December 19, 2016
In a book designed for the loyal golf fan, Sabino, a devoted golfer and author (How to Play the World’s Most Exclusive Golf Clubs), compares the tireless Ralph Kennedy to baseball’s “Iron Man,” Lou Gehrig, observing that Kennedy’s competitive zeal led him to shatter records on many of the world’s courses. Kennedy, a member of the New York Athletic Club and full-time pencil salesman, first teed off on a local golf course in 1910, and quickly racked up a total of 100 different courses before the decade’s end. The author credits British golfer Charles Leonard Fletcher’s boast of playing over 240 courses in his career to motivating Kennedy’s 43-year amateur run; by the end he’d played on more than 3,165 courses in 48 U.S. states and 15 other countries. Sabino scores in his faithful account of the “everyman golfer,” but he fails to connect the personality of the high achiever with his fevered obsession. Still, this is a profound, compelling tribute to one driven man with an undying love of a sport; it feels real and satisfies the golf devotee’s hunger for statistics.