Tom Watson, a few months short of his sixtieth birthday, led the 2009 British Open with one hole to play and came within an unlucky bounce of winning it for the sixth time. His stunning performance electrified the golf world and showcased a swing that has endured as a model of good mechanics, rhythm, and repeatability.
In The Timeless Swing, Watson draws on all the knowledge and expertise he has accumulated over the course of his extraordinary career, imparting lessons that will help golfers of any age play to the best of their abilities and enjoy the game more. From fundamentals like learning the proper grip to advanced shotmaking techniques such as swinging in wind, he breaks down the full swing into all its parts and explains with his trademark easy voice the most effective ways for mastering each.
Watson complements these lessons with time-tested drills and also offers a variety of tips and exercises to help golfers continue to swing well as they get older. And for the first time ever, he reveals the two key concepts he considers the most important of all—concepts that can enable players of all levels to attain a timeless swing.
The Timeless Swing is illustrated with stunning photographs by award-winning Golf Digest photographer Dom Furore, and Watson carefully draws the reader’s eye to what is essential in each photo, providing the kind of easy-to-understand guidance usually found only in private lessons.
With a foreword by Jack Nicklaus and archival highlights of Tom Watson’s most memorable shots and tournaments, this is an indispensable guide from a consummate teacher and one of the most respected and admired players in the game.
Special Bonus: Each chapter includes an easy-to-access video of Tom Watson teaching key lessons. See details in the book's introduction.
Power Golf
No matter how experienced a golfer you are—whether a beginner or more advanced—Power Golf will help you play through to your best game ever.
Baseball in the Garden of Eden
Think you know how the game of baseball began? Think again.
Forget Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown. Forget Alexander Joy Cartwright and the New York Knickerbockers. Instead, meet Daniel Lucius Adams, William Rufus Wheaton, and Louis Fenn Wadsworth, each of whom has a stronger claim to baseball paternity than Doubleday or Cartwright.
In The Timeless Swing, Watson draws on all the knowledge and expertise he has accumulated over the course of his extraordinary career, imparting lessons that will help golfers of any age play to the best of their abilities and enjoy the game more. From fundamentals like learning the proper grip to advanced shotmaking techniques such as swinging in wind, he breaks down the full swing into all its parts and explains with his trademark easy voice the most effective ways for mastering each.
Watson complements these lessons with time-tested drills and also offers a variety of tips and exercises to help golfers continue to swing well as they get older. And for the first time ever, he reveals the two key concepts he considers the most important of all—concepts that can enable players of all levels to attain a timeless swing.
The Timeless Swing is illustrated with stunning photographs by award-winning Golf Digest photographer Dom Furore, and Watson carefully draws the reader’s eye to what is essential in each photo, providing the kind of easy-to-understand guidance usually found only in private lessons.
With a foreword by Jack Nicklaus and archival highlights of Tom Watson’s most memorable shots and tournaments, this is an indispensable guide from a consummate teacher and one of the most respected and admired players in the game.
Special Bonus: Each chapter includes an easy-to-access video of Tom Watson teaching key lessons. See details in the book's introduction.
"There is no such individual as a born golfer. Some have more natural ability than others, but they’ve all been made."—Ben Hogan
Considered one of the greatest golfers in the history of the game, Ben Hogan is still noted for the phenomenal power of his swing and his unbeatable ability as a ball striker. He is also known for his dedication to practice and his belief that any golfer can, with training, determination, and a little guidance, improve his or her game significantly. With the help of his classic book, Power Golf, you too can achieve a higher level of play than you ever thought possible.
Considered one of the greatest golfers in the history of the game, Ben Hogan is still noted for the phenomenal power of his swing and his unbeatable ability as a ball striker. He is also known for his dedication to practice and his belief that any golfer can, with training, determination, and a little guidance, improve his or her game significantly. With the help of his classic book, Power Golf, you too can achieve a higher level of play than you ever thought possible.
Profusely illustrated with detailed line drawings, Power Golf walks you through every step of the skills that Ben Hogan painstakingly acquired over his years as a champion player. Here, you will find:
· How to master the celebrated Hogan grip that made his swing so powerful
· Why a balanced stance is important, and how to achieve it
· The details of a winning backswing and downswing
· How to achieve greater distance from your wood shots
· Why iron shots are so important and how to accomplish greater accuracy
· Minimizing your number of putts
· How to conquer bunker, uphill, and downhill shots
· Playing in rain and wind
· And featuring Ben Hogan's "Eight Hints on How to Lower Your Score"No matter how experienced a golfer you are—whether a beginner or more advanced—Power Golf will help you play through to your best game ever.
Think you know how the game of baseball began? Think again.
Forget Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown. Forget Alexander Joy Cartwright and the New York Knickerbockers. Instead, meet Daniel Lucius Adams, William Rufus Wheaton, and Louis Fenn Wadsworth, each of whom has a stronger claim to baseball paternity than Doubleday or Cartwright.
But did baseball even have a father—or did it just evolve from other bat-and-ball games? John Thorn, baseball's preeminent historian, examines the creation story of the game and finds it all to be a gigantic lie, not only the Doubleday legend, so long recognized with a wink and a nudge. From its earliest days baseball was a vehicle for gambling (much like cricket, a far more popular game in early America), a proxy form of class warfare, infused with racism as was the larger society, invigorated if ultimately corrupted by gamblers, hustlers, and shady entrepreneurs. Thorn traces the rise of the New York version of the game over other variations popular in Massachusetts and Philadelphia. He shows how the sport's increasing popularity in the early decades of the nineteenth century mirrored the migration of young men from farms and small towns to cities, especially New York. And he charts the rise of secret professionalism and the origin of the notorious "reserve clause," essential innovations for gamblers and capitalists. No matter how much you know about the history of baseball, you will find something new in every chapter. Thorn also introduces us to a host of early baseball stars who helped to drive the tremendous popularity and growth of the game in the post–Civil War era: Jim Creighton, perhaps the first true professional player; Candy Cummings, the pitcher who claimed to have invented the curveball; Albert Spalding, the ballplayer who would grow rich from the game and shape its creation myth; Hall of Fame brothers George and Harry Wright; Cap Anson, the first man to record three thousand hits and a virulent racist; and many others. Add bluff, bluster, and bravado, and toss in an illicit romance, an unknown son, a lost ball club, an epidemic scare, and you have a baseball detective story like none ever written.
Thorn shows how a small religious cult became instrumental in the commission that was established to determine the origins of the game and why the selection of Abner Doubleday as baseball's father was as strangely logical as it was patently absurd. Entertaining from the first page to the last, Baseball in the Garden of Eden is a tale of good and evil, and the snake proves the most interesting character. It is full of heroes, scoundrels, and dupes; it contains more scandal by far than the 1919 Black Sox World Series fix. More than a history of the game, Baseball in the Garden of Eden tells the story of nineteenth-century America, a land of opportunity and limitation, of glory and greed—all present in the wondrous alloy that is our nation and its pastime.
Neil Lanctot's biography of Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella—filled with surprises—is the first life of the Dodger great in decades and the most authoritative ever published.
Born to a father of Italian descent and an African- American mother, Campanella wanted to be a ballplayer from childhood but was barred by color from the major leagues. He dropped out of school to play professional ball with the Negro Leagues' Washington (later Baltimore) Elite Giants, where he honed his skills under Hall of Fame catcher Biz Mackey. Campy played eight years in the Negro Leagues until the major leagues integrated. Ironically, he and not Jackie Robinson might have been the player to integrate baseball, as Lanctot reveals. An early recruit to Branch Rickey's "Great Experiment" with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Campy became the first African-American catcher in the twentieth century in the major leagues. As Lanctot discloses, Campanella and Robinson, pioneers of integration, had a contentious relationship, largely as a result of a dispute over postseason barnstorming.
Campanella was a mainstay of the great Dodger teams that consistently contended for pennants in the late 1940s and 1950s. He was a three-time MVP, an outstanding defensive catcher, and a powerful offensive threat. But on a rainy January night in 1958, all that changed. On his way home from his liquor store in Harlem, Campy lost control of his car, hit a utility pole, and was paralyzed below the neck. Lanctot reveals how Campanella's complicated personal life (he would marry three times) played a role in the accident. Campanella would now become another sort of pioneer, learning new techniques of physical therapy under the celebrated Dr. Howard Rusk at his Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. As he gradually recovered some limited motion, Campanella inspired other athletes and physically handicapped people everywhere.
Based on interviews with dozens of people who knew Roy Campanella and diligent research into contemporary sources, Campy offers a three-dimensional portrait of this gifted athlete and remarkable man whose second life after baseball would prove as illustrious and courageous as his first.
Sherrie Daly, the former wife of PGA tour superstar John Daly, takes a swing at the controversial man they call “Wild Thing” in this jaw-dropping memoir about what really goes on behind the scenes of professional golf.
Golf’s wholesome reputation is not what it used to be, thanks to Tiger Woods. But Woods’s bad boy scorecard doesn’t even compare to that of the sport’s original player: John Daly. Sherrie Daly should know. She was married to him for nine years.
It’s no secret that John, one of the PGA tour’s most popular stars, is known for his erratic behavior and on-the-edge lifestyle as much as for his powerful, grip-it-and-rip-it style on the green. But the never-ending carousel of free-flowing cash, booze, and women seduces many of the sport’s big-time swingers. In this juicy tell-all, Sherrie takes readers into the clubhouse to expose the seedy side of the gentleman’s game.
She dishes on John’s out-of-control antics throughout their marriage, many of which she helped cover up to protect his career, and his self-destructive addictions to whiskey, sex, and gambling, which led him to lose one of his biggest purses ever—nearly one million dollars—in an hour. She writes candidly about the physical and emotional abuse she endured and why she continued to play the role of golf wife despite the trashed hotel rooms, wrecked homes, and demolished cars. Then she turns the tables on herself, sharing the truth behind her catfights with his girlfriends, her legal troubles, and especially the night John alleged she attacked him with a steak knife.
Behind the polite clapping, collared shirts, and hushed voices, golf is just like any other professional sport, with groupies, party-crazed athletes, and blatant infidelity. After years in the exclusive players’ wives club, Sherrie Daly is Teed Off and ready to rip the game’s well-groomed facade to shreds.
Golf’s wholesome reputation is not what it used to be, thanks to Tiger Woods. But Woods’s bad boy scorecard doesn’t even compare to that of the sport’s original player: John Daly. Sherrie Daly should know. She was married to him for nine years.
It’s no secret that John, one of the PGA tour’s most popular stars, is known for his erratic behavior and on-the-edge lifestyle as much as for his powerful, grip-it-and-rip-it style on the green. But the never-ending carousel of free-flowing cash, booze, and women seduces many of the sport’s big-time swingers. In this juicy tell-all, Sherrie takes readers into the clubhouse to expose the seedy side of the gentleman’s game.
She dishes on John’s out-of-control antics throughout their marriage, many of which she helped cover up to protect his career, and his self-destructive addictions to whiskey, sex, and gambling, which led him to lose one of his biggest purses ever—nearly one million dollars—in an hour. She writes candidly about the physical and emotional abuse she endured and why she continued to play the role of golf wife despite the trashed hotel rooms, wrecked homes, and demolished cars. Then she turns the tables on herself, sharing the truth behind her catfights with his girlfriends, her legal troubles, and especially the night John alleged she attacked him with a steak knife.
Behind the polite clapping, collared shirts, and hushed voices, golf is just like any other professional sport, with groupies, party-crazed athletes, and blatant infidelity. After years in the exclusive players’ wives club, Sherrie Daly is Teed Off and ready to rip the game’s well-groomed facade to shreds.
No comments:
Post a Comment