A Hole By Hole Special--
The 2000 Holiday Gift Golf Book Selections!

This year's collection covers a wide spectrum of golfing interests.

If you are looking for more gift book selections, just click over to three other pages of mini-reviews: the original Coffee Table Golf Book page, the1999 Holiday Gift Book page, or the Little Golf Books page.

If you're looking for more substantial books for the golfer you're trying to please, just click to the Pastbooks Page and pick a review.

Click on the covers or text links below to buy these books for gift-giving this holiday season or later. These books are perfectly fine gifts for others, or for yourself for that matter.

This is a good collection with surprising variety. The authors provide well-written explanations of dozens of competitive formats. The book also includes the charts needed to play both Calloway System and Stableford tournaments. The inclusion of these two charts make the book worth the modest price by itself.

Valentine and Hubbard also include useful sections on terminology, betting methods, and a well-done primer on golf etiquette.

This beautiful coffee-table book goes beyond the usual pretty pictures and adds some real substance. Each description of now-gone courses such as The Lido, Key West, or Oakland, uses a standard format. The overall layout, including yardages and par for each hole, is displayed by artwork and the occasional aerial photograph or scorecard. Plenty of other great old pictures, such as one of Bobby Cruikshank winning the 1927 Los Angeles Open at El Caballero, add to the history.  In addition, Wexler describes how each course would likely play under today's conditions, and gives insight into why some courses no longer exist.

Another good argument for taking the time to practice, rather than only trying to find your game during a weekly round. NBC golf analyst Maltbie, one of the more articulate PGA Tour Pros, shows how a well-thought-out approach to practicing will pay off in the long run. The middle of the book also includes handy charts that will help you analyze each shot during a round, and also help develop your own practice plan.

Maltbie succeeds in convincing golfers that time on the range is not only fun but essential for developing real progress.

This is a great supplement to Ben Hogan's original classic of golf instruction, Five Lessons. Several dozen photographs used to help Anthony Ravielli with his famous illustrations that accompanied the first book were discovered by the Hogan estate. Leadbetter and Rubenstein make good use of the old photographs along with new illustrations by Keith Witmer, a worthy successor to Ravielli. They then follow the Five Lessons structure to explain, refine, and update Hogan's approach to the golf swing.

Caps off to the Hogan estate for making these pictures available, and to Rubenstein and Leadbetter for knowing how to enhance golf instruction with them.

Chapbooks once were a very popular form of small publications, including bits and pieces on dozens of topics. Silverman notes that chapbooks were "[t]he forerunner[s] of today's magazines and literary reviews."

Woodford Press is reviving the old form. Silverman put together a great little collection of all sorts of golf pieces. Short stories, instructional guides, architecture essays, psychological studies, and business articles fill the compilation. The book should help keep some good golf writing from fading into the past.

Former CBS golf announcer Ben Wright follows up on the heels of his successful autobiography, Good Bounces & Bad Lies, with this witty collection of his not-so-stock phrases used to describe golf. Each alphabetical listing includes a pithy explanation, with Wright's distinctive tone well in evidence. For some readers, terms such as "Aquatic Doom" will bring Wright's distinctive voice directly into their inner ears.

This little book is fun for fans of wit, word-play and golf.

"The Other Shack" is back with yet another beautiful book.

Shackelford, author of The Golden Age of Golf Design and editor of Masters of the Links, gained access to a fabulous collection of photographs of the famous club, taken before, during, and after construction of the enchanting layout.

He combines the photographs with a well-written history. Essay subjects include the founding of the club, the retention of MacKenzie to do the design, its construction, and a hole-by-hole description.

The book cover graphic to the right of this review doesn't do any justice in showing how great this black and white collection actually looks.

Fans of Tiger Woods, Pebble Beach, and the U.S. Open will love this coffee table book. Brown and his band of writers and photographers put together what could be called a extended Sports Illustrated story on the 2000 Open.

All the emotions that poured forth from that memorable major, from the Payne Stewart service to Tiger's record-setting performance, are captured in nice detail.

The sportswriting in this book is the equal to the photographs, a feat not often accomplished in this type of book. It's a welcome exception to the general rule. 

If you're looking for other golf books for the holidays, click on this image:

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