and Lee Trevino—were in contention. This, D'Antonio says, is what makes golf, or any sport for that matter, exciting: competition at a lofty level. Class warfare was afoot too, appropriately enough in a year that saw the entire US undergoing a sea change; both Palmer and Trevino came from working-class backgrounds, unusual in golf at that time. D'Antonio tenders jaunty background copy on each of the principals: fast-lane, handsome Palmer, Mr. Charisma; Nicklaus, pudgy and squeaky but relentless; the suave Player, who took a hit for his South African citizenship even though he was anti-apartheid; and Trevino, the comedian, off a brilliant 1971 season and a bracing ethnic addition to the WASP Tour. Nicklaus captured the Master's and the US Open and appeared to be on the way to a Slam, but after he lost the British Open to Trevino, the wind was knocked out of the season, though Player's triumph at Oakland Hills was also dramatic. D’Antonio’s prose captures the excitement as Nicklaus rushes for the Slam, and even more enjoyable is the wealth of chatty material he offers on the Tour, from player critiques of Augusta and Pebble Beach to the degeneracy of the Crosby Pro-Am to Palmer’s slow fade. Miniature portraits of Tour players like Tom Weiskopf, Johnny Miller, and Lee Elder round out the picture.
A passionate, informed guide to the bellwether season that now can be seen as a turning point for golf, on the road out of the sporting shadows to become, remarkably, a glamour game.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7868-6716-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
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
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.
A disjointed debut memoir about how competitive swimming shaped the personal and artistic sensibilities of a respected illustrator.
Through a series of vignettes, paintings and photographs that often have no sequential relationship to each other, Shapton (The Native Trees of Canada, 2010, etc.) depicts her intense relationship to all aspects of swimming: pools, water, races and even bathing suits. The author trained competitively throughout her adolescence, yet however much she loved racing, “the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.” In 1988 and again in 1992, she qualified for the Olympic trials but never went further. Soon afterward, Shapton gave up competition, but she never quite ended her relationship to swimming. Almost 20 years later, she writes, “I dream about swimming at least three nights a week.” Her recollections are equally saturated with stories that somehow involve the act of swimming. When she speaks of her family, it is less in terms of who they are as individuals and more in context of how they were involved in her life as a competitive swimmer. When she describes her adult life—which she often reveals in disconnected fragments—it is in ways that sometimes seem totally random. If she remembers the day before her wedding, for example, it is because she couldn't find a bathing suit to wear in her hotel pool. Her watery obsession also defines her view of her chosen profession, art. At one point, Shapton recalls a documentary about Olympian Michael Phelps and draws the parallel that art, like great athleticism, is as “serene in aspect” as it is “incomprehensible.”
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15817-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
