Home > Furman Bisher > Archives > 2008 > May > 15 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USLike duffers, golf books scatter wildly
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Probably — and I say so to protect myself from litigation — more useless books are written about golf and how to play it than any other game. You might include cooking, but that’s not a game, and one false step and you can get poisoned. But golf is the hot topic now, with all these touring pros in the vicinity torturing themselves at Sugarloaf, even the guy who designed the course. Greg Norman must have been mad at somebody, particularly anybody who plays golf.
We had another golfing visitor in town last week, I hear. I missed Carl Hiaasen. I was out of town at another golf event, watching Paul Goydos almost win The Players Championship. He has a better handicap than Hiaasen, and he doesn’t go around writing books about it. I mention Goydos over Sergio Garcia because Sergio won about the way Ernie Els won a tournament awhile ago. Neither won it, somebody else lost it, in the case of the TPC, Goydos. Good-natured, humorous and just recovering his game, as is Hiaasen.
Goydos is making more headway. Hiaasen starts his book with an 18 handicap and he finishes at 18. The confounding struggle in between is the meat and potatoes of his project, titled “The Downhill Lie,” which reminds me of another golf story, or almost golf story, having to do with another chap who spent a life jousting with the accursed game, Jim Murray, the great columnist.
Jim was being escorted to his burial place in a cemetery in Los Angeles by a cadre of old pals. Most of us had played golf with him on some continent or another, and knew of his contentious relationship with it. He once talked the owner of a new course not yet opened to the public to let him play a round first, that way he could say he once held a course record, though it may have been 104. As his escorts walked away from the hearse down a slope toward the burial plot, laboring under the weight of the heavy casket, one of our group murmured softly, “It’s a downhill lie. Jim wouldn’t like that.”
So, you get the significance of a downhill lie in golf. Hiaasen had given up golf 30 years before and his renewal became his “downhill lie,” 207 pages of it. He is a genuinely esteemed author, and sport is not his customary genre. I’ve noticed his name on books by my wife’s bedside at times, but since she deals in quite a contrast of reading material, it never occurred to me that the same guy would be writing a book about golf. So when “The Downhill Lie” arrived in my mail, curiosity seized me and I read the darn thing from cover to cover. And laughed, and empathized, and sneered, and tired of his constant name-dropping, David Feherty, for instance.
Golf literature, to employ the term loosely, mainly falls into two categories: How-to and how-not-to. There are some outstanding books of instruction, Hogan’s “Five Fundamentals of Golf,” without which Larry Nelson would never have reached the stars, he says. And Harvey Penick’s “Little Red Book,” and Bobby Jones’ “Golf Is My Game,” and many another.
For every one of those, there are two dozen about some guy and his lousy game. If you can’t play it well, sit down and tell the world about it. Get it off your chest. Belabor us with your world travails, and the worse it is, the better it sells, I’d guess. Must be, for all those that are out there. For pure how-to, I guess the Englishman Ted Ray’s book covered it all, “Driving, Approaching and Putting.”
I say that, for nobody ever writes a book about putting. Most important stroke of the round, makes or breaks the game, and all the self-acclaimed experts write about everything but putting. I forget if Hiaasen gets into it or not. I’d check it out, but I’m not certain I could stand that much painful golf again.
Comments
By Four-putt
May 16, 2008 2:13 AM | Link to this
Furman — in your first paragraph you talk about avoiding litigation over your opinion of golf books. No one can successfully sue you for your opinions in the context of doing a review.
But you knew that.
By Furman's Legacy
May 16, 2008 3:06 AM | Link to this
You mentioned protecting yourself from litigation, Furman.
Litigation is one thing you DO have longstanding experience in. How about you write about the landmark libel case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court on account of you?
You know, Furman, the lawsuit that resulted when you claimed Bear Bryant and Wallace Butts were guilty of conspiring to fix games.
That’s right…that lawsuit…the one that eventually bankrupted the Saturday Evening Post.
It’s been 40+ years, Furman. Isn’t it time to come clean? For those who love the truth your relavency ceased all meaning a long time ago.
Do the right thing…tell the truth. Do you really want your legacy to be “the big lie?”
By Red Pepper
May 16, 2008 9:48 AM | Link to this
Furman’s Legacy, The Post story was written by Frank Graham, Jr. What’s Bisher to do with it?
By Tiger_Woods
May 16, 2008 12:40 PM | Link to this
Man, what has Furman ever done to you guys?
By Furman's Legacy
May 16, 2008 10:04 PM | Link to this
Red Pepper — You are right. The 1963 Post story was written by Frank Graham, Jr. However, Graham penned the story with the substantial assistance of Furman Bisher. This followed on the heels of Bisher’s earlier Post article accusing Bryant of severe brutality in football.
A Sports Illustrated article on the “game fixing” controversy is linked below.
http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1078953/index.htm
Quoting Bryant about the 1963 Post story “I found out who was compiling it: Furman Bisher, although his name wasn’t going to be on it…Bisher, or somebody, was supposed to have a photostat of a $50,000 check I had written as a payoff.”
Well, the rest is hisory. Bryant sued for $10 million, The Post settled with him out of court. Wallace Butts of Georgia sued and won a six figure settlement that The Post appealed — all the way to the US Supreme Court (and lost).
Bisher may have let time cover a career launched on libel but the stain remains. If Bisher had 1/1000th of the class of a Dan McGill — a true elder statesman and gentleman of sports — he’d come clean.
By Bisher Fan
May 17, 2008 10:43 AM | Link to this
To the moron that posted the first comment: Isn’t it about time you got ready for your nightly visit to the strip club, where you pay women for attention? What a freakin loser!
By NOT a Bisher Fan
May 17, 2008 10:59 AM | Link to this
Hey, “Bisher Fan” — I think you’re in the minority here.
Check out time is 11:00 am. Get your bags and hit the bricks.
The Bisher fan-bus is pulling out in 1 minute. If you board now you can sit anywhere you like except the driver’s seat.
By GRADY BYRD
May 17, 2008 11:44 AM | Link to this
YOU ARE RIGHT ON ABOUT TO MANY GOLF BOOKS.IF THE AVERAGE GOLFER FOLLOWED THE GOLF TIPS IN ALL THESE BOOKS HE WOULD QUIT THE GAME THIS MORNING.
By nahjay davnpooh
May 17, 2008 2:23 PM | Link to this
furman - just die, dude. your work is boring and the world of sports past you by in the mid-1980s.
By Cindy
May 28, 2008 3:53 PM | Link to this
John Smoltz is partial owner in Acceleration Sports Insitute in Spartanburg SC. They shut the doors without prior notice to any members and kept all MONEY. What does John Smoltz have to say about ripping off all the innocent kids he screwed out of there dreams? So much for being an American HERO. http://www.wspa.com/midatlantic/spa/home.apx.-content-articles-SPA-2008-05-27-0022.html Shame on you!
By Ted Striker
May 28, 2008 7:21 PM | Link to this
Cindy: Can you say “I like to spam all the AJC comment sections with an unrelated (unsubstantiated) post?”