Nearly 50 years after taking up the game, Michael Bamberger made a pair of startling discoveries: golf had never meant more to him, and he knew almost nothing about it. He decided to cover himself in green in a whole new way. He spent a year inside the ropes of professional golf --- playing, caddying, competing, volunteering and interviewing --- looking for a door into the sport’s sanctum sanctorum. In THE PLAYING LESSON, Bamberger goes on the ultimate golfing bender. You’ve read about St. Andrews before, but here you will experience the home of golf in a whole new way. You’ll join the author as he volunteers in one tournament, caddies in others, plays in men’s and women’s pro-ams, and conducts intimate interviews with elite figures in the game.

Over Michael Bamberger’s celebrated writing career, he has written a handful of books and hundreds of Sports Illustrated stories about professional golf and those who play it --- that is, the .001 percent. Now, in a delightful turn of events, Bamberger has decided to train his eye on the rest of us. In his most personal book yet, Bamberger takes the lid off a game that is both quasi-religious and a nonstop party, posing an age-old question early that is answered over its pages: Why does the game cast such a spell on us? Here is the story of modern golf that is not on TV. This is our story, we who pay to play, who can’t wait to get another crack at the game, even when golf doesn’t love us back.

Tiger Woods’ long descent into a personal and professional hell reached bottom in the early hours of Memorial Day in 2017. Woods’ DUI arrest that night came on the heels of a desperate spinal surgery, just weeks after he told close friends he might never play tournament golf again. Instead of sinking beneath the public disgrace of drug abuse and the private despair of a battered and ailing body, Woods embarked on the long road to redeeming himself. In THE SECOND LIFE OF TIGER WOODS, Michael Bamberger draws upon his deep network of sources to tell the true and inspiring story of the legend’s return. Packed with new information and graced by insight, Bamberger’s story reveals how this iconic athlete clawed his way back to the top.

Michael Bamberger, who has covered golf for 20 years at Sports Illustrated, shows us the big names as we’ve never seen them before: Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Curtis Strange, Fred Couples --- and the late Ken Venturi. But he also chronicles the legendary figures known only to insiders, who nevertheless have left an indelible mark on the sport. All these figures, from the marquee names to the unknowns, have changed the game. What they all share is a game that courses through their collective veins like a drug.