Editorial Content for The Ball in the Air: A Golfing Adventure
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
THE BALL IN THE AIR is not your typical golf book. It doesn’t revolve around tour players, exotic trips to majestic courses, or the majors. Instead, Michael Bamberger introduces us to three individuals who love playing golf for the joy it brings them.
Hall of Famers Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Paul Runyan and others began their iconic careers working as caddies or in other endeavors associated with golf courses. Bamberger chronicles a female version of that early connection to the game. Pratima Sherpa grew up in a maintenance shed at the Royal Nepal Golf Club in Kathmandu, and her story was featured in Golf Digest. She eventually would earn a scholarship from a California college and become the first amateur golfer from her native Nepal to achieve world recognition.
"You don’t need to love the sport to be drawn to the characters who come to life on the pages of this enthralling book."
Ryan French came from a family of golfers and played on a collegiate team. He focused on the nuts and bolts of the game and recognized that there was a story behind every score. A coach of his once said, “Too bad you can’t make a living from all this random stuff you know.” It was a prescient observation considering where Ryan ended up following a major detour.
Finally, we meet Sam Reeves, a self-made millionaire in the cotton industry. Sammy, as he was known, was the son of a cotton mill owner. In 1943, at the age of eight, he began working in his father’s mill earning 10 cents for each piece of cotton remnant he stitched together. At the end of the summer he made $124, the proceeds of which went to purchasing stock in AT&T and Chrysler. Sammy also caddied at the local golf course. All the caddies there were African American, except for him. He learned how to properly grip a golf club. As Bamberger notes, “A good grip was a mark of class, like a pressed suit on Sundays.”
There is a fourth subject here: Michael Bamberger himself. Being a writer and a caddy has deeply affected his view of the game and the relationships developed through it. As he can attest, sharing a round of golf with a stranger can be a rewarding and enriching experience. An impressive supporting cast includes such greats as Tiger Woods, Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus.
You don’t need to love the sport to be drawn to the characters who come to life on the pages of this enthralling book.
Teaser
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.
Promo
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.
About the Book
After a lifetime of writing about the professional sport, Michael Bamberger, “the poet laureate of golf” (GOLF magazine), delivers an exhilarating love letter to the amateur game as it’s played --- and lived --- by the rest of us.
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. And just as every round is an adventure, every life in golf is, too. The golfers Michael Bamberger introduces in THE BALL IN THE AIR will leave you inspired and moved. You’ll meet Sam Reeves, a golf-loving US Army soldier who becomes captivated by a fellow soldier, Cliff Harrington, a gifted Black golfer who’s cruelly robbed of the chance to show the world all he can do. You’ll meet Ryan French, who plays on a college golf team out of Animal House. You’ll get to know Pratima Sherpa, who grew up in a maintenance shed at the Royal Nepal Golf Club in Kathmandu and took up the game with a stick whittled by her father.
THE BALL IN THE AIR is reported with Bamberger’s customary you-are-there intimacy and captures the sweep of time. Pratima finds her way from Nepal to a university golf team in Southern California. Ryan and his father caddie in minor-league events while sleeping in tents, a preamble to Ryan’s becoming the godfather of the popular Monday Qualifier Twitter feed. Sam Reeves, born in rural Georgia during the Depression, becomes a cotton king, the oldest amateur to make the cut at the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, and the ultimate man for all seasons.
And there are Bamberger sightings, too, as he finds his own path in the game. You’ll make joyful side trips with the author, who’s spent more than 40 years exploring golfers and golf, a way of life that captivates him down to his bones. You’ll visit the golf course at Balmoral Castle in Scotland and compete with Bamberger and other purists at the National Hickory Championship in rural Pennsylvania. At St. Andrews, you’ll get up close and personal with Lee Trevino, one of the few professionals in these pages, because Trevino, when you really get to the core of the man, is one of us. He can’t get enough of it.
THE BALL IN THE AIR is Bamberger’s valentine to golf. The modern world, obsessed with fame and fortune, has infiltrated professional golf --- but it hasn’t infiltrated golf. Bamberger is here to highlight the distinction and to celebrate the game and all who play it.
Audiobook available, read by David Morse
