The Bogey Man, Rick Reilly
The Bogey Man, Rick Reilly
List: $27.99 | Sale: $19.59
Club: $13.99

The Bogey Man
A Month on the PGA Tour

Author: Rick Reilly, George Plimpton

Narrator: Jeff Bottoms

Unabridged: 9 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/26/2016

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

George Plimpton chronicles his month spent on the PGA tour in The Bogey Man, repackaged and including a foreword by Rick Reilly and never-before-seen content from the Plimpton Archives.

What happens when a weekend athlete -- of average skill at best -- joins the professional golf circuit? George Plimpton, one of the finest participatory sports journalists, spent a month of self-imposed torture on the tour to find out. Along the way, he meets amateurs, pros, caddies, officials, fans, and hangers-on. In The Bogey Man, we find golf legends, adventurers, stroke-saving theories, superstitions, and other golfing lore, and best of all, Plimpton's thoughts and experiences -- frustrating, humbling and, sometimes, thrilling -- from the first tee to the last green.

This intriguing classic, which remains one of the wittiest books ever written on golf, features Arnold Palmer, Dow Finsterwald, Walter Hagan, and many other golf greats and eccentrics, all doing what they do best.

About Rick Reilly

Currently a screenwriter and author, Rick Reilly for years wrote for Sports Illustrated and appeared on and wrote for ESPN. In addition to being voted the NSMA National Sportswriter of the Year eleven times, he has been recognized with the Damon Runyon Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism. USA Today called him, "the closest thing sportswriting ever had to a rock star."


Reviews

Goodreads review by Xavier on June 03, 2024

After finishing the book, I thought it was a pretty solid read when it comes to factual information about playing as an amateur on the PGA tour. It alleviated to the lifestyles of the professional caddies, which I never thought about but was cool to have some insight into their lives. From my unders......more

Goodreads review by Brad on March 01, 2012

This is, at least, the fifth best golf book I've ever read! Fantastic writing.......more

Goodreads review by David on May 28, 2018

This book deals with the psychology of golf, especially the ways a struggling player thinks about the challenges of the game. I am a new, struggling player, and so Plimpton's description of the golfer's body as "a monstrous, manned colossus poised high over the golf ball" and his mind filled with "a......more

Goodreads review by Pecker on February 25, 2015

50 years later after the events, this was an interesting read. Plimpton's confessions of his bookish approach to the history of golf added some fun comments. However, It felt a little behind the leading edge in his treatment of the caddy pros, mostly black men. He wanted to portray them colorfully,......more

Goodreads review by Tolkien on November 07, 2019

Charming enough collection of golfing anecdotes and bonhomie, but lacks a cohesive narrative to make it more readable......more


Quotes

"Humorous but also agonizing and also unfailingly fascinating regardless of one's interest in golf. For the psychology of the sport-- and this is what Mr. Plimpton is probing-- there is nothing more revealing around."—The New York Times

"Plimpton will interest even the man who can't tell a pitching wedge from a putter.... This is really a book about a kind of madness with rules, and anyone can appreciate the appeal of that."—Newsweek

"Golf is a lonely and private game, lacking the natural drama of football, but Plimpton, by substituting improvisation for plot, has caught its mad comedy and bizarre effects on people in a book just as charming, in its own way, as Paper Lion."—Life

"A delight--more entertaining, if possible, than I remembered... the reader leaves George Plimpton's wide world of sports with deep reluctance.... His prose is as elegant and seemingly effortless as Ted Williams's swing or an Arnold Palmer iron shot.... His teammates recede--like the old baseball players vanishing into the cornfield in Field of Dreams, taking their magical world with them but living on in fond memory."—Edward Kosner, Wall Street Journal

"Sports memoirs, like humor collections, rarely outlive their authors, but Plimpton's books have aged gracefully and even matured. Today they have the additional (and unintended) appeal of vivid history, bearing witness to a mythical era."—Nathaniel Rich, New York Review of Books