Description:
Some stories regularly refresh themselves. The Walter Mittyesque tale of the dreamer chasing the dream is one of them. In The Fine Green Line, John Paul Newport's dream is a golf dream, and he relates it with good grace and humor, quite willing to analyze its inherent improbability and interpret the mysteries at its core. In his mid-30s, recently remarried, a new father, and playing to a handicap of less than 3, he sets out to focus on his game for a year, take his lumps on the minor-league tours, see how much he can improve, and finally test how he and his game stand up by trying to qualify for the PGA Tour via the murderous Q School tournament in the fall. Like all worthwhile journeys, the destination is of less consequence than the trip itself. Newport's is a long and strange one, filled with small successes, big humiliations, reality checks, the kindness of strangers, and a colorful cast of wannabes on the golfing fringe, guys who live from week to week out of the back of their cars. Ultimately, Newport must come to terms with his own obsession with the game as he tries to figure out exactly where the fine green line of his title falls. He searches on and off the course for this abstract and invisible--and, he finally accepts, insurmountable--barrier that keeps the game's aristocracy on one side and those who can post the occasional 69 on the other. It's a search that takes him within himself and to anyone--such as Golf in the Kingdom's Michael Murphy, respected teaching pro Michael Hebron, swing doctors, and psychologists--who might be able to shed enlightenment, improve his swing, or focus his mind with laserlike intensity. It also sets off on some pretty memorable rounds of golf and the kind of grip-it-and-rip-it soul-searching that every hacker who's ever hit a ball with purpose--and shanked it anyway--is bound to understand. --Jeff Silverman
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