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Darren Clarke - An Open Book - My Story to Three Golf Victories
A golfer loved for his courage and charisma, Darren Clarke has the crowds behind him. They know he is a warm, funny raconteur who likes a Guinness, who both works hard and plays hard. More important, they know that this man pulled himself up by his bootstraps, having lost his wife Heather to cancer, to triumph at the 2006 Ryder Cup. Just days before the start of the 2011 Open at Royal St George's, Darren's game had once again deserted him, leaving him 'putting like a man with blurred vision'. A month before his 43rd birthday he was not in a good place. But Heather was 'watching from above', the crowd were roaring him on, golf guru Dr Bob Rotella was telling him to 'go unconscious' - and something sparked inside him. The rest is golfing history. Born in Dungannon, Northern Ireland, Darren caddied for his golf course greenkeeper father, turning pro in 1990. He has played in four victorious Ryder Cup sides and beat his close friend Tiger Woods in the 36-hole final of the 2000 WGC-Andersen Consulting Match Play. In 2002 he became the only player to win the English Open three times. In An Open Book he speaks candidly about fellow-players, coaches and golfing psychologists; about how he was bullied at school, narrowly missed and IRA bomb and eventually set up a foundation to develop junior golf in Ireland; and about how he found personal happiness again, marrying Alison Campbell in April 2012. Most vividly of all, he takes the reader down those rainswept fairways to the ecstasy of that final putt when, at his 20th attempt, he lifted the silver claret jug.
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Tiger Woods Autobiography
Based on three years of extensive research and reporting, two of today’s most acclaimed investigative journalists, Jeff Benedict of Sports Illustrated and eleven-time Emmy Award winner Armen Keteyian, deliver the first major biography of Tiger Woods - sweeping in scope and packed with groundbreaking, behind-the-scenes details of the Shakespearean rise and epic fall of a global icon. In 2009, Tiger Woods was the most famous athlete on the planet, a transcendent star of almost unfathomable fame and fortune living what appeared to be the perfect life - married to a Swedish beauty and the father of two young children. Winner of fourteen major golf championships and seventy-nine PGA Tour events, Woods was the first billion-dollar athlete, earning more than $100 million a year in endorsements from the likes of Nike, Gillette, AT&T and Gatorade. But it was all a carefully crafted illusion. As it turned out, Woods had been living a double life for years - one that exploded in the aftermath of a late-night crash that exposed his serial infidelity and sent his personal and professional life off a cliff. In Tiger Woods, Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian dig deep behind the headlines to produce a richly reported answer to the question that has mystified millions of sports fans for nearly a decade: who is Tiger Woods? Drawing on more than four hundred interviews with people from every corner of Woods’s life - friends, family members, teachers, romantic partners, swing coaches, business associates, Tour pros and members of Woods’s inner circle - Benedict and Keteyian construct a captivating psychological profile of an African-American child programmed by an attention-grabbing father and the original Tiger Mom to be the 'chosen one', to change not just the game of golf, but the world as well. But at what cost? Benedict and Keteyian provide the startling answers in a biography, updated for this edition, destined to make headlines and linger in the minds of readers for years to come.
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Seve: The Autobiography
Seve is the most extrovert player Europe has ever produced. Playboy good looks along with a magnetism that attracted non-golfers to the game made him the biggest drawing card Europe has ever had. He emerged on the world scene with typical élan, hitting one of the most outrageous shots ever seen at the 1976 Open Championship. Three years later he became the youngest Open Champion of the modern era when he won the first of his five major championships. Ballesteros started Europe's domination of the Majors throughout the 80s and 90s, paving the way for Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer, Ian Woosnam, Sandy Lyle and Jose Maria Olazabal. His play in the Ryder Cup, fuelled by an intense dislike for Americans, helped restore Europe's pride in the event. Driven by basque pride and with a fiery Latin temperament, Seve has often let his heart rule his head. Seve is the remarkable story of one of the game's most fascinating characters.
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Peter Alliss: Reflections on a Life Well Lived
Peter Alliss was a truly monumental figure in the world of golf. His voice was the soundtrack to many who have paid even the scantest attention to the old game. This book records Peter's vivid recollections of a life well lived, looking back on his double-edged career in sport and media, one that is unlike any other and is surely never to be repeated. Sit back and listen to Peter Alliss do what he did best: ramble on about this and that in that famous voice of his, drawing sharp and funny observations from disparate quarters of life before inevitably tying everything neatly together and returning to the subject of golf. His memory for long-passed names and distant places remained extraordinarily sharp. He was also a man of his age which, naturally, meant there were more than a few facets of modern life he found confusing and exasperating. This, however, is surely true for any of us who have lived beyond the point where we wake up each day wondering what we ought to do with our lives. He appreciated his good fortune at being able to make a living from his ‘ramblings’ while, at the same time, possessing an acute awareness of his rare talent for finding the appropriate word or phrase while winging it over a television picture. His belief that, sometimes, silence is more eloquent than words flies in the noisy face of much modern broadcasting. He was all the more appreciated by many of us for sticking to this conviction and for daring to hold firm in the face of changing convention. Peter is gone now, but the spirit of kindness in which he lived his life reverberates still.
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The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods
In March 2004, Hank Haney received a call from Tiger Woods in which the golf champion asked Haney to be his coach. It was a call that would change both men’s lives. Tiger – only 28 at the time – was by then already an icon, judged by the sporting press as not only one of the best golfers ever, but possibly the best athlete ever. But Tiger was always looking to improve, and he wanted Hank’s help. Over the next six years of working together, the supremely gifted Woods collected six major championships and rewrote golf history. Hank was one of the very few people allowed behind the curtain. Always haunting Tiger was his fear of ‘the big miss’ – the wildly inaccurate golf shot that can ruin an otherwise solid round – and it was because that type of blunder was sometimes part of Tiger’s game that Hank carefully redesigned his swing mechanics. Towards the end of their time together, the champion’s laser-like focus began to blur and he became less willing to put in punishing hours practicing. Hints that Tiger hungered to reinvent himself were present in his bizarre infatuation with elite military training, and – in a development Hank didn’t see coming – in the scandal that would make headlines in late 2009. It all added up to a big miss that Hank, try as he might, couldn’t save Tiger from. There’s never been a book about Tiger Woods that is as intimate and revealing – or one so wise about what it takes to coach a superstar athlete.
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Golf My Way: Jack Nicklaus
Golf My Way is the one book that presents a complete, in-depth, A-to-Z explanation of how this greatest of champions thinks about and plays the game. Unlike his other books, which present tips and tweaks, GOLF MY WAY gives the reader Nicklaus's entire approach, allowing the avid student to pick and choose among Jack's principles and techniques. In the thirty years since it first came out, Nicklaus has gone on to compile the greatest championship record in golf history. As is inevitable over any thirty-year span, there have been considerable changes in his body, his equipment, and the golfing scene around him. With his tournament career winding down, Jack felt it was time to put the finishing touches on this instructional classic, adding significant new material that shares what he has learned through the years and how he has coped with the changes in and around him. A whole new section, 'Reflections and Recommendations', discusses what, why, and how the changes in his outlook and techniques came about; it gives advice on the oft-neglected mental elements of playing better that are not directly related to ball-striking or shotmaking (factors that may have been his greatest strengths as a player); and reflects upon the differences in tournament golf now compared to when he joined the PGA Tour. GOLF MY WAY was hailed as a classic as soon as it arrived on the scene. Now Nicklaus closes the books, with the definitive final edition that covers the whole of his game through a lifetime of greatness.
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