An astonishing story of accomplishment that would have been invigorated by more lively, animated prose.
An in-depth, inside look at the legendary golfer’s historic 1997 Masters win.
Besides reliving his eventful week at Augusta National as a much-hyped 21-year-old, the usually secretive Woods (How I Play Golf, 2001), with co-author Rubenstein, reveals a great deal about himself, his family, his coaches, and his thinking as he prepared to hit key shots during his four, pressure-filled championship rounds. Thanks to prestigious amateur wins prior to 1997, Woods had already played in the tournament twice. He recounts playing practice rounds with past Masters winners like Nick Faldo, Fred Couples, and Raymond Floyd, during which he consistently asked questions about how to play the course. They provided valuable advice, especially regarding how to negotiate the course’s treacherous greens using the old balata golf ball. Woods also realized that he would need to be able to swing at less than full speed, hit the ball down, and take spin off it when needed. He then goes into great detail describing his three practice days before the tournament started, working on specific shots, understanding where to place tee shots, dealing with the media, and playing in the delightful par-3 tournament. When Thursday’s play arrived, Woods was shocked: “I would never have realized that I would shoot 40 on the front nine of the first round.” His back swing had gotten too long. Just before starting the back nine, Fluff Cowan, his caddie, helped calm him down. Woods shot 30 on the back nine, two under for the day. His final winning score of 270 and his margin of victory—12 strokes—were new tournament records. The author’s meticulous recounting of those next three days—the shots hit, the challenges met, the emotions felt—provides a rare perspective of golf played at the highest level.
An astonishing story of accomplishment that would have been invigorated by more lively, animated prose.Pub Date: March 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4555-4358-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
