To The Linksland 30th Anniversary Edition

A 30th anniversary edition of Michael Bamberger’s widely beloved golf classic recounting his honeymoon adventures as a caddie in Europe—including a new introduction by Golf in the Kingdom author Michael Murphy, a new afterword, and never-before-seen photographs. Thirty years (and counting!) after publication, To the Linksland still enthralls readers who pick it up for the first time or who return to this timeless book for the sheer pleasure of it. In 1991, Michael Bamberger, a newspaper sportswriter, gave up his apartment, took a leave-of-absence from his job and his life, and, joined by his newlywed wife, set off to explore the wide world of golf. Bamberger’s first step in this madcap golfing adventure was to become a caddie on the European golf tour. On it, and up close and personal, the author encountered the game’s most dynamic players, including golf’s greatest artist, Seve Ballesteros. Crisscrossing the Continent with his bride, Bamberger caddied for a true original, Peter Teravainen, a Yale-educated golfer with a workingman’s spirit, capable of making brilliant, on-the-spot observations about the game. (“Good shots must come in groups of two.”) Over the course of one unforgettable year, Bamberger caddied in the national championships of Portugal, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, and, finally, Scotland, golf’s ancestral home. Once there, Bamberger fell under the spell of one of golf’s great teachers and thinkers, Mr. John Stark. To the Linksland is the captivating memoir of Bamberger’s golfing pilgrimage. From an all-night caddie bus on the back roads of southern Europe to Stark’s secret six-hole course in the Scottish Highlands, Bamberger takes you on a journey into the heart of golf. To the Linksland is a lyrical tale of discovery. It is a classic. This thirtieth-anniversary edition is bookended with a new introduction by Michael Murphy and a new afterword by Bamberger. In between them are a trove of new photographs. Triumphantly back in print, To the Linksland is a “great book for your golfing soul” (Golf Monthly).

A 30th anniversary edition of Michael Bamberger’s widely beloved golf classic recounting his honeymoon adventures as a caddie in Europe—including a new introduction by Golf in the Kingdom author Michael Murphy, a new afterword, and never-before-seen photographs. Thirty years (and counting!) after publication, To the Linksland still enthralls readers who pick it up for the first time or who return to this timeless book for the sheer pleasure of it. In 1991, Michael Bamberger, a newspaper sportswriter, gave up his apartment, took a leave-of-absence from his job and his life, and, joined by his newlywed wife, set off to explore the wide world of golf. Bamberger’s first step in this madcap golfing adventure was to become a caddie on the European golf tour. On it, and up close and personal, the author encountered the game’s most dynamic players, including golf’s greatest artist, Seve Ballesteros. Crisscrossing the Continent with his bride, Bamberger caddied for a true original, Peter Teravainen, a Yale-educated golfer with a workingman’s spirit, capable of making brilliant, on-the-spot observations about the game. (“Good shots must come in groups of two.”) Over the course of one unforgettable year, Bamberger caddied in the national championships of Portugal, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, and, finally, Scotland, golf’s ancestral home. Once there, Bamberger fell under the spell of one of golf’s great teachers and thinkers, Mr. John Stark. To the Linksland is the captivating memoir of Bamberger’s golfing pilgrimage. From an all-night caddie bus on the back roads of southern Europe to Stark’s secret six-hole course in the Scottish Highlands, Bamberger takes you on a journey into the heart of golf. To the Linksland is a lyrical tale of discovery. It is a classic. This thirtieth-anniversary edition is bookended with a new introduction by Michael Murphy and a new afterword by Bamberger. In between them are a trove of new photographs. Triumphantly back in print, To the Linksland is a “great book for your golfing soul” (Golf Monthly).

"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: we start at home, head on out, endure a series of events--fortunate and otherwise--and hang on for dear life as we play our way back to the house. In these pages, we celebrate the thrill of it all, as we start, turn, and finish this game of a lifetime"--Amazon.com.

A spiritual journey, a lush travelogue, a parable of sports and philosophy—John Updike called this unique novel “a golf classic if any exists in our day.” When an American traveler on his way to India stops to play a round on one of the most beautiful and legendary golf courses in Scotland, he doesn’t know that his game—and his life—are about to change forever. He is introduced to Shivas Irons, a mysterious golf pro whose sublime insights stick with him long after the eighteenth hole. From the first swing of the Scotsman’s club, he realizes he is in for a most extraordinary day. By turns comic, existential, and semiautobiographical, Michael Murphy’s tale traces the arc of twenty-four hours, from a round of golf on the Links of Burningbush to a night fueled by whiskey, wisdom, and wandering—even a sighting of Seamus MacDuff, the holy man who haunts the hole they call Lucifer’s Rug. “Murphy’s book is going to alter many visions,” The New York Times Book Review declared. More than an unforgettable approach to one of the world’s most popular sports, Golf in the Kingdom is a meditation on the power of a game to transform the self.

"Was golf better (to use one of Tiger's favorite phrases) back in the day? In [this book], Michael Bamberger, who fell for the game as a teenager in its wild Sansabelt-and-persimmon 1970s heyday, goes on a quest to try to find out. The result is a candid, nostalgic, intimate portrait of golf's greatest generation--then and now"--Dust jacket flap.

“Fascinating...[Bamberger] knows the world of professional golf, and the pressures it exacts, like few others.” —The Wall Street Journal It’s one of the greatest comebacks of all time. And for Tiger Woods—his game, his body, and his life in shambles—getting back to the winner’s circle was only half the story. Here’s the rest of it. Tiger Woods’s long descent into a personal and professional hell reached bottom in the early hours of Memorial Day in 2017. Woods’s 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. His mug shot and alarming arrest video were painful to look at and, for Woods, a deep humiliation. The former paragon of discipline now found himself hopelessly lost and out of control, exposed for all the world to see. That episode could have marked the beginning of Tiger’s end. It proved to be the opposite. 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, who has covered Woods since the golfer was an amateur, draws upon his deep network of sources inside locker rooms, caddie yards, clubhouses, fitness trailers, and back offices 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. Here you’ll meet the people who have shaped and saved Tiger’s life. It’s a disparate group: a Florida police officer, an old friend from Tiger’s boyhood, his girlfriend, his manager, his caddie. You’ll go inside the ropes and see Tiger’s interactions with fellow pros, with broadcasters and rules officials and Tour executives, with legends young (Rory McIlroy) and old (Jack Nicklaus) and in between (Fred Couples). On the Sunday before Masters Sunday, you’ll join Tiger as he takes a long, slow, contemplative walk across Augusta National, and you’ll be with him again seven days later in the splendid isolation of the tee at thirteen, in the rain, his right foot slipping while he swings his driver at 120 miles per hour. This is an intimate portrait of a man who has spent his life in front of the camera but has done his best to make sure he was never really known. Here is Tiger, barefoot, in handcuffs, showing a police officer a witty and self-deprecating side of himself that the public never sees. Here is Tiger on the verge of tears with his children at the British Open. Here is Tiger trying to express his gratitude to his mother at a ceremony at the Rose Garden. In these pages, Tiger is funny, cold, generous, self-absorbed, inspiring—and real. The Second Life of Tiger Woods is not only the saga of an exceptional man but also a celebration of second chances. Bamberger’s bracingly honest book is about what Tiger Woods did, and about what any of us can do, when we face our demons head-on.

A masterpiece of architectural literature, "The Links" is the first book that fully addresses the complexities of the golf course in terms of design, construction, and definition of the game. Written in 1926, Robert Hunter conceptualized "The Links" as a complete study, a manual for golf course architects and design enthusiasts, specifically written to advance the field of study in a way that had never been tried before. Although Hunter was not a golf course architect by trade, or even a golfing professional, his background as a dedicated socialist reformer led to his unique understanding of the relationship between golf and its greater contribution to society. The challenges posed by golf, as well as the beauty produced by the singular nature of the world’s most famous links, led Hunter to conclude that diversity is what makes golf the cherished game that it is. In "The Links," he postulates, “It is not the love of something easy which has drawn men like a magnet for hundreds of years to this royal and ancient pastime; on the contrary, it is the maddening difficulty of it.” Supported by over fifty photographs and original drawings, "The Links" details the essential features of an ideal golf course and provides insight into the strategies and methods used to design the world’s most renowned courses. As acclaimed architect Dr. Alister MacKenzie wrote, “I have read "The Links" with the greatest interest. Mr. Hunter is familiar with all the great courses in the world and he has written a most entertaining book, which I am sure every golfer will read with profit. I do not hesitate to say that it is the classic of the subject.”