Total Golf: The Most Comprehensive Guide to Golf and Golf Instruction

Outlining every facet of the game and well illustrated, this book is one of the most comprehensive golf texts - from the beginner to the advanced player. Starting out with the proper selection of clubs and outlining the various factors that could affect your game - it gives valuable information for the beginner. A comparison of the Modern Swing and the Classic Swing by tour players is well illustrated and well annotated. Each club type is outlined on proper use: Driver, fairway woods, long irons, mid irons, wedges, and short irons. Course management, sand play, pitching, chipping and putting are explained in detail. This is one of the best and most comprehensive books that should be in every golfer's library.

Great book with all kinds of well organized instruction. A long section devoted to various celebrity golfers and how they swing is perhaps too lengthy, as it basically shows that everyone is different (perhaps those who follow celebrity golfers would enjoy it more than I did). But the book is long enough that there is plenty of instruction in it, with good pictures. Overall, it has been one of the most helpful things for my golf game.

After a 30 year break from golf I decided to get serious again. I quickly discovered that my fairly intuitive knowledge of the golf swing picked up as a child wasn't going to get me back to the middling handicap I held when I was 20. I started reading three golf books concurrently, "Total Golf", "100% Golf" by David Leadbetter and "Ultimate Golf Techniques" by Malcolm Campbell. Not a particularly smart move but within a couple of weeks I dispensed with all but "Total Golf". Its the only book of the three that I kept 're-searching' to find some half remembered piece of wisdom. Total Golf is thorough, methodical, mainstream and it has a coherent graphical style (unlike Campbells). Its fairly prescriptive but gives sound reasons for its approach. I've since read a number of other golf books but this remains my favourite guide and I have now moved on the to same authors "Laws of the Golf Swing'. The only other book I would wholeheartedly recommend is "Golf Magazines Complete Book of Golf Instruction". This is a much larger book covering the history of the game and many variants of the mainstream approach. For a beginner I would still recommend 'Total Golf'.