Driving Myself Crazy: Misadventures of a Novice Golfer »

Jessica Maxwell, formerly a columnist for Audubon magazine, writes the "Great Outdoors" column for Millionaire magazine and publishes regularly for Esquire, Forbes, and Travel and Leisure. She is the author of I Don't Know Why I Swallowed the Fly and Femme d'Adventure: Travel Tales from Inner Montana to Outer Mongolia. She lives on Oregon's McKenzie River.

Adventure writer Jessica Maxwell loves a challenge and decided to tackle golf the way she had tackled skiing and fly-fishing, two demanding sports she took up in her early thirties after a life as a confirmed "non-jockette." Surely golf couldn't be that much more difficult-could it?

In this irreverent memoir we have a front-row seat as Jessica struggles to learn golf's etiquette, traditions, and complex rules — from her first comical attempts to coax practice balls out of a golf ball machine, to just hitting the damn ball, to acquiring her own set of Nancy Lopez clubs!

Among her coaches are Peter Croker, a revolutionary Australian teaching pro, Cindy Swift Jones, his partner and putting guru, and Al Mundle, the Harvey Penick of the Northwest, as well as seventy-eight-year-old American women's golf legend Peggy Kirk Bell and the queen of golf herself, Nancy Lopez.

A willful celebration of what one golf coach called "the atrocious first year," Driving Myself Crazy is an often hilarious, always inspiring tale of one woman's obsession with proving to herself that golf — played right — is a beautiful game ... at least for that moment.

Publishers Weekly

Until her mid-30s, Maxwell considered herself a nonathlete. Then she mastered fly-fishing and skiing, gaining enough proficiency to write about these sports. So how difficult could golf be? wonders Maxwell in this chronicle of her first year playing. Initially, she can barely hit the ball and doesn't understand when her coach tells her to "read the ball." (While Maxwell was looking for some philosophical message, the coach simply wanted her to stare at the name on the ball until she made contact with it.) Fortunately, Maxwell has help from some of the most accomplished golfers as she learns the game. She spends time in Hilton Head with one of the first great women golfers, Peggy Kirk Bell, as well as with champion Nancy Lopez. Her coaches include the Australian Peter Croker and Al Mundle, one of the best American golf coaches. Maxwell finds humor and frustration in the game; she admires the beauty of the spectacular championship courses, but she's baffled at the phrase "carry water," which she mistakenly imagines means that she'll have to cart bottles of water along with her clubs. And it takes a while before Maxwell is able to recognize and ask for the appropriate clubs. Fledgling golfers and even some more advanced players will identify with Maxwell's experiences and laugh along with her. For those enamored of the sport, this lighthearted read makes a nice addition to the coming golf season. (June) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|