Blue Fairways : Three Months, Sixty Courses, No Mulligans

by Charles Slack

Release Date: 01 September, 2000

Edition: Paperback

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Slack scores high at writing as well as golf

We should all be grateful to Barbara Slack for permitting her husband to take an extended leave from family to indulge in a golfing odyssey that starts at the top of Route 1 in northern Maine and finishes in the Florida keys. His gift for describing the pleasures and perils afforded by public courses and their denizens fills the pages with rich humor, colorful stories, and canny insights. Slack is the Everyman golfer, scattering too many 8's and an occasional birdie on scorecards wherever he goes, but never giving up on his hopeless quest to get one round below 80. His blackest throes and most transcendent exultations are so well expressed that they capture thoughtscapes that you will swear you have experienced after selected shots. His descriptions of the courses and the scenery that line Route 1 are vivid and engaging. In its modest way, this book is an apotheosis to the democratization of golf that marks the end of our century. Even as John Updike strides the luxurious fairways of his Myopia Hunt Club in relative seclusion, Slack introduces us to boisterous companions wandering among the dry divots of Dyker Beach, Cobb's Creek and Pohick Bay. A great holiday gift for the public golfer, and one that will make the country club member reconsider the humanity he may have forsaken when he entered Shangri-La.

This book's a birdy

What Charles Slack lacks in skill as a golfer he makes up for in his ability to describe the essential attraction of the world's most aggravating game: the hope that lies at the beginning of every backswing. More than just about golf, this is a quirky tour of back-roads America. Slack has a fine, gentle sense of humor and the best kind of intelligence - sharp but unpretentious. He may not have broken par on his tour, but he sure has with this book.