The Heritage Golf Reader: Volume II

The perfect gift or coffee table piece, this second volume of The Heritage Golf Reader set presents a wide ranging sampling of verse, short stories, memorable quotes, and jokes about the beloved (and cursed!) game. Many famous writers are represented, includ­ing the creator of Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne, “An Inland Voyage”. The identity of many is unknown. Other stories presented in this second volume of this set are two stories by P. G. Wodehouse, “The Heel of Achilles,” and “A Mixed Threesome”; John Campbell Haywood’s “The Way of Some,” Harry Irving Shumway’s “The Greatest Duffer I Ever Knew,” A. W. Tillinghast’s “A Woman’s Way,” “The Letter of the Law” by Theodore Banks, and two by the prolific Gerald Batchelor, “The Major’s Bogey”, and “Local Rules.” Poetry includes “A Wonderful Score” by the West Point graduate General Walter N. P. Darrow and “The Conundrum of the Links” by the legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice. Among fifty seven poems there is one of unknown author­ship that was inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s “If,” as well as poems inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Ravin’ of a Golf Maniac,” and R. M. Milnes (Lord Houghton), “Duffers Yet.”

One nonfiction article proves that many issues abide quite a while, as some of the issues discussed today were discussed by Horace Hutchinson (British Amateur Champion 1886, 1887) in 1903’s “The Success of the Wom­an Golfer.” There are several contributions by golfer/writers better known for their accomplishments in other fields. These include the course designer A. W. Tillinghast and the playwright and Episcopalian minister William Gil­bert van Tassel Sutphen who named the nineteenth hole, and the man who introduced the curveball to college baseball (Clinton Scollard). Memorable observations include those by the writers H. G. Wells, Harper Lee, John Up­dike and the creator of James Bond, Ian Fleming. Memorable quotes from two philosophers, humorists Will Rogers and H. L. Mencken are included. Presidential observations from Woodrow Wilson and Gerald Ford are also included. Finally also are the ideas of the great one, Bobby Jones.