Game I Love

Now 85, Snead has played professional golf for seven decades and observes wryly that he has won 185 tournaments and lost 400. Writing with sports psychologist Pirozzolo, he talks about the mental set needed on the links, urging golfers to have a ""blueprint"" before they begin a round, to concentrate on rhythm and timing, to have mastery over themselves and not be concerned about how others play, and, above all, to stay in shape and to practice regularly. All this, presumably, is predicated on the assumption that the player has good technique, which Snead always had, demonstrated here by flipping the right-hand pages to see his stroke in action. He writes of the presidents he has played with and the celebrities he has met, from the serious Bing Crosby to the playful Harpo Marx. The text is supplemented by sidebars written by the likes of Byron Nelson, Lee Trevino, Judy Rankin, Tom Watson and Dan Quayle, in Snead's opinion the top golfer among politicos. The book is best approached as an outstanding guide, rather than as an autobiography. (Nov.)