12/25/2023 0 Comments Short game golf bookNicklaus was still in his prime at 37, and Tom was coming into his at 26 when they ran away from the rest of the field that weekend at Turnberry. This book recounts the basic facts of both men's careers. I remember that his rivalry with Jack Nicklaus was the subject of some of Howard Cosell's Speaking of Sports radio broadcasts. Of course Tom Watson is a Kansas Citian, and his career was just coming into view when I first moved here in 1975. And Joe has won plenty of accolades from his peers over the years. I don't follow sports quite closely enough to be likely to have strong negative reactions to what sports writers say about this or that athlete, so I can't critique the accuracy of his opinions over the years (and that's what sports writing is, largely, opinions, isn't it?), but I found his articles to be well-written and entertaining. Kansas Citians are familiar with Posnanski as a longtime sports writer for the Kansas City Star. When I learned that Joe Posnanski had written a book that covered the 1977 Open Championship at Turnberry, I was all over it. I played decently, and brought home lots of photos, stories and memories. I was prepared for crazy bad weather, but I was very fortunate, and in 5 rounds, I dealt with one short-lived rain. In 2017 I went to Scotland and played Turnberry, Gleneagles, St. Of course not all of the Opens are played on links courses, but I'm especially locked in to those that are. The (British) Open Championship is my favorite because I love the vagaries of links golf. I'm a big golf fan - I don't watch weekend by weekend, but I watch all of the men's and women's major tournaments that I can. Spanning from that first match through the “Duel in the Sun” at Turnberry in 1977 to Watson’s miraculous near-victory at Turnberry as he approached sixty, 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. Yet over the next twenty years their seemingly divergent paths collided as they battled against each other again and again for a place at the top of the sport and drove each other to ever-soaring heights of accomplishment. Watson was one of those Arnold Palmer fans. Nicklaus lacked charm and theatrics, and he was thoroughly despised by most golf fans because he had displaced Arnold Palmer as king of the golf world. Nicklaus played a game of consummate control and precision. Though they shared some similarities-they were both Midwestern boys who had learned how to play golf at their fathers’ country clubs-they differed in many ways. The first time they met, at an exhibition match in 1967, Tom Watson was a seventeen-year-old high school student and Jack Nicklaus, at twenty-seven, was already the greatest golfer in the world.
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