The PGA Championship tees off today at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, New York. According to CBS Sports, some of the top contenders for winning the championship are Jon Rahm, Scott Scheffler, and Rory McIlroy. To keep the excitement going, we’ve compiled a list of golf books to take you back to the course after the tournament ends!
Little Poison
JOHN DECHANT
Little Poison is the story of a man who made a career out of punching above his weight on the golf course. Paul Runyan won twenty-nine PGA tournaments between 1930 and 1941, as well as another major championship in 1934.
The Immortal Bobby
RON RAPOPORT
Drawing on scores of interviews, a careful reconstruction of contemporary accounts, and Jones’s voluminous correspondence, award-winning sportswriter Ron Rapoport reveals the man behind the legend and provides a moving depiction of a long-gone sporting age in The Immortal Bobby.
The Hole Truth
BILL FELBER
In The Hole Truth Bill Felber provides a relativistic approach for evaluating and comparing the performance of golfers while acknowledging the game’s changing nature. The Hole Truth analyzes the performances of players relative to their peers, creating an index of exceptionality that automatically factors the changing nature of the game through time.
Playing Through
JIM MORIARTY
Jim Moriarty has focused his attention on the glory, sacrifice, success, and despair of golf’s champions. In Playing Through, he captures the essence of this most recent, most transformative chapter in golf’s long history.
A Course of Their Own
JOHN H. KENNEDY
During the twentieth century, African American pioneers such as Lee Elder, Howard Wheeler, and Charlie Sifford broke down the barriers for black golfers who wanted to play, and win, as equals with white golfers. A Course of Their Own looks at golf from the perspectives of these men, who had courage as well as remarkable skills.
Duel in the Sun
MICHAEL CORCORAN
Drawing on interviews with participants, caddies, journalists, and spectators, Michael Corcoran brings the drama of this historic Open Championship to vivid life in Duel in the Sun. Along with a revealing retelling of the ’77 Open, Corcoran delivers an evocative historical overview of the Open and the tradition it represents.
Arnie, Seve, and a Fleck of Golf History
BILL FIELDS
Arnie, Seve, and a Fleck of Golf History is filled with colorful moments and perceptive observations about golf greats ranging from the first American-born U.S. Open champion, Johnny McDermott, to Seve Ballesteros, the Spaniard who led Europe’s resurgence in the game in the late twentieth century. Fields gives us golf writing at its finest, capturing the game’s larger dramas and finer details, its personalities and its enduring appeal.
The Masters
DAVID SOWELL
David Sowell returns to Augusta now with the third edition of The Masters, adding more history and updating each hole with additional stories of greatness and tales of woe for a new generation of golfers led by Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, and Patrick Reed, as well as from an older guard represented by Bubba Watson, Adam Scott, and Sergio García.
Wide Open Fairways
Bradley S. Klein
As golf courses move away from the “big business, pristine lawn” approach of recent times, Bradley S. Klein, a leading expert on golf course design and economics, finds much to contemplate, and much to report, in the way these wide-open spaces function as landscapes that inspire us, stimulate our senses, and reveal the special nature of particular places in Wide Open Fairways.
King of Clubs
JIM DUCIBELLA
It began as a Depression-era, winner-take-all challenge between two Chicago stockbrokers, one of them a flamboyant daredevil with more guts than money and the other with more money than sense. It erupted into a national news story, one never told in its entirety—until King of Clubs: The Great Golf Marathon of 1938.
For more titles like these, explore our Sports, Media, and Society series.