golfrewind.com

Is this something that exists? I would love for my son to start learning some of this great games history. He enjoys reading, but I was looking to hand him something a little more teenager friendly. Any suggestions. Thanks.

Maybe Golf Anecdotes by Robert T. Sommers? Paperback. Anecdotes (duh) from various periods in the game's history, arranged by era (oldest to most recent). Most anecdotes are less than a page long, so he'd quickly get exposure to a lot of past golfers, tournaments, and events. Then maybe he could find a golfer or something he'd want to read about in greater depth. I'm pretty sure this book is still in print. Try a well-stocked local bookstore (e.g., a Barnes & Noble or something like that).

Here's another possibility, but tougher to find. In a used-book store, I found a reproduction of Harry Vardon's The Complete Golfer, orginally published about 100 yrs ago. Golf Digest reprinted it as part of its Golf Digest Classic Series, which also included Bobby Jones on Golf and Golf Fundamentals by Seymour Dunn. It's really interesting to see how the game used to be played, and written about.

Good luck!

Thanks Jim

Sorry this didn't occur to me earlier, Keith, but here's another possibility: I see that Mark Frost's The Greatest Game Ever Played is now on the shelves in paperback. As you probably know, it's about Francis Ouimet's victory over Harry Vardon at the 1913 U.S. Open.

The book is not written for kids, but Frost writes so well that a teenager reading at grade level shouldn't have a problem. The angle that might appeal to a teenager is that Ouimet (as you probably know) was only 20 yrs old and was taking on a living legend, Vardon, who was twice Ouimet's age. Also, Ouimet's caddy was a short 6th-grader (Eddie Lowery). So there's a kids-vs.-adults angle that a teenager might especially enjoy. (And for the rest of us, it's just a plain good story, well-told, of a historic U.S. Open championship.)

Thanks again Jim. I found the Golf Anecdotes book on E-bay for a couple of bucks. We'll get him started with that one.