The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever

Those of us who love golf- its traditions and history, will ove this true story of a match that was arranged as a wager, and turned out to be one of the best of all time

A quick read, good golf book, didn't really capture me, but held me enough to finish it.

If I had read "The Match..." before I read Mark Frost's other golf-related books ("The Greatest Game Ever Played" and "The Grand Slam: Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf") I would have missed out on a couple of really good reads - because I would never have picked up another of his books.

The main substance of this book - the story of a unique, one-time golf match between two aging masters of the professional game (Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson) and two up-and-coming young amateurs (Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward) at one of the most beautiful, and exclusive, golf courses in the country, Cypress Point, on California's Monterey Peninsula - would have made a good magazine article. In order to tease it out to book length, however, Frost intersperses biographical chapters on the lives of the four participants, as well as the two instigators of the match, Eddie Lowery (Francis Ouimet's then-pint-sized caddy for his improbable 1913 US Open victory over Englishmen Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, 40-odd years later a successful Bay Area businessman and supporter of amateur golf) and George Coleman, a wealthy California business figure. It's mostly blatant, and superfluous, padding - the material on Hogan has been better chronicled elsewhere, with a lighter touch, by more skilled writers (Curt Sampson comes to mind...) and the dirt-digging on Eddie Lowery's business dealings and troubles with the amateur golf establishment border on the sordid.

Frost's florid writing style in this book is off-putting and sensationalistic; he leaves no superlative unturned, and must have worn out his thesaurus in the search for more and better adjectives the further he got along in the story. His chapters on Hogan are fawning and overly-sentimental, reminiscent of James Dodson's saccharine 2004 biography of the man (no surprise that Frost singles out Dodson for mention in his Oscar show-length thank you's).

One thing that Frost never pays off on is the title's tagline: "The Day The Game of Golf Changed Forever". How can event that was witnessed by a relative handful of people, a private golf match with no title or championship significance, be said to have changed the game of golf forever? The match did occur at a cusp in the sport, as golf was changing from a pastime of the wealthy, in which amateur sportsmen were held in higher esteem than the professional practitioners of the sport, to the Arnold Palmer-inspired pastime of suburban professionals and blue-collar workers, when TV and its attendant influx of money made it a national sensation that provided a viable, even lucrative, living for the touring professionals in the game - but none of those changes hinged on, or were precipitated by "The Match".

Razor out the biographical padding, leaving only the chapters on the match itself and the afterword on the history of the course (but my enjoyment of that portion of the book may be attributable to local interest, as I was born and raised just inland of the Monterey Peninsula, in the Salinas Valley) and you'll have an enjoyable lunchtime read; and if you're ready to immerse yourself in more of the early history of the game, pick up "The Greatest Game Ever Played" and "The Grand Slam: Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf" - they are much better books.

This little book is packed with history of the game of golf. The Match was the perfect vehicle to present the six characters who make this event come to life. Thanks for introducing me to Harvie Ward. To anyone who plays, loves, and/or enjoys this game you must take the few hours it takes to read this compelling story.

Two recent golf books stand out above all others: The Match and Fairway to Hell: Around the World in 18 Holes, which is far and way the most hilarious and insightful. I looked forward to The Match because I had heard it takes place at Cypress Point and I've always dreamed of playing that course, so it was a treat to walk and play it with some of the greatest golfers of all time. In case you haven't heard, the centerpiece of this story is a casual best ball match play round between Ben Hogan and Bryron Nelson (representing the pros) and Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward (representing the amateurs). The time is 1956 and Venturi and Ward are the last of the gentleman amateurs playing at the highest levels of the game. The event is precipitated by a bet instigated by none other than Eddie Lowery, the pint-sized ten-year old caddie from "Greatest Game" who has (believe it or not) become a millionaire California car dealer. This connection to the earlier book is more than a coincidence and Lowery becomes more important to the story than one might expect. The Match is required reading for any serious golfer. On one level learning more about the life story and personality of these great players as well as that of Cypress Point and the Crosby Clambake are quintessential elements of the glory of golf in America. As before, Mark Frost does an amazing job illuminating this background (including a great recounting of the famous Hogan comeback after his accident.)