I thought this was funny:

I am interested in this book, and saw this following description on ebooks.com. Whoever wrote this certainly isn't a golfer and most likely didn't read the book.  
And is the part concerning all the spectators accurate? I wouldn't think the real CPC would let that happen.
-- Rob

Description
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Eddie Lowery left his first imprint on the game of golf in 1913 as the 10–year–old caddie to underdog U.S. Open champion Francis Ouimet. Best–selling author Mark Frost continues Lowery’s story 43 years later with Lowery as a multi–millionaire car–dealer, who boasted to fellow millionaire and golf staple George Coleman that amateur golfers Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi could hands down beat any other two golfers in the world in a best ball match. A bet was made for a substantial sum of cash, and a tee time was set at the prestigious Cypress Point Country Club (Hampton Roads, Virginia) for Ward and Venturi to play whomever Coleman decided to bring. The morning of the match, Coleman showed up with the other half of the foursome: Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, the two most distinguished golfers in the world. Despite efforts to keep the match under wraps from the public, word leaked out as soon as the men arrived at the course and a hundred people surrounded them by the time they reached the first tee. Three and a half hours later, nearing the conclusion of what many in the game now refer to as the greatest private match in the history of American golf, the crowd lining Highway 1 and the eighteenth fairway numbered close to five thousand people. Mark Frost brings to life an unlikely golf match that changed golf forever.

Here we go again. Are we to believe that all those "winks," "looks" and "grimaces" were so etched in Ken Venturi's memory that he was able to accurately describe each of the ones mentioned in the book?

I don't think I can read "The Match." Every descriptive liberty taken with the actions of these four players (three of whom are not around to verify anything) would simply drive me crazy, and cause me doubt other parts of the narrative. The straight facts (and Venturi's most vivid memories) of this remarkable match would have been enough.

Well Bob, given that the Cypress Point described in that quote is said to be in Hampton Roads, Virginia, then heck,  the stuff about Highway 1 and 5000 spectators could well be true.

 

I am not sure which "facts" in that mini-review are coming from the reviewer, and which are coming from Frost's book, but either way it sure doesn't reflect well on either of them.

I've been a defender of Frost before... I still say I enjoyed his book about the famous Ouimet US Open win ("Golf's Greatest Game")... but I guess it took something hitting relatively close to home to get me bothered.

Because this DOES bother me.

TH

Shel:

I understand all of that.  My defense remains that at least with the prior books, Frost made no attempt to declare this as anything but fiction.. and the parts that bothered people here were so obviously fictitious (thoughts inside the minds of each of Ouimet and Vardon, for example) that to be bothered by them not being "fact" just struck me as odd.

But when he gets obvious geographic details wrong, well than that's too much, even for me.

BTW, I know Dan King cited the publisher saying these were non-fiction books, but I still don't buy it.  To me they are all historical fictioln at best.

TH

What does he add?  There are no new characters of importance?  No plot.  No insight.  Merely an attempt to be a mind reader scores of years after the fact.  Even the psychological "insights" are sophomoric at best.  I guess since the books are about golf and intersting events connected with the game we love, some of us will read them and be satisfied.  I am afraid I'll receive a copy as a gift, the same way I got the last one.

Rick:  it would make this all a lot easier if they were labelled as historical fiction.  But reading "Greatest Game", it was so obviously such to me that I was shocked when Dan showed me how they were labelled.  As a consumer and not an author, I was unconcerned.  But yes, in a more perfect world they are labelled correctly.

Shel:  well, I enjoyed the Ouimet tale, however one wants to label it.  What he added for me as a fleshing out of a tale I had previously only known the barest details about.  If he embellished things on the way to getting to these bare details, it did not bother me.  But again, since to me it was so obviously historical fiction, I was looking at it as such and it was thus pretty mindless entertainment.  Because yes, it was about golf, and it was a pretty darn exciting tournament.

TH

Great example, Michael. I would add these embellishments (if I were a Frost-like reconstructionist):

"As he tapped in his miss, the rage was palpable and a hush fell over the thirteenth green. "I am such a sheeety poatter," the fiery Spaniard thought to himself as he hovered over the edge of the cup. To the astonishment of the gallery, Garcia delicately released a strand of saliva towards it, all the while mentally cursing his father for failing to teach him the crosshanded putting grip when he was first learning the game.

Whether his gob landed "in the middle" remains a question for the ages . . .

I have not read the book and feel that I might blow a gasket should I do so.

Is this in it?

"Three and a half hours later, nearing the conclusion of what many in the game now refer to as the greatest private match in the history of American golf, the crowd lining Highway 1 and the eighteenth fairway numbered close to five thousand people. Mark Frost brings to life an unlikely golf match that changed golf forever."

Any one that knows Cypress, would tell you that Highway 1 does not border the 18th hole, in fact the road is not even in Pebble Beach. Secondly, to say that there were five thousand spectators on the 18th hole is simply absurd. You would have to have all of those spectators standing shoulder to shoulder covering the fairway from tee to green.

Some of the stuff about George Coleman is incorrect.

Bob

Not to dispute you,but does anyone here know for a fact that Highway 1 wasn't moved at some point between the 1950s and today?  It could be that it ran through the coastal communities before being rerouted into the bypass of Carmel, PG and Monterey that it is today.

I have no idea if that is true or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if it originally ran around the point rather than over the hill as it does today.

Rick:  it would make this all a lot easier if they were labelled as historical fiction.  But reading "Greatest Game", it was so obviously such to me that I was shocked when Dan showed me how they were labelled.  As a consumer and not an author, I was unconcerned.  But yes, in a more perfect world they are labelled correctly.

What makes it difficult for me is that each of the people who have recommended the book to me thought it was nonfiction. And I believe they are typical.

I only got about a quarter of the way through it before I gave up and started looking for an author's note about the story. It's in the back of the book, and he did not call it historical fiction.

Ken

Quote from: Bob_Huntley on November 29, 2007, 05:22:50 PM

I have not read the book and feel that I might blow a gasket should I do so.

Is this in it?

"Three and a half hours later, nearing the conclusion of what many in the game now refer to as the greatest private match in the history of American golf, the crowd lining Highway 1 and the eighteenth fairway numbered close to five thousand people. Mark Frost brings to life an unlikely golf match that changed golf forever."

Any one that knows Cypress, would tell you that Highway 1 does not border the 18th hole, in fact the road is not even in Pebble Beach. Secondly, to say that there were five thousand spectators on the 18th hole is simply absurd. You would have to have all of those spectators standing shoulder to shoulder covering the fairway from tee to green.

Some of the stuff about George Coleman is incorrect.

Bob

Not to dispute you,but does anyone here know for a fact that Highway 1 wasn't moved at some point between the 1950s and today?  It could be that it ran through the coastal communities before being rerouted into the bypass of Carmel, PG and Monterey that it is today.

I have no idea if that is true or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if it originally ran around the point rather than over the hill as it does today.

John,

I can assure you that in the fifties Highway 1 is in about the same place as now. Pebble Beach was a gated community decades before The Match.


Bob

I literally just got off the phone with Frost, and asked a lot of questions about all three of his golf books. I don't have time to transcribe the quotes now, but I'll put some of them up on my blog with my review of the book next week.

He defends his position well, and says a lot of the commentary about use of direct quotes in Greatest Game and The Match is "overdone." He says he had access to most of the individuals in question -- or friends who had heard direct accounts on the stories from Ward or Lowery.

It is an interesting debate -- and I'll throw some of the audio clips on the blog as well, so people can hear his perspective directly.

That said, he's one of the few writers to bring major attention to golf design. As he told me, Cypress is treated like a character....

Frost writes what he considers non-fiction. He does it in a very sloppy manner, doing little to no research. My only experience is with his Greatest Game book. It had so many details wrong, I never got past page 100. Some of you seem to believe facts aren't as important as a good story, but I'm glad to see Huckaby is finally coming to see the danger of writing such sloppy history.

I look forward to hearing Frost trying to justify his sloppy research.

Regarding Highway 1, there is a Web sight discussing the history of the California highways. I don't know the geography of Monterey as well as some of you, but I don't see anything about the highway running through Pebble Beach.

Click here to read a history of Highway 1

That took me about 15 minutes of research, apparently more time than Frost bothered taking.

Cheers,
Grandan King

A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas—a place where history comes to life.
 --Norman Cousins

I literally just got off the phone with Frost, and asked a lot of questions about all three of his golf books. I don't have time to transcribe the quotes now, but I'll put some of them up on my blog with my review of the book next week.

He defends his position well, and says a lot of the commentary about use of direct quotes in Greatest Game and The Match is "overdone." He says he had access to most of the individuals in question -- or friends who had heard direct accounts on the stories from Ward or Lowery.

It is an interesting debate -- and I'll throw some of the audio clips on the blog as well, so people can hear his perspective directly.

That said, he's one of the few writers to bring major attention to golf design. As he told me, Cypress is treated like a character....

Robert,

Frost may well have spoken to some friends of Lowery et al but two he should have called were Coleman's daughter, who was a very good golfer and his butler Franco, who was there the whole time.

Bob