THE MISSING LINKS: Golf and the Mind

It's not just the club, the ball, and the real estate you're fighting in a game of golf, says the author of this methodically parsed analysis of the most maddening game in the world. It's your own state of mind. That's probably true. But Morley dissects not only the anxious golfer, the big hitter, and the hustler, but also every club, every hole on a mythical eighteen-hole course, and virtually every rubber band encased in the tiny white pill that golfers take out to the course on Saturday afternoons. But they take it for fun, not to bore themselves to death, and this is a subject that could have been treated with considerably less gravity. As handled, the result is a plodding, unimpassioned, over-methodical look at the dullest components of a good game.