Golf Memoirs

Filled with delightful and insightful stories about golf and the golfers Rotella works with, Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect will improve the game of even the most casual weekend player.

The man who invented shock rock tells the amazing and, yeah, shocking story of how he slayed his thirsty demons with a golf club. It started one day when Cooper was watching a Star Trek rerun between concerts, bored and drunk on a quart-of-whiskey-a-day habit. A friend dragged the rocker out of his room and suggested a round of golf. Cooper has been a self-confessed golf addict ever since.

For the first time, champion Tiger Woods reveals the five secrets to his amazing success - a combination of physical, metaphysical and psychological practices he uses daily to keep his game in top shape.

A beloved New York Times bestselling author and golf aficionado shares his insatiable curiosity, trademark sense of humor, and vast knowledge of the game in this cavalcade of original pieces about why we love the sport, now featuring three additional new pieces.

In 2009, Tiger Woods was the most famous athlete on the planet, a transcendent star of almost unfathomable fame and fortune living what appeared to be the perfect life - married to a Swedish beauty and the father of two young children. Winner of 14 major golf championships and 79 PGA Tour events, Woods was the first billion-dollar athlete, earning more than $100 million a year in endorsements from the likes of Nike, Gillette, AT&T, and Gatorade. But it was all a carefully crafted illusion. As it turned out, Woods had been living a double life for years.

When Tiger Woods went on an extraordinary majors run between 1999 and 2008, one man stood at his side: his caddie Steve Williams. Together Steve and Tiger dominated the PGA Tour and won an astonishing 13 major championships, their sights set on breaking Jack Nicklaus’s record 18 majors. Before they could overtake Nicklaus, however, their partnership ended abruptly, and a 12-year period without talking began. Years later, the two reconnected. Together We Roared offers an inside look at what it is like to ride alongside greatness.

Over the past sixty-five years, millions of golfers have studied Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons, making it the bestselling golf book of all time. Now, Hogan’s masterpiece has received the definitive edition it deserves. Widely regarded as one of the greatest golfers in the history of the sport, Hogan is especially known for his mastery of the golf swing. At the start of his career, he played with a hook that threatened to ruin his game, until he dedicated himself to correcting it—and in doing so, he gained a rare and hard-fought understanding of the fundamentals.

The Big Miss is Hank Haney's candid and surprisingly insightful account of his tumultuous six-year journey with Tiger Woods, during which the supremely gifted golfer collected six major championships and rewrote golf history. Hank was one of the very few people allowed behind the curtain. He was with Tiger 110 days a year, spoke to him over 200 days a year, and stayed at his home up to 30 days a year, observing him in nearly every circumstance....

Before he was a national disc golf champion, Scott Stokely was a latch-key kid, a troubled teen, an arrogant punk. Before his entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, he was a black-market dealer, an addict, a fugitive from justice. Scott would become a devoted teacher, a dedicated advocate, a team leader, and one of the toughest competitors in the history of disc golf. But first, he would have to grow up.

A Course Called Ireland is the story of a walking-averse golfer who treks his way around an entire country, spending 16 weeks playing every seaside hole in Ireland. Along the way, he searches out his family's roots, discovers that a once-poor country has been transformed by an economic boom, and finds that the only thing tougher to escape than Irish sand traps are Irish pubs.

Ever since his astonishing victory in the 1991 PGA Championship, John Daly has enthralled fans with his big drives, bigger personality, and "Grip It and Rip It" approach to golf - and to life. Usually seen with a Marlboro Light dangling from his lip, John is the unchained, unpredictable, unapologetic bad boy of professional golf. My Life in and out of the Rough is a thrillingly - and sometimes shockingly - candid memoir of a larger-than-life athlete battling assorted addictions (alcohol, gambling, chocolate, sex), his weight, and, perhaps worst of all, divorce lawyers.

Globe and Mail golf columnist Lorne Rubenstein has authored multiple acclaimed books and had his work featured in major golf publications. Moe & Me is a riveting exploration of the life of Moe Norman, known for his unusual swing on the course - and his crippling insecurity and introverted nature off of it.

On April 13, 1986, ten-year-old Tiger Woods watches his idol, Jack Nicklaus, win his record sixth Masters. Just over a decade later, chants of “Ti-ger, Ti-ger!” ring out as the twenty- one-year-old wins his first Green Jacket. He blazes an incredible path, winning fourteen major titles (second only to Nicklaus himself) by the time he’s thirty- three, smashing records and raising standards. Then come multiple public scandals and potentially career-ending injuries.

In 1997 Tiger Woods was already among the most-watched and closely examined athletes in history. But it wasn't until the Masters Tournament that his career would definitively change forever. Woods, then only 21, won the Masters by a historic 12 shots, which remains the widest margin of victory in the tournament's history, making it an iconic moment for him and sports.

Like most amateur golfers, Tom Coyne had often wondered whether the pros won because they were more talented or because they were more obsessed. Overweight and burdened by a 14 handicap, he decided to find out for himself what it takes to play like a pro. Charting his journey - which included hiring top golf gurus such as Dr. Jim Suttie - Paper Tiger takes listeners from the Michelob tournament (a win for Tom) to the Australian Tour, where 40-mile-per-hour winds and a driving rain scare off his Japanese partners.

In 1997, as every schoolchild knows, Tiger Woods won the Masters by the largest margin in history, becoming the first Black player to win a major championship. Four years later, the world watches with breathless anticipation as he returns to Augusta National, aiming for a milestone no other golfer has ever achieved: four professional Grand Slam triumphs in a row. In The Tiger Slam, Kevin Cook delivers a gripping, inside-the-ropes account of an astonishing streak of victories that left Woods’s rivals scrambling to keep up.

Bob Harig's Tiger & Phil provides an in-depth chronicle of the decades-long rivalry that drove the success of golf's two biggest stars, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

A journalist who many iconic athletes have trusted to tell their stories (of both triumph and disgrace), Jim has had unprecedented access to the people, places, and extraordinary events in the world of sports. Asking tough but fair questions, he has broken numerous stories, and landed squarely in the middle of others, from the Ben Johnson and Barry Bonds steroid scandals, to Michael Jordan’s surprise retirement, to the off-the-court Kobe/Shaq feud which led to their on-the-court break up, to being part of the live broadcast for 22 Super Bowls.

Phil Mickelson is one of the most compelling figures in sports. For more than three decades he has been among the best golfers in the world, and his unmatched longevity was exemplified at the 2021 PGA Championship, when Mickelson, on the cusp of turning fifty-one, became the oldest player in history to win a major championship. In this raw, uncensored, and unauthorized biog­raphy, Alan Shipnuck captures a singular life defined by thrilling victories, crushing defeats, and countless controversies.

Renowned novelist and screenwriter Mark Frost turns his eye for golf to an event so famous that it’s grown to the stuff of legend. In 1956, a casual bet between two millionaires eventually pitted two of the greatest golfers of the era—Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan—against top amateurs Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi. Frost recounts this dramatic tale from start to finish, detailing the match that vaulted golf out of the shadows and into the national spotlight.