|
The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan
|
| Price: |
50 new or used available from $0.12
Average customer review:
Product Description
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #286585 in Books
- Published on: 2006-05-02
- Released on: 2006-05-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 288 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Known more for his novels of the macabre, Coyne moves onto the links and comes up with a terrific blend of golfing lore, PGA tournament drama and country club soap opera. It's 1946, and Jack Handley is a 14-year-old caddy at a posh country club near Chicago. He loves the game, and his mother needs the money. When Ben Hogan shows up one day to play a practice round before the Open, Jack caddies for Hogan and for Jack's pal, assistant pro Matt Richardson, as the two men play a not-very-friendly round. Coyne's descriptions of the strained practice round and the gripping first day of the Chicago Open are masterful sports fiction, with Jack reliving every drive, chip and putt, adding savvy golf tips and caddy tricks. Add in Jack's entanglement in Matt's secret romance with the daughter of the club's rich and powerful president, and anecdotes of other legendary players (like Jimmy Demaret, Gene Sarazen and Lefty Stackhouse), and the results rank with James Dodson's nonfiction, and John Corrigan's PGA golf mysteries. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
When golf novelists reach for profundity, they invariably trot out either God or Ben Hogan. Often, there is little distinction between the two, with Hogan dispensing wisdom in godlike fashion. Coyne builds his novel around the revered Hogan, too, but he loses the fantasy element. The frame story has an author speaking to a gathering of country-club members in Chicago about his experiences caddying for Ben Hogan in 1946, when the Chicago Open was held at the club. His tale involves a talented assistant pro, whose romance with the daughter of the club president threatens his chance to compete against Hogan. Our narrator caddies for Hogan in a practice round and then finds himself forced to choose between a job with the great man and his loyalty to the assistant pro. The interpersonal story line descends quickly into melodrama, but Coyne nails the golf scenes. Whether describing Hogan's surgeonlike style, or relaying the shot-by-shot drama of a match, he never makes a bad swing--no sloppy metaphors, no wrong-club howlers, only precise prose in service to that most precise of athletic motions, the golf swing. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
From the Inside Flap
At the time, Matt Alexander was the young club pro—Jack’s idol, his dear friend, and a talented player with a velvet swing. Caddying for Matt, Jack oftentimes reined in Matt’s reckless play as together they dissected each hole in preparation for Matt’s attempt to qualify for the Chicago Open. But a secret romance that began between working-class Matt and Sarah, the daughter of the club president, threatened to disrupt their training—and their friendship.
Shortly before the Open, on a momentous late afternoon, fourteen-year-old Jack found himself caddying a tense practice round between Matt Alexander and Ben Hogan. In between golf swings and cigarette breaks, Hogan spent time with the impressionable Jack, teaching him far more about life than about golf.
Jack, thrilled by Hogan’s presence at the country club but mindful of his own friendship with Matt, found his loyalties were divided when it came time to caddie in the Open. In a series of events—both poignant and tragic—Jack’s decision on whom to caddie for became the pivotal moment of the summer, and perhaps his life.
The summer of 1946 was a time of heightened emotions for the young teenager, and the Chicago Open itself was a moment of truth for Jack Handley. Retelling the story at the anniversary, he relives the golf matches—and reveals to his audience the human side of the iconic Hogan.
The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan is filled with stories about this golden era of golf and the legendary Ben Hogan. It is a bittersweet novel about golf and growing up, and the strangers we meet along the way who make all the difference in our lives. Advance Praise for The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan
This novel achieves something remarkable. . . . The two fictional marathon golf contests . . . are presented with such narrative skill, such compelling detail, and such evident love of the game that they are transfixing. John Coyne has managed to employ golf as a lens through which aspects of Midwestern daily life in the 1940s, of thwarted love, of social class, are revealed with stark and unsettling clarity.
—Norman Rush, winner of the National Book Award for Mating
The imagined anecdotes involving Ben Hogan ring true. A great job by John Coyne.
— Curt Sampson, author of Hogan and The Grand Slam
Don’t play golf myself. The only two balls I ever hit was when I stepped on the garden rake. But I can tell you that John Coyne captures the skill and magic of fellow Texan Ben Hogan in a helluva great story.
—Kinky Friedman, next governor of Texas and author of Texas Hold ’Em and Cowboy Logic
John Coyne has come up with a winning golf tale. Anyone who loves the game will have trouble putting down this intriguing story, which skillfully mixes fact and fiction. Coyne gives us tragedy, triumph, and Ben Hogan all in one. For those who enjoy a good read about golf, it’s perfect!
—J. Michael Veron, author of The Greatest Player Who Never Lived
He so cleverly tells this original tale that you will be shocked to learn that this is merely the product of his rich imagination.
—Geoff Shackelford, author of The Future of Golf and Grounds for Golf
I knew Ben Hogan on the golf course and off. John Coyne has captured the spirit of the man as well as the player himself.
—Jules Alexander, photographer for The Hogan Mystique
A must-read not just about the game of golf, but also about the game of life.
—The Professional Caddies Association
John Coyne knows golf and golf history, and he understands the intricate workings of the human heart. Anyone who loves golf—and many readers who don’t know a five-iron from a free throw—will appreciate his skill and be happily drawn into this fine story.
—Roland Merullo, author of Golfing with God
Customer Reviews
The Best Golf Story Ever!!!
If you love golf, you will love this book. If you're a caddy, you love this book. If you love characters rich in wisdom, life, and love, you'll love this book. If you love a good story, you'll love this book. In other words there is no way you won't love this book. Coyne's prose is as smooth and powerful as Hogan's swing and much like the Hawk himself, Coyne hits his target with precision and ease while always leading the reader to the next shot. With this novel Coyne just might have birdied every hole too. Buy this book, it's the story about life you've always wanted to read. Read it, you won't regret it.
A really great golf read...Coyne connects with The Caddy......
A masterful fiction writer whose story telling and intimate Hogan truths and legends make this an exciting novel for all readers...Golf aside, an intriguing love story and interesting take on country club mores. Read it!
Superb Novel
This is an excellent, truly wonderful novel. For an author known more for Gothic horror stories, this is a major shift to the golf course, a game he obviously plays and loves. He must also have been a caddie, for he knows all of the lingo. The reader does not have to be a golfer, for all such terms are defined in the text. Structurally it is built around two tense matches between Ben Hogan and the assistant club pro, Matt Richardson. The point of view is the caddie, Jack Handley. The first match is Hogan's practice match, the second the first round of the Chicago Open (in which Richardson somehow makes the cut). Another device Mr. Coyne uses is dual narrative structures--the first (which dominates) is Jack telling, decades later, his story of the Hogan-Richardson matches when he was 14 years old. I might add that it does not ring true that an audience could sit through 250 pages worth of this. The third-person narrative is set years later when Jack returns to his former club to recount the Chicago Open after having become a professor who's written a famous book on golf.
There is an air of tension throughout because Jack tells the reader early, almost between the lines, that the story will end in tragedy. One assumes it will be a lost tournament, but it is a real tragedy in which a central character dies. Besides telling a story that locks the reader's interest, Mr. Coyne is a true master of his craft: metaphors ("Matt gave me a grin as if he had just won the lottery, the Open, and the girl of his dreams. I [was] feeling as I had just robbed a bank"); speaks directly to the reader ("On a humid day, as you players know, the ball will carry farther"); humor, as when two characters have to go French Lick, Indiana, because there was no blood test required nor a three-day waiting period ("'Even I, a fourteen-year-old, knew about French Lick, which was named, I might add, for the salt springs in the area and not lascivious behavior.'") There is also continual contrast between the post-War equipment golfers were forced to use--factories had been converted for wartime--and the clubs most people now see on TV. 1946 to 2006 does not seem to have improved professional scores very much.
But Mr. Coyne's strong suit is constant tension, both hole-by-hole and by the tragedy that will conclude the novel. If Jack the caddie is the main character, the source of the book's wisdom is Ben Hogan. Jack Handley is a different man because of his brief meetings with him. The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan is a truly rewarding book for golfer and non-golfer alike.
