Sports Biographies Golf

When twenty-one-year-old Tiger Woods stunned the world by winning The Masters by a mind-blowing twelve strokes, the first thing he did was embrace the three most important people in his life: his father, his mother, and Hughes Norton. Now, in Rainmaker, Norton offers “the most amazing ‘behind the curtain’ view ever written about the world of sports management” (Jim Nantz, CBS Sports). This is an engaging and unforgettable memoir that explores golf as never before.

The Big Miss is Hank Haney's candid and surprisingly insightful account of his tumultuous six-year journey with Tiger Woods, during which the supremely gifted golfer collected six major championships and rewrote golf history. Hank was one of the very few people allowed behind the curtain. He was with Tiger 110 days a year, spoke to him over 200 days a year, and stayed at his home up to 30 days a year, observing him in nearly every circumstance....

When Tiger Woods went on an extraordinary majors run between 1999 and 2008, one man stood at his side: his caddie Steve Williams. Together Steve and Tiger dominated the PGA Tour and won an astonishing 13 major championships, their sights set on breaking Jack Nicklaus’s record 18 majors. Before they could overtake Nicklaus, however, their partnership ended abruptly, and a 12-year period without talking began. Years later, the two reconnected. Together We Roared offers an inside look at what it is like to ride alongside greatness.

On April 13, 1986, ten-year-old Tiger Woods watches his idol, Jack Nicklaus, win his record sixth Masters. Just over a decade later, chants of “Ti-ger, Ti-ger!” ring out as the twenty- one-year-old wins his first Green Jacket. He blazes an incredible path, winning fourteen major titles (second only to Nicklaus himself) by the time he’s thirty- three, smashing records and raising standards. Then come multiple public scandals and potentially career-ending injuries.

Before he was a national disc golf champion, Scott Stokely was a latch-key kid, a troubled teen, an arrogant punk. Before his entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, he was a black-market dealer, an addict, a fugitive from justice. Scott would become a devoted teacher, a dedicated advocate, a team leader, and one of the toughest competitors in the history of disc golf. But first, he would have to grow up.

In the span of one unforgettable year, Coyne crisscrosses the country in search of its greatest golf experience, playing every course to ever host a US Open, along with more than two hundred hidden gems and heavyweights, visiting all fifty states to find a better understanding of his home country and countrymen. Coyne’s journey begins where the US Open and US Amateur got their start, historic Newport Country Club in Rhode Island.

Like most amateur golfers, Tom Coyne had often wondered whether the pros won because they were more talented or because they were more obsessed. Overweight and burdened by a 14 handicap, he decided to find out for himself what it takes to play like a pro. Charting his journey - which included hiring top golf gurus such as Dr. Jim Suttie - Paper Tiger takes listeners from the Michelob tournament (a win for Tom) to the Australian Tour, where 40-mile-per-hour winds and a driving rain scare off his Japanese partners.

A journalist who many iconic athletes have trusted to tell their stories (of both triumph and disgrace), Jim has had unprecedented access to the people, places, and extraordinary events in the world of sports. Asking tough but fair questions, he has broken numerous stories, and landed squarely in the middle of others, from the Ben Johnson and Barry Bonds steroid scandals, to Michael Jordan’s surprise retirement, to the off-the-court Kobe/Shaq feud which led to their on-the-court break up, to being part of the live broadcast for 22 Super Bowls.

In the middle of Oliver Horovitz's high school graduation ceremony, his cell phone rang: It was Harvard. He'd been accepted, but he couldn't start for another year. A caddie since he was 12 and a golfer sporting a 1.8 handicap, Ollie decided to spend his gap year in St. Andrews, Scotland - a town with the UK's highest number of pubs per capita, and home to the Old Course, golf's most famous 18 holes - where he enrolls in the St. Andrews Links Trust caddie trainee program.

Bob Harig's Tiger & Phil provides an in-depth chronicle of the decades-long rivalry that drove the success of golf's two biggest stars, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

John Feinstein, who has spent four decades finding intriguing sports characters and narratives and turning them into classic books, chronicles the life and career of David Feherty. Feinstein tells hilarious true tales about Feherty’s time in the limelight and interactions with stars such as Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Payne Stewart, and Seve Ballesteros. Feherty is fall-down-funny, self-deprecating, and a lifelong underdog who has thrived as a commentator and television interview host, and most recently as a touring standup comic.

One night in a Chicago restaurant, Michael Bamberger draws up a list of golf heroes. Nine are living legends, like Arnold and Jack. Nine are secret legends, like Dolphus "Golf Ball" Hull: a windblown tour caddie from Jackson, Mississippi. What they all share is a game that courses through their collective veins like a drug. Accompanied by a sidekick and friend, a former tour player who is a secret legend himself, Bamberger seeks to locate and get to know these luminaries.

Timothy M. Gay writes that four-time major champion Rory McIlroy is "golf's ageless Opie Taylor," a superstar whose charm transcends national boundaries and enlivens the game. His swing is so powerful that Tiger Woods is teaching his own son to mimic Rory's action. But a charismatic persona and a pretty swing don't translate into winning championships. Rory has failed to win another major and fallen short of achieving the career Grand Slam. Rory Land tells the saga of a compassionate superstar living in a world where "money has no conscience."

Tiger Woods’ long descent into a personal and professional hell reached bottom in the early hours of Memorial Day in 2017. Woods’ DUI arrest that night came on the heels of a desperate spinal surgery, just weeks after he told close friends he might never play tournament golf again. The former paragon of discipline now found himself hopelessly lost and out of control, exposed for all the world to see. That episode could have marked the beginning of Tiger’s end. It proved to be the opposite.

Gary Player's Black Book contains 50 questions and detailed responses from 18-time major winner Gary Player. The book, divided into three parts, focuses on specific scenarios and problems that arise in golf, life, and business.

From award-winning sports writer Kevin Robbins, discover the story of legendary golfer Payne Stewart, focusing on his last year in the PGA Tour in 1999, which tragically culminated in a fatal air disaster that transpired publicly on televisions across the country.

To the Linksland is the captivating memoir of Bamberger’s golfing pilgrimage/extended honeymoon. From an all-night caddie bus on the back roads of southern Europe to Stark’s secret six-hole course in the Scottish Highlands, Bamberger takes you on a journey into the heart of golf. This thirtieth-anniversary edition of Bamberger’s classic, lyrical tale of discovery is bookended with a new introduction by Michael Murphy and a new afterword by Bamberger.

His story is unprecedented in the world of golf. Born to a family of migrant laborers, Calvin Peete dropped out of school in the eighth grade, went to work picking crops, first swung a golf club at the age of twenty-three-and rose to the top of the PGA. In Calvin Peete: Golf's Forgotten Star, Gordon Hobson tells for the first time Peete's incredible story. Calvin Peete's story is inspiring, but it also reveals the struggles many Black golfers endured even after the Caucasian—only clause was removed from the PGA's bylaws.

Spanning from that first match through the Duel in the Sun at Turnberry in 1977 to Watson's near-miraculous victory at Turnberry as he approached 60, and informed by interviews with both players over many years, The Secret of Golf is Joe Posnanski's intimate account of the most remarkable rivalry and (eventual) friendship in modern golf.

The colorful, sentimental, funny, affectionate, cantankerous memoir by the most colorful, funniest, most cantankerous-- and probably the most revered-- sportswriter of the last fifty years. Dan Jenkins is accepted as one of the greatest (if not the greatest) golf writer of all time, wrote beloved bestselling novels and abused more corporate expense accounts than anyone who ever lived. It's a touching, laugh-out-loud tribute to the romanticism of old-time sportswriting-- and the glory days of sports.