cover image Golf, as It Was in the Beginning: The Legendary British Open Courses

Golf, as It Was in the Beginning: The Legendary British Open Courses

Michael Fay. Universe Publishing(NY), $40 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-7893-0683-8

It's a duffer's dream: a ""fantasy"" course of 18 holes, each drawn from a different (and real) British course used in British Open play. Fay (Golf, As It Was Meant to Be Played) traveled through the British Isles in preparing the book, gathering the history of courses as well as their peculiarities and specifics. Accompanied by lush photos by Michael Freeman (Frank Lloyd Wright Masterworks), Fay describes what makes each hole-of-choice interesting, what the obstacles are and some ways to play them. Of the 12th hole, at England's Royal Saint Georges course, Fay writes, ""A shot hit through the fairway is just as likely to be a lost ball as not."" The ""enormous short bunker"" of hole 17 at Prestwick, England's course has a wooden stair for climbing in and out. The expansive photographs of the course feature stormy Liverpool skies, a sunset at Murfield Gullane and a dozen variations on the simple color green.