Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #773 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-06
• Released on: 2007-11-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In 1956, millionaires Eddie Lowery and George Coleman made an off-the-cuff bet on a golf match and inadvertently set up one of the sport's most climactic duels; this one casual game has become the sport's great suburban legend. Frost (The Greatest Game Ever Played) diligently covers the two pros slightly past their prime, Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, who squared off against two top amateurs, Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi. It happened in the last hours of Hogan's playing career, and ten years after Byron had left the stage, but at the near pinnacle of the amateurs', whose personalities couldn't have been more diametrically opposed (Venturi the classic up-and-comer, and Ward the inveterate playboy who performed hungover on two hours' sleep). The match itself, scrupulously teased out by Frost for maximum drama, is less interesting than the people involved and the historical backdrop. The match happened near the sport's great cusp, as it transitioned from something for amateurs to a professional career, from a pastime for wastrel aristocrats and entertainers (and Bing Crosby, with his annual booze-soaked Clambake charity matches) to a mainstream suburban obsession. Frost has a penchant toward the florid, but as he writes, Because he was Ben Hogan, and it was just past twilight, and his like would never pass this way again, he captures an elusive magic in this improbable matchup and what it meant for those who played and witnessed it. (Nov.)
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Ken Venturi
"The Match was a dream I never thought would come true. If I hadn't been there I wouldn't believe it myself, and if you know anything about sports or the game of golf, once you pick up this book you won't put it down. No one will ever see an event like this again. Fiction can't touch it."

From the Inside Flap

The bestselling author of The Greatest Game Ever Played returns with the story of the little-known match that forever changed the history of golf.

The year: 1956. Four decades have passed since Eddie Lowery came to fame as the ten-year-old caddie to U.S. Open Champion Francis Ouimet. Now a wealthy car dealer and avid supporter of amateur golf, Lowery has just made a bet with fellow millionaire George Coleman. Lowery claims that two of his employees, amateur golfers Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi, cannot be beaten in a best-ball match. Lowery challenges Coleman to bring any two golfers of his choice to the course at 10 a.m. the next day to settle the issue.

Coleman accepts the challenge and shows up with his own power team: Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, the game's greatest living professionals, with fourteen major championships between them.

In Mark Frost's peerless hands, complete with the recollections of all the participants, the story of this immortal foursome and the game they played that day--legendarily known in golf circles as the greatest private match ever played--comes to life with powerful, emotional impact and edge-of-your-seat suspense.

Customer Reviews

If you liked this book, you MUST read this interview!
I found this incredible interview regarding how the game of Golf has changed over the years. You wouldn't believe the evolution! If you have any interest in the history of Golf, this is a must read. If you want to become even more knowledgeable on the subject, scroll to the bottom of the interview and get in touch with the author. After reading, I guarantee you will be able to lead the most interesting discussions and impress your friends!

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/interviewroden.html

The best book on golf competition I have ever read.

In The Greatest Game Ever Played, Mark Frost provides a brilliant account of 20-year-old Francis Ouimet's 18-hole playoff victory over Britons Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in the 1913 U.S. Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, where Ouimet once caddied. That said, I think his account of an 18-hole match at Cypress Point Golf Club on the Monterey Peninsula (just before the annual "Crosby Clambake" in 1956) between professionals Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson against amateurs Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi describes a match at least as significant. His is certainly the best book on golf competition that I have ever read.

With the curiosity of a cultural anthropologist and the skills of a master storyteller, Frost establishes and then explores a context within which four of the greatest golfers in the 1950s agreed to a "friendly match." They knew each other, respected each other, and enjoyed each other's company. However, in his own unique way, each was a ferocious competitor, especially when engaged in match play competition. Frost provides a hole-by-hole account (the primary story line) but he also brings to life each of the four competitors, explaining their respective backgrounds, personalities, and motivations while stressing their passion for the game of golf. The supporting cast includes Eddie Lowery who, when years old, caddied for Ouimet during his Open victory and is now a wealthy car dealer and among the leaders of the USGA. Also George Coleman, also a multi-millionaire as well as a member of Cypress Point who accepts Lowery's challenge to select any two professionals to compete against Ward and Venturi.

Credit Frost with accomplishing two separate but related objectives: to provide a riveting account of the match itself over an especially challenging as well as beautiful course designed by Alister MacKenzie, and, to place the match within a much larger frame-of-reference that includes the emergence of professional golf following the retirement of Bob Jones, real estate development of the Monterey Peninsula area, and the evolving controversy about the meaning of the term "amateur," given the fact that both Venturi and Ward were two of Lowery's salaried employees who devoted almost all of their time and energy to competitive golf.

Even those who have little (if any) interest in golf will thoroughly enjoy reading this book. It has everything: a full cast of colorful characters, several compelling story lines, multi-dimensional social commentary, and following the conclusion of the match, an "Afterward" that provides what Paul Harvey calls "the rest of the story" concerning the four competitors and their two supporters. Then in an Appendix, Frost provides historical information about the Peninsula before focusing his attention on Marion Hollins and her involvement in both competitive golf and efforts to realize her "oversized dreams" for the area.

This is one of very few works of non-fiction that I have read in recent years that created in me a growing sense of sadness as I approached the last few pages. I really enjoyed it that much? Yes. In fact, I began to re-read it the next day and although I knew the outcome of the match, enjoyed the second reading at least as much as the first. Thank you, Mark Frost.

Gripping Even Though You Know The Outcome
Mark Frost leaves you breathless as he paints an unmatched literary canvas with words--you can hear it, see it, smell it, feel the tension. Throughout he intersperses snippets and bios of the players so you can't wait to get back to the action. Each time I put it down I looked forward to picking it up and reading it again. I have read also The Greatest Game Ever Played and The Grand Slam. Both excellent, but "The Match" to me was one of the richest literary creations on golf I have ever read.