cover image Drive for Show, Putt for Dough: Memoirs of a Golf Hustler

Drive for Show, Putt for Dough: Memoirs of a Golf Hustler

Leon Crump, John Stravinsky. William Morrow & Company, $23 (208pp) ISBN 978-0-06-270171-8

Crump says he loves golf, but what he loves even more is making money on the course. His priorities are easily explained: after a youth spent as a caddy in his hometown in North Carolina and working as a machinist in 1958 at the age of 22, he went to a course in South Carolina where betting was the rule--and he won $l300. At the time, a player on the pro tour might make that much in a year, so Crump resolved to become a hustler. Hustler's cheats abound, some even trying to hustle other hustlers, but in all his years of playing, Crump likes to brag that he has always been ""up front"" about what he does and how he does it. He has won money playing an entire round with only a putter or with the ball covered by a paper cup before every shot. He maintains that ""a true golf hustler is a good player who can elevate his game against another good player when the money's up."" Writing with Stravinsky (The Complete Golfer's Catalogue) he presents a breezy and informative autobiography that anyone with even a trace of larceny will enjoy. $50,000 ad/promo; author tour. (May)