Scan barcode
A review by emilykathleenwrites
A Course Called America: Fifty States, Five Thousand Fairways, and the Search for the Great American Golf Course by Tom Coyne
3.0
This book was a book club selection for my "Adventure Memoir Book Club" and it was not for me. I like the idea of traveling across America with a purpose in mind, but I couldn't get into the golf.
I preferred the sections where he focused on the people he met and the landscape and had no interest in the central question of the book, "What is the best golf course in America?" At times he comes off as smug (Alaska, "I wondered how many types of hepatitis you could get in one setting.") and other times humble, (Navajo Nation... even though he left trash on the course and made someone else pick it up) I really liked the reverence he held for the land in the Nebraska section, "It's really about that sense of place that makes a golf course feel like it belongs... The mystery of why sometimes a nine-hole muni felt perfect while an elite ranking topper sometimes felt incomplete."
I preferred the sections where he focused on the people he met and the landscape and had no interest in the central question of the book, "What is the best golf course in America?" At times he comes off as smug (Alaska, "I wondered how many types of hepatitis you could get in one setting.") and other times humble, (Navajo Nation... even though he left trash on the course and made someone else pick it up) I really liked the reverence he held for the land in the Nebraska section, "It's really about that sense of place that makes a golf course feel like it belongs... The mystery of why sometimes a nine-hole muni felt perfect while an elite ranking topper sometimes felt incomplete."