Rating: 
Summary: Funny Funny Funny!!![.]
Review: If I could give this book 20stars I would. I enjoy reading the Reilly column in SI, this was a thousand times better!For anyone interested in golf this is a must read. I found myself laughing out loud over and over again. The only problem is that it was too darn short!Bravo Mr.Reilly!!![.]
Rating:
Summary: A must-read
Review: It's not often I get jealous of other writers, but it's not often that Rick Reillys come along. The umpteen-time Sportswriter of the Year winner graces the back page of Sports Illustrated with slice-of-life gems all the more admirable for the impact he is able to generate within the stifling confines of a severely word-limited format. Although he doubtless tires of hearing it, he is indeed the stylistic heir of the late, wondrously talented and insightful Pulitzer-prize winning sports columnist Jim Murray. Like that legend, Reilly concerns himself with the human side of sports and is endlessly curious about what goes on in the minds and hearts of athletes who are more typically presented to us by the mainstream media as cardboard-cutouts fashioned by front-office flaks.If you read the "Life of Reilly" column in SI as if it were dessert and you wish it were the main course instead, Who's Your Caddy? is your answer. To delve deeper into the psyches of golfers, Reilly cajoled a handful of them into letting him caddy for them, which is roughly akin to Yogi Berra helping you with your PhD thesis in linguistics. Yet, in the same way scientists often learn more from experiments gone wrong than the ones which succeed, the reactions of these players to the self-deprecating Reilly's sincere but fumbling attempts to do what looks so simple on television are especially illuminating. (Not to mention that you'll never again look at caddies in the same way.) Each of the chapters deals with a single golfer and reads like an extended one of his columns: The narrative pace is blistering and the key literary devices, as they were with Murray, are the howlingly funny and apt similes and metaphors. Taking a lesson from the world of screenwriting, Reilly's preference is to show, not tell, and nowhere is this more in evidence than in the piece on Donald Trump, in which he uses lengthy, verbatim recitations from The Donald himself to prove the contention that nothing this business legend does or says is anything less than the best, the most, the highest and the greatest ever. Of all that's been written about Trump, nothing comes closer to conveying what it must be like to spend a few hours with him, and we even get a hint of an answer to the intriguing question of what Trump is like when he's alone: According to Reilly, he never is. It would seem that the man, like a quantum particle, has no objective existence of his own absent an observer. While Reilly takes definitive and consistent points of view about his subjects (one wonders if Tom Lehman is truly a candidate for beatification), he nevertheless is usually honest enough to toss a monkey wrench into the batter even though it might undercut his basic premise. His portrait of John Daly's late-developing defiance in the face of his manifold weaknesses is compelling, but, despite knowing that our sympathy would likely devolve into something less tolerant, Reilly nevertheless describes for us a grotesque scene in which "Long John" graphically justifies that ambiguous moniker in the back seat of a car. Reilly makes it sound funny, sort of, but it's undeniably depressing. Passing up this book because you have no interest in golf or golfers would be like passing up Gulliver's Travels because you have no interest in giants. It's not about golf, it's about people, and golf is simply the vehicle for discovering them. While it's true that you can learn more about someone playing a single round of golf with him than you can living next door to him for six months, imagine caddying for him, as Reilly has. It's also about writing, and this author is a national treasure that anyone interested in language, craft and endless creativity owes it to himself to read.
Rating: 
Summary: Save Your Money
Review: Juvenile. Puerile. Sophomoric. Disappointing. I'm sure there are other perfect words to describe this book, but they don't come to mind immediately. As a golf fan, I expected so much more from this book than it delivers. I expected an inside look at what makes pro golfers tick, but what I got were, in no particular order of either "Boring" or "Who cares?", the following topics: 1. How Donald Trump cheats
2. How beautiful Donald's live-in is
3. How Deepak Chopra deludes himself (read the section, then refer to any of Bill Murray's monologues in "Caddyshack")
4. How amazed Reilly was/is at the size of John Daly's penis (Seriously... it's in there)
5. Which LPGA stars are sleeping with each other
6. Which LPGA stars are sleeping with other players' caddies And on and on and on.... In a nutshell, save your money. This was the worst book I've read in a long, long time.
Rating: 
Summary: Laugh Out Loud
Review: Look - if you have ever played golf, attended a tournament and followed a weekend tournament then you will laugh at this book. Missing Links made me laugh and so does this book. Reilly's experience as a caddy is full of mishaps and missteps and because you know the people for whom he is caddying - you will laugh and chuckle. Love Golf - Read this Book!
Rating:
Summary: Out of Bounds
Review: Not exactly Herbert Warren Wind here. Rick Reilly's attempt at a humorous peek at life on the other side of the ropes falls well short of the green. Of the twelve chapters, each detailing time spent carrying the bag of a celebrity, only two or three are of any interest. The highlights of the book perhaps include the stories on blind golfer Bob Andrew, crippled Casey Martin, and David Duval - with a glimpse of the family tragedy that colors his game. And in all fairness, I learned a bit more about the LPGA. Yet the constant snickering about the idiosyncracies, different biology, and lifestyle preferences of women pros were consistent with the bulk of this book: written for an audience in a third grade bathroom. We learn for instance that the author gets a first hand glimpse of why John Daly is nicknamed "Long John", and that Brad Faxon's caddy measures yardage "You got 189 plus OJ" (meaning 2 for two murders,) or "It's 201 plus Anna (Kournikova, a perfect 10)." We're subjected to a discussion with self-help mystic Deepak Chopra that describes how to keep cool or hot on the golf course. Naturally, the answer involves a bodily aperture below the belt. Even worse, we endure Reilly's retelling of Bob Newhart's old jokes. As you might suspect, Reilly's poor delivery leaves the reader wishing he or she just found the old Newhart albums on [...].
Beyond the premise that a rookie caddy might have a truly difficult time keeping pace with professional golfers the yuks are pretty dull. Reilly's self-deprecating jokes about dropping clubs, spilling bags, and misreading yardages grows old fast. After the first few pages, we get it. The chapter on (famous?) gambler Dewey Tomko and his high-roller friends is mind-bogglingly offensive. Even if the reader is OK with cliché-filled banter out of a cheap dime-store detective novel ("Dewey, if you're bluffin', I'll kill you, etc.,") most golfers and sportsmen would find these lowlife bettors a black spot on a pretty good game. Is it a thrill to learn about Michael Jordan and others losing hundreds of thousands of dollars on golf bets? For that matter, why not throw in a chapter on steroid use for laughs? All in all, this scatology is pretty much straight out of the locker room, and not one in which you'd care to spend much time.
Rating:
Summary: Who's Your Caddy? : Looping for the Great, Near Great, and R
Review: Overall, this CD set is a great deal of fun to listen to, as Reilly knows golf and golfers well. Somehow or other, he managed to caddy for several professional and prominent golfers: John Daly, David Duval, and Donald Trump, to name a few. Reilly is more than willing to describe in detail his mistakes as an inexperienced caddy; he has the ability to make the listener visualize exactly what the embarrassment factor was for each "goof." Reader Grover Gardner is excellent at portraying the author's emotions. Working together, Reilly and Gardner make the experiences so real that listeners can almost hear the rattle of clubs before one of the professional caddies shows Reilly how to stop them from shaking in the bag and disturbing his golfer. Two of the golfers, Casey Martin and Bob Andrews, play with physical handicaps: Martin, who is the only professional golfer allowed to ride in a golf cart by a Supreme Court decision, plays with continual pain; Andrews is blind. Reilly's descriptions of their courage and competitiveness display great sensitivity and are extremely effective. The only chapter that fails is the one involving LPGA golfer Jill McGill, where Reilly's attitude abruptly changes to patronizing and supercilious as he describes the women's golf tour. Recommended for all audio collections, but primarily for men
Rating:
Summary: metaphysically hilarious...
Review: Probably the funniest sports book I've read this side of Dan Jenkins. The chapter on Deepak Chopra had me laughing so hard my chihuahua started barking (admitedly that isn't difficult). The section on Casy Martin was poignant, and may have changed my mind on his complaint against the PGA and their "no carts" policy. My only criticism is the author's statement that Tom Watson won his first tournament at the age of 34. I'm pretty sure that Tom won quite a few--including majors prior to his 30th birthday. A minor beef, but golfers would know that.
Rating: 
Summary: Majestically unfunny
Review: Reilly is like the kid in high school who tries sooo hard to be funny: some of the jokes he tells might indeed be good, but the sheer, focused effort to "be funny" conveys a sad idiocy to it. Many of his "funny" lines read like they should be accompanied by a vaudeville cymbal-crash, or at very least the canned laughs of 70s sitcoms. His relentless self-deprecating fun-poking at his own caddying inability comes across as contrived in someone who, at other junctures in the book, is revealed to be a solid low-to-no handicap player. The sections on Trump and Jill McGill were decent. The rest was a write-off, and revealed no more abut the inner workings of tour golf that you can glean attending a practice round at any tournament. The snippets of translated "caddy lingo" are pitiful, and by the end of the book I was simply skipping them outright. This book will appeal to some tastes - after all, even "Blind Date" and "Maury" find audiences... somewhere. If you love watching "Grey Goose 19th Hole" on Golf Channel, or you tape or TiVo episodes of "Peter Jacobsen Unplugged", buy the book with no second thoughts. Otherwise, redeploy your money to another piece of golf literature (Ken Venturi's "Up and Down...", for instance) and you'll be glad you did.
Rating:
Summary: Majestically unfunny
Review: Reilly is like the kid in high school who tries sooo hard to be funny: some of the jokes he tells might indeed be good, but the sheer, focused effort to "be funny" conveys a sad idiocy to it. Many of his "funny" lines read like they should be accompanied by a vaudeville cymbal-crash, or at very least the canned laughs of 70s sitcoms. His relentless self-deprecating fun-poking at his own caddying inability comes across as contrived in someone who, at other junctures in the book, is revealed to be a solid low-to-no handicap player. The sections on Trump and Jill McGill were decent. The rest was a write-off, and revealed no more abut the inner workings of tour golf that you can glean attending a practice round at any tournament. The snippets of translated "caddy lingo" are pitiful, and by the end of the book I was simply skipping them outright. This book will appeal to some tastes - after all, even "Blind Date" and "Maury" find audiences... somewhere. If you love watching "Grey Goose 19th Hole" on Golf Channel, or you tape or TiVo episodes of "Peter Jacobsen Unplugged", buy the book with no second thoughts. Otherwise, redeploy your money to another piece of golf literature (Ken Venturi's "Up and Down...", for instance) and you'll be glad you did.
Rating:
Summary: Can I give no stars?
Review: Reilly is the master of the one-liner -- the hacked-out, ridiculously over-the-top one-liner. Want to know what John Daly is packing behind his zipper? Reilly is your man. Want to know what Nicklaus thinks of Reilly's "looping" ability? Get this book. Want to hear Donald Trump go on and on and on about the waterfall he built on his new golf course? Reilly has the goods. Poor Reilly. He thinks he's funny. No, he is convinced that he's HILARIOUS. He's not. He's a hack who, every blue moon, writes a decent column for Sports Illustrated. This book is to be avoided at all costs. Wamt to know what an unhappy, seething reader who wants his money back looks like, Rick? Come find me.
|
