cover image Golf: An Album of Its History

Golf: An Album of Its History

Robert McCord. Burford Books, $35 (176pp) ISBN 978-1-58080-063-1

A fact-packed, illustrated look at the sport from its probable origins in Holland to the present, this album by the author of The Golf Connoisseur and a contributor to Golf Digest broadly covers the game. There are accounts of the great courses and their designers; changes in equipment, from the feather-filled ball of the early 19th century to gutta percha and then to the modern wound-core ball; the evolution of clubs; changes in rules; but above all the great players. Here are Old Tom Morris; Harry Vardon, who won the U.S. Open in 1900 and increased interest in the sport on this side of the Atlantic; Francis Ouimet, who beat Vardon in the 1913 U.S. Open and put American golf on the map; the great triumvirate of Hogan, Nelson and Snead; the second great triumvirate of Palmer, Nicklaus and Player; and, of course, Tiger Woods. McCord also gives as much attention to women's golf as to men's, going back to Joyce Wethered and Glenna Colette Vare and touching on Patty Berg and Babe Didrikson Zaharias on the way to Joanne Carner and Kathy Whitworth. 125 black-and-white and eight color photos supplement the text. (Aug.)