Golf's Strangest Rounds: Extraordinary But True Stories from Over a Century of Golf

Golf has a long history dating back many centuries, long before the first British Open in 1860, but the oldest episode covered in this book dates from 1870. Many strange episodes from then until the new millennium are covered, not just from professional events but also from amateur events, as well as a few novelty events. The book also covers milestones in golf history, one of these being the argument over the format of the golfing event within the 1908 Olympics. The upshot of that argument was that there was no golf in the 1908 Olympics. Featured in the 1904 Olympics, golf has been excluded ever since although it may return eventually. The selection of episodes, as ever in a book of this type, can be argued about. Bernhard Langer's round featuring his climb up a tree does not get a piece of its own, although it is mentioned during the coverage of a different episode. The Ryder Cup has been full of drama since it became Europe versus the USA, but nothing that happened in these events gets its own piece, although Brookline is mentioned in another episode. However, six near misses by Greg Norman each get separate coverage. A different author might have give less coverage to Greg's misfortunes (maybe combining them into one piece) and more to the Ryder Cup, but there have been so many strange golfing stories that some had to be left out. Indeed, the author admits that his book is primarily made up of British and American stories with a few from Australia, simply because of the volume of stories available. He had no need to look elsewhere even though he is confident that he could have found great stories from elsewhere. The author also explains three different ways to hole in one and not win a hole, one of which caused a rule change. Now there are only two ways. You can't work them out? Buy the book and find out. Occasionally tragic but mostly funny and always entertaining, this is well up to the standard that I expect from this series.