Nine Must Read Golf Books

Winter in Minnesota is a good time to catch up on your reading – especially golf books. Because I’m old and have
lived through many cold winters, I’ve read a lot of golf books. Here are nine that I feel are must read:

*Down The Fairway By Bobby Jones
*Dr. Golf By William Price Fox
*Golf In The Kingdom By Michael Murphy
*How To Play Your Best Golf All Of The Time By Tommy Armour
*On Learning Golf By Percy Boomer
*Power Golf By Ben Hogan
*Swing The Clubhead By Ernest Jones
*The Dogged Victims Of Inexorable Fate By Dan Jenkins
*The History Of American Golf By Herbert Warren Wind

These books are a combination of history, humor, instruction, and biography. Why so many instructional books on
the list? Because the golf swing is probably golf’s greatest mystery. The instructional books here are not new, but all
of modern golf instruction comes from these four books.

Who is the greatest player of all time? We could never settle that argument. But the greatest writer of golf who was
also a golf champion is Bobby Jones… so let’s start with his book Down The Fairway.

Jones wrote Down The Fairway when he was only 25. He had just finished winning the U.S. Open and the British
Open in the same year and wanted to write while he thought he was at the pinnacle of his career. It’s shocking to
read how insightful and humble he was at such a young age. Jones makes it clear that he wasn’t always on his A
game, and that some days the game felt impossible – even to him. Jones had a nervous temperament and tournament
golf was very hard on him. He gives the reader an inside look at the mind and emotions of one of golf’s all time
greats.

Though Bobby Jones was from money and was an old school golfer, he was not a snob. That can not be said about
Dr. Golf. William Price Fox makes fun of the blue-blooded types that epitomized golf about 100 years ago in his
book Dr. Golf. Is it funny? Yes, if you enjoy absurd humor. This doctor is the owner of the fictional golf sanctuary
Eagle Ho, and answers golf questions in the form of “Dear Abby.” The game of golf has had to wrestle with being
perceived as a hotbed of exclusion and snobbery since it came to America. Dr. Golf does everything he can to
portray that attitude. One frustrated writer says it best “Is there always this almost unbearable attitude of superiority
in your messages?”

On a totally different wavelength is the mystical, magical Golf In The Kingdom by Michael Murphy. Golf In The
Kingdom is Murphy’s semi-autobiographical account of a young American philosophy student on his way to India
via a stopover in Scotland where he meets Shivas Irons. Shivas loves the heart and soul of golf in a way that Dr.
Golf pretends to. Shivas opens our traveler’s mind to the idea that golf is a vehicle to enlightenment – the type of
enlightenment that he is seeking in India.

Though Shivas Irons was supposed to be a golf star, he never explains how to swing the golf club. Tommy Armour
was a golf star and explains how to swing the golf club in How To Play Your Best Golf All Of The Time. This is my
all time favorite golf instructional book. I love the tone and especially love the common sense attitude towards
playing golf.

A very different attitude, but a very valid and fascinating look at the golf swing comes from Percy Boomer in his
book On Learning Golf. Boomer is the guy who came up with the visual of “turning your hips in a barrel.”
Boomer’s a very intelligent fellow and his ideas of the golf swing are very sophisticated. He livens it up with his
interludes where he discusses the golf swing with such people as a world famous mathematician and a world-class
dancer.

Boomer’s theories are evident in Ben Hogan’s Power Golf. Hogan is credited with the start of the modern swing that
relied more on the big muscles and less on the hands. I believe that Percy Boomer’s book actually lead the charge,
but Hogan’s book was the big breakthrough – especially in America.

The anti-modern swing bible is Ernest Jones’ Swing The Clubhead. Jones lost a leg in WWI but continued to be a
champion golfer because he could “swing the clubhead.” You need to hear his mantra and see the pictures of a little
girl making a perfect swing.

But golf isn’t only about the golf swing. Dan Jenkins wrote about golf for many years in Sports Illustrated and Golf
Digest. Some of his best essays are in his book The Dogged Victims Of Inexorable Fate. The title came from Bobby
Jones description of tournament golfers. Jenkins captures the many sides of golf… and very often in humorous
fashion.

But the king of golf writers is the late Herbert Warren Wind. Though his name can seem pretentious and he wrote
for the New Yorker magazine, Wind is down-to-earth and captures the charm and history of our game in The Story
Of American Golf.