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Driving Myself Crazy: Misadventures of a Novice Golfer Paperback – February 27, 2001
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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.
- Print length240 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBantam
- Publication dateFebruary 27, 2001
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.62 x 8.17 inches
- ISBN-100553379909
- ISBN-13978-0553379907
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Editorial Reviews
Review
-- Tom Robbins
"When the fly-fishing instructors' hectoring fades away and the inevitable big fish is duly subdued, and the wiggling, jiggling, and tiggling is over and done, this rookie's sweet discovery is the same as that of every fly fisher I respect: it was never about the fish; it was about the joy."
-- David James Duncan, author of River Teeth
"La Femme Jessica lurches from one improbable, hilarious, and outrageous adventure to the next in a style she herself calls 'girl gonzo stuff.' No one does it better."
-- Tim Cahill
An Alternate Selection of The Literary Guild and Book-of-the-Month Club
From the Inside Flap
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," D
From the Back Cover
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.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"What on earth are you thinking about?"
The sexy southern underbuzz of David Taylor's voice cut slowly through Alabama's insect opera.
I was afraid to tell him.
What I was thinking about had nothing to do with the golf drill he had just set up for me. But it was related to the neat line of golf balls waiting patiently in the grass just north of my right foot. In a connect-the-dots sort of way, they had led my mind to a stunning discovery: The theme song of Lawrence of Arabia when hummed double time becomes the theme song of Ozzie and Harriet. In that irrefutable truth, I was now sure, lay the key to understanding Western Civilization, and the shock of this discovery had kept me hovering over golf ball number one for several minutes.
"The point is not to think," Taylor coached. "Just hit the ball."
I had never hit a real golf ball before, so it was hard not to be nervous. And when I'm nervous I hum. The calming notes of Lawrence of Arabia surfaced first. Then the golf ball started to swell like an inflating airbag coming at'cha, and extreme nervousness pushed the foreboding notes of Lawrence of Arabia into the peppier, safer upper atmosphere of Ozzie and Harriet.
Hence my discovery.
Taylor wasn't impressed.
As director of marketing for Birmingham's SunBelt Golf Corporation, he had dealt with beginners and their excuses many times. In fact, his company actually built the rookie-friendly Robert Trent Jones Trail upon which we were standing. The Trail, as it's called, is an 18-course, 324-hole, 100-mile Alabama golf mecca considered by many to be the world's finest public golf offering. A 1990 survey showed that it had become the number one tourist draw in the state. Quite an accomplishment, since a 1980s survey had revealed that the only time people used to visit Alabama was when they had to drive through it to get somewhere else.
The Trail is why we were there. Or, why Taylor was there. I was there to go bass fishing. A certain golf magazine editor had dangled it in front of me as bait to get me to cave in on the golf part of an Alabama golf-and-bass-fishing story she wanted. I knew I could do the fishing part; the editor said I could just "walk the courses with the pros" for the golf part.
So there I was, a mere twenty minutes from downtown Birmingham, standing on the driving range of the Robert Trent Jones Trail's first course, Oxmoor Valley, where SunBelt Golf—and David Taylor—are headquartered.
By rights, I had no right to be there at all. The only eighteen-hole golf I'd ever played was miniature golf at Camp Putt with my ten-year-old nephew, who had made s'mores out of my score despite my hole-in-one on "Beaver Dam" (the secret is to putt between the two chewed-up "trees").
What Taylor had in mind was real grown-up golf with full-sized golf clubs and serious distances. Surely he knew the harrowing intimidation a tiny, waiting white ball inspires in all rank beginners. It seems so small, so far away. This inaccessibility tends to hyperfocus our attention on it, and soon the Airbag Phenomenon occurs: The golf ball grows to unmanageable proportions. As we watch in terror, our gaze takes on a laserlike intensity under which the ball's pale skin begins to crumple and smoke. Eventually its molecules compact until its mass finally collapses upon itself like a miniature black hole. So, by the time a beginner actually swings, the ball has pretty much become the hole, which explains why rookie golfers invariably miss the ball on their first swing.
Would that my problem were so simple.
Taylor was right about the thinking-too-much part. I was stuck in intellectual overdrive. It was clear that I wouldn't get over the shock of the Lawrence of ArabiaOzzie and Harriet revelation anytime soon. But maybe I could do some sort of mental transference that at least would make my hands actually do something.
"Okay," I thought. "Just pretend you're Peter O'Toole galloping by and . . . um . . . playing polo."
Britain. British actors. Polo. Polo ponies. Hitting balls with sticks. It could work.
It didn't.
I continued to stare dumbly at my equally dumb—or at least mute—golf ball. "Okay," Taylor said finally, his southern hospitality careening dangerously near the Bronx zone. "Just read the ball."
Read the ball?
I brightened. If reading the ball was anything like reading the water while fly fishing, then Taylor was on to something. Maybe he wanted me to fully consider its position, the particular way it was perched upon a certain tuft of grass, lending it that extra bit of elevation. Or perhaps he was referring to its symbiotic geometry, its mathematical relationship to, say, that tree, this bush, my shoe. A golf-ball-as-center-of-the-universe sort of thing, which would, somehow, manifest in certain logarithmic assumptions and implied swing corrections.
"No," Taylor corrected. "I mean read the ball. Read the writing on the ball. The brand name. That name right there," he said, pointing to tiny black script scrawled across the ball's stippled surface.
"Okay, I can do that," I proclaimed with new confidence. "I like to read."
"Well, keep reading until you make contact with it."
"With the brand name?"
"With the ball."
My mind could almost hear his mind add: "you moron."
"Okay," I replied. "Read the ball."
To be honest, there wasn't all that much to read. Just the strange word
"Titleist." It looked like a secret golf code, but I figured this was not the moment to ask David what it meant.
"Read the ball," I told myself. "Just read the ball."
Then I started doing it. Actually reading the odd little word on the ball over and over. Titleist. Titleist. Titleist. Suddenly the word took on a tempo of its own, a one-two-three waltzing gait that began dancing slowly around my mind. TIGHT-elle-list. TIGHT-elle-list. TIGHT-elle-list!
Just as suddenly, but without my instruction or permission, my hands moved! Pulling the club—a seven-iron—up behind my right shoulder, then, just as automatically, pushing it down hard, the club head aimed directly at my unsuspecting golf ball.
Then I hit it.
To my complete amazement, the ball went helicoptering into that moody springtime air with serious Michael Jordan hang time. Real time didn't slow down; it accelerated. My life didn't pass before my eyes; my future did. And David Taylor, I noted, wore a gentleman's grin that split his handsome face like an Alabama watermelon, intent on this moment of ripe perfection.
"That's golf," he declared. "Now, hit the other ones."
Product details
- Publisher : Bantam; First Edition (February 27, 2001)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0553379909
- ISBN-13 : 978-0553379907
- Item Weight : 7.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.62 x 8.17 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,290,571 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #588 in Golf Biographies (Books)
- #727 in Sports Humor
- #2,812 in Golf (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Jessica Maxwell is a nationally acclaimed adventure-travel writer and the author of books on flyfishing, golf, travel and natural medicine. In October 2009, Simon and Schuster/Atria/Beyond Words published her first spiritual adventure book, Roll Around Heaven, which went on to win two national gold book awards. Jessica's work has been included in more than two dozen travel anthologies, including Bill Bryson's Best American Travel Writing 2000. She was the youngest regular contributor to Esquire's Travel column (1985 to 1997), and created Audubon's in-the-field conservation column, True Nature. On Forbes.com you can flyfish for piranha in the Amazon with her, join her on a Norwegian moose hunt, cruise Bangkok's River of Kings in a converted rice boat or go fishing with her -- and wild tigers! -- in the Himalayas. But, she says, the mystical experiences in Roll Around Heaven make her earthbound adventures look like "chopped piranha liver." "And if a complete spiritual klutz can end up rolling around heaven right here on earth, anybody can!" In Roll Around Heaven she shows you how.
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Save your time and money and go find something else.
Whether you're an old duffer, a first-time golfer or a couch potato, you will enjoy Maxwell's misadventures as she strives to know what to do, what to call things, before anybody realizes she doesn't know what's she doing. Carefully plotted chapters recount her lighthearted story of figuring it all out. Along the way, many a chapter doubles as an exploration of some aspect of the game -- its history, protocol, clothing, environmentalism (yes!) and so on -- all adding up to golf's romantic allure. Not to mention the romantic allure of Graham -- is he boyfriend material? or is he a 'golf stalker'? -- who pops up from chapter to chapter to share his insights on golf, life, and fly-fishing, which is the other sport he shares with Maxwell (see her previous book, "I Don't Know Why I Swallowed the Fly").
Fortunate are we when Maxwell lets us carry her clubs as she seeks the tutelage of the world's greatest golf pros, like Australian pro-cum-philosopher Peter Croker and Croker's American partner, Cindy Swift Jones, an authority on the short game of putting; and as she plays the world's greatest golf courses, like Alabama's Robert Trent Jones Trail and Scotland's ladies' country clubs, founded in Victorian times, when G.O.L.F. really did mean "Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden." And Maxwell hits a hole-in-one when she joins Nancy Lopez in a hotel kitchenette, cooking potluck casseroles while discussing America's sports culture with insights learned on the LPGA tour as well as from Lopez's husband, baseball star-turned-ESPN analyst Ray Knight.
First page to last, Maxwell's droll style is matched to her theme, now poetic, then cheeky, always as captivating as the royal and ancient game she so capably describes.
Along the way we are treated to some genuine golfing tips from some of the top coaches in the land. The advice runs from the "old school" to the sublime (maybe Zen-like is a better description). I haven't played golf in ten years, but after finishing the book I found myself on the front yard stiffly swinging a seven iron.
The author also has a talent to communicate in the vernacular of the various folks she encounters. The hilarious exchanges with a French chef, a Scottish lady pro (at St. Andrews no less) a bass champ from the south and a gallery of other personalities she meets along the way had me laughing out loud.
Coursing through this lively read is the drama of the "boyfriend"- or is he a stalker as suggested by a friend? Is Jessica finally in love? Will Valerie approve? Do we care? (Yes! )
The pure enjoyment, exhilaration and frustration of the author is contagious. If you're feeling gloomy, open this book randomly and read one page. You'll be laughing in spite of yourself.
Obviously, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Here's an easy test to determine if you should spend your own bucks on this book. If you don't find the following excerpt (taken without permission) worth a snicker, save your money. The excerpt--"Fish World is a self styled collection of rooms dedicated to the art of catching bass. I confess that,......"
So what's a fish story doing in a golf book? It makes sense. Read it and see.