The Dewsweepers: Seasons of Golf and Friendship

My name is Al Cece and at the age of 61 now I have been a member of a group very similar to James Dodsons for sevferal years now. It is fabulous to see how they share their lives as they play the rounds. It also took me many years of golf to now realize that it is so much more about the friendships, experiences, jokes, the bad shots ( as well as the good), the walks, the noises in the backswing, the 19th hole and the weeklong e-mails and chatter between the rounds. We too are like a band of brothers and help each other with family problems, health issues, and, of course, solving world problems! One thing we do not do is mess with each others swings....but we do take lots of pride getting into each others "heads". I also have set up a bowling team (before I read the book) of my golf friends to see each other during the winter in Berkshire County, Massachusetts and a Breakfast Club of the Taconic golf club members during the winter also to see each other every other Saturday morning for a couple hours. Am reading the book again now and can't wait to share things at the next breakfast club meeting. fabulous... al

"Golf, and sometimes life, are full of new beginnings." So starts one of the most charming books on the subject of golf and life that I have read in quite some time. For this is not a "golf book" any more than Seabiscuit was about a horse race. The author, a former 2 handicap realizes as he advances into his 40's that "I wasn't just losing my ability to play the game the way I once had...Golf was ceasing to be fun."Dodson discovers the group of guys that become The Dewseppers when he is enveigled to travel to Syracuse to speak at a charity fund raiser. The fellow doing the inviting had read his previous book "Final Rounds" and thought the author might have something worth listening to about golf forging lasting relationships. One thing leads to another and the antics and follys of The Dewsweepers become a thread which runs through the book, but the story is about much more than them.It is about relationships of all kinds. A son and his mother. A boy and his father. A lovely lady named Wendy. Arnold Palmer. Aging friends. A chance meeting on a magical golf course. Brotherly love gone sour. And so many more.Dodson has the most interesting way of making how we relate to each other, the humor, the sorrow, the mundane and the magificent all come alive in a very real way. I found the book enthralling. Those who have reviewed this book and sniffed about some of the name dropping that occurs in it are missing the point entirely. People like Arnold Palmer just happen to be a real part of Dodson's life. To leave out the "names" is to fail to tell the story to it's fullest.In the end he finds that the joy he had gotten from golf during his life was not lost. As he puts it, it was "merely waiting for me to catch up..." There is a lot to learn about life and relationships in this book and I doubt there are any of us who could not benefit from that.

Dodson conveys the true feelings of playing golf with people who you can come to love almost as much as your family. I truely felt like buying copies for the other 3 guys in my foursome after I was done with it. Just like Final Rounds which I bought for my father. Not for the hard hearted it can bring tears to your eyes at times and cause outrageous laughter at others.

James Dodson has an innate ability to perfectly describe how a golfer really feels about courses, clubs, and the friendships that develop over years of playing the game. Inside the pages of this book are some of the most hilarious and wonderful accounts of men being boys and vice versa that the reader will ever stumble across. There is a mix of golf history, travel, family psychology and the tormenting trials of trying desperately to master a game that is impossible to master. If you play golf, at any level of capability, you will enjoy this book!