For 100 years, golf in Scottsdale, Arizona, has challenged and entertained professionals, duffers, and spectators alike. Courses have evolved from the oiled sand courses of the early 1900s to championship layouts with breathtaking scenery--lush green fairways surrounded by cacti, boulders, and desert washes. Scottsdale's favorable winter climate creates an ideal setting for international golf tournaments, like the FBR Open, featuring stellar tour professionals and watchable celebrities. Scottsdale-area golf businesses enhance the game and the local economy. Rarely seen images in this new retrospective have been gathered from a variety of local archives, historical societies, and private collections.

Richard Blackman was chased off a course by a lion. Despite being blind, Charles Boswell shot a round of 81. An errant drive by Mathieu Boya resulted in the destruction of the entire air force of Benin. Otto Bucher shot a hole-in-one at age ninety-nine. Mobster Al Capone shot himself in the foot during a round of golf. Tommy Bolt was fined 250 for repeatedly breaking wind during the 1959 Memphis Open. While leading the 1934 U.S. Open, Bobby Cruickshank knocked himself out when he threw his club into the air in celebration of a good shot. At the 1973 Sea Pines Heritage Classic, Hale Irwin hit a.

Whether readers play for fun or for serious sport, this guide will encourage them to live their ultimate golfing fantasies at the world's premier courses. Each golf course has been selected for its interest either as a challenge to play, a place of outstanding beauty, a famous occurrence, or the brilliance of its design.

In golf the playing field is also landscape, where nature and the shaping of it conspire to test athletic prowess. As golf courses move away from the "big business, pristine lawn" approach of recent times, Bradley S. Klein, a leading expert on golf course design and economics, finds much to contemplate, and much to report, in the way these wide-open spaces function as landscapes that inspire us, stimulate our senses, and reveal the special nature of particular places. A meditation on what makes golf courses compelling landscapes, this is also a personal memoir that follows Klein's own unique journey across the golfing terrain, from the Bronx and Long Island suburbia to the American prairie and the Pacific Northwest. Whether discussing Robert Moses and Donald Trump and the making of New York City, or the role of golf in the development of the atomic bomb, or the relevance of Willa Cather to how the game has taken hold in the Nebraska Sandhills, Klein is always looking for the freedom and the meaning of golf's wide-open spaces. And as he searches, he offers a deeply informed and absorbing view of golf courses as cultural markers, linking the game to larger issues of land use, ecology, design, and imagination. Purchase the audio edition.

In Rough Meditations, Golfweek Architecture Editor Bradley Klein weaves engaging and often hilarious essays as he takes readers on a tour of golf course architecture and explains the difference between good and bad golf course design. He recounts his exploits as a caddy on the PGA and LPGA tours, tells a heartwarming tale about introducing his daughter to the game, and much more. In his charming style, Bradley liberally accents his stories with personal wisdom on the game, including how to look at a green's grass and slope to judge speed, distance, and placement of a putt. system.