February 23, 2009
Given that it's written by one of the sport's premier chroniclers and is set mostly in and around the bucolic grounds of Southern Pines, N.C.—a resort town based mostly on the pursuit of golfing—there is surprisingly little golf in this homey memoir, though that's probably for the best. Dodson (Ben Hogan
; Final Rounds
) recounts how he was gripped by a midlife crisis after a shakeup at his magazine and the deaths of several close friends and family members. These events, plus a desire to give his son the same memories of golf that his father imparted to him, sent the Maine journalist scampering back to his Southern childhood home. Although Dodson knows perfectly well that possibly uprooting his whole family is little more than indulging a “chance to live out a boyhood fantasy” of being a smalltown newspaper man, he makes the idea as appealing as possible. There is not much forward momentum in this excessively ambling and self-satisfied work, and it suffers from Dodson's tendency to record conversations with a level of detail that sometimes strains credibility. However, it's all painted in a glossy, buttery hue of such fine vintage nostalgia that it's all the reader can do by the end to not immediately light out for the central North Carolina hill country.
February 1, 2009
Dodson (Beautiful Madness: One Man's Journey Through Other People's Gardens, 2006, etc.) downsizes his working relationship to golf and upgrades the quality of his life when he returns to his North Carolina hometown.
By 2005, golf was giving the author a bad case of professional yips. Dodson felt (and convincingly expresses here) that the PGA Tour, which he covered for a glossy magazine, had been drained of color and personality and was moving perilously far from its fan base."Slow death by corporate prosperity" was fulfilling the worry expressed in 1960 by the founder of the Augusta National Golf Club, that"you'd eventually get one big business rather than a game." On a visit to Pinehurst, where his father had introduced him to golf, he was captivated by the town's easy rhythm, its scented air and the prospect of writing for a local paper about things that he loved and cared about—not to mention all that links time on Pinehurst's deservedly famous courses. The town's laid-back atmosphere is perfectly captured in Dodson's prose, whether describing a game of golf with his growing circle of friends, tendering nuggets of wisdom to his son ("golf and life are both games subject to change without notice") or even pondering death. Dodson's lack of pretense and his wealth of conviviality give readers a sense of investment in the man and his modest work, which is long on sentiment but not extravagantly so.
A humane, insightful memoir of elemental composure and meaning regained.
(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
February 15, 2009
Dodson, author of the popular memoir Final Rounds (1996), revisits fathers, sons, and golf with this story of his return to Pinehurst, North Carolina, often considered the home of golf in America. For Dodson, it is also his own home, the place where his father introduced him to golf and where he hopes to inspire the same passion for the game in his teenage son. Turning down assignments from national magazines, Dodson takes a part-time job as writer-in-residence for a small newspaper in the Pinehurst area and moves into a cottage, juggling between North Carolina and his home and family in Maine. The fabled Sandhills, home not only to Pinehurst but also to dozens of other world-class golf courses, prove the perfect tonic for Dodsons incipient midlife crisis, restoring both his sense of his past and his love of golf. This slow-paced, eulogistic memoir draws on the deep, near-archetypal feelings that dedicated golfers have for the game, its history, and their own connections to the fathers and mentors who first put clubs in their hands. A bit sentimental, to be sure, but, in Pinehurst, thats the rub of the green.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)