cover image At the Turn: How Two Electrifying Years Changed Golf Forever

At the Turn: How Two Electrifying Years Changed Golf Forever

Steve Eubanks. Crown Publishers, $24 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-609-60743-5

While Tiger Woods may be the wunderkind of the professional golf world, there's plenty of drama in the PGA besides Woods's career. After the U.S. team suffered a devastating loss at the 1997 Ryder Cup, it came back to win the famous international tournament in 1999. That same year, beloved team member Payne Stewart died in a tragic plane accident. Squabbling over funding, advertising and rules continues to threaten the PGA. Eubanks, formerly with the PGA and author of Augusta: Home of the Masters, knows all the players and aptly describes the minute details of winning putts and behind-the-scenes politics. He writes with an eye for descriptive as well as narrative detail, with a directness that sometimes makes for humorous reading: he compares one player to ""Gregory Peck in a royal-blue Disneyland shirt, ankle deep in a creekbed with his trousers pulled above his knees.... He was in no way embarrassed by the utterly farcical scene he was creating. If he could play the shot from the water and win the tournament, he would look like a hero."" (May) Forecast: Golfers and ardent fans will enjoy this account of two years in the life of U.S. golf, but to many it will already seem obsolete. Players agonize over every shot, but readers may not want to relive the sport's past few years of minutiae. But Eubanks has done an admirable job with research and presentation, and his book will have great appeal for a specific audience.