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From his first steps onto the public stage, this true icon of sport exuded an aura more inviting than off-putting, and his substantial record--92 titles worldwide, four Masters championships, a U.S. Open crown, and back-to-back British Open victories--speaks for itself. So does his autobiography. It is friendly, chatty, honest, passionate, long on spirit, and deft with the anecdotes it shares. As a storyteller, Palmer is as down the middle with the failures and hard times as he is with the remarkable triumphs. He writes thrillingly about golf at its most competitive; probingly about his rivals, particularly Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus; revealingly about the extended slump that followed the '64 Masters, his last win in a major; fairly and nobly about his own legendary status; emotionally about his family and his complex relationship with his father; and quite movingly about both his and his wife's battles with cancer: "The very word...used in the same sentence as Winnie's name struck cold terror in my heart." If A Golfing Life sometimes finds itself ankle-deep in the rough of its own sentimentality--"I'm damned proud of my efforts"--it also surprises with unflinching candor and self-awareness: "Walking down the fairway, shaken to the core," he concedes of his titanic collapse in the final round of the 1966 U.S. Open, "I doubt if I have ever felt as alone or as devastated on the golf course. I know what a train wreck the world is witnessing." In the end, the volume's real appeal isn't just the charismatic persona of Palmer himself--it's his ability to take aim at the birdies and bogeys of a full life on and off the course and assess them with clarity, charm, equanimity, and wit. --Jeff Silverman
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