So many works of golfing history focus on the greats: the best players, the most prestigious championships, the hardest courses, and the like. But most avid golfers are average players, relishing in the joy of the sport itself. In Golf’s Iron Horse, celebrated golf writer John Sabino chronicles the previously untold story of Ralph Kennedy, a golf amateur whose love of the game set him on par to play more courses than anyone before. A founding member of Mamaroneck, New York’s prestigious Winged Foot Golf Club, Kennedy had long been an avid golfer when he met Charles Leonard Fletcher in 1919. When the Englishman told Kennedy that he had played more than 240 courses in his lifetime, Kennedy took it as a challenge and became determined to play more. In a feat that caused the New York Sun to declare him “golf’s Lou Gehrig” in 1935, Kennedy succeeded in beating Fletcher’s record, and then some. He played golf on more than 3,165 different courses in all forty-eight states, nine Canadian provinces, and more than a dozen different countries during his forty-three year love affair with the game. In addition to the 3,165 unique courses he played, the unrelenting Ralph also played golf a total of 8,500 times over his lifetime, the equivalent of teeing it up every day for twenty-three straight years. Lou Gehrig’s seventeen years in professional baseball pales in comparison. This intriguing story includes details of the special conditions under which he was able to play the Augusta National Golf Club and the unique circumstances of his visits to Pebble Beach and the Old Course at St. Andrews. Perfect for golf aficionados, Golf’s Iron Horse will inspire every reader to tee off at a new course.

In the tradition of John McPhee and Tracy Kidder, John Strawn's book is a brilliant analysis of how a golf course was built in the Florida scrubland and of the people who assemble for its creation. A must-read for any golfer -- or for anyone interested in how complex things come to be.

Judd, upon returning from the hell called War, found himself in another hell in the Nation he called home. A thriving web of human trafficking, child sex rings, and child slavery. A Global market where the blood of innocents were bought and sold, daily. ... The Playground of the Rich. Only this time, it was not Emperors, Kings or Queens conducting their Orchestra of Evil. No ... this was new. A battlefield called “America”. The new Merchants of Flesh? Politicians. Bankers. Celebrities. Corporate Giants. The Clientele? One and the same. However, one of these people had crossed the line ... The Lady in Red, that is. She had awakened something in Judd. Something very ... old. So who was she? More importantly who ... rather, what was Judd? The Lady in Red” was the “name” assigned to her by Judd’s goddaughter, his best friend’s youngest child ... who said it first, in fear of, “The Lady in Red,” she had called this ... female ... after being abducted and brutalized by this woman in a red, professional dress. She had asked of her mother, “Mommy, is the lady in red coming back?” The real question to be asked here is “What” was coming ... The Madness of Lazurus has begun.

The hysterical story bestseller about one man's epic Celtic sojourn in search of ancestors, nostalgia, and the world's greatest round of golf By turns hilarious and poetic, A Course Called Ireland is a magnificent tour of a vibrant land and paean to the world's greatest game in the tradition of Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. In his thirties, married, and staring down impending fatherhood, Tom Coyne was familiar with the last refuge of the adult male: the golfing trip. Intent on designing a golf trip to end all others, Coyne looked to Ireland, the place where his father has taught him to love the game years before. As he studied a map of the island and plotted his itinerary, it dawn on Coyne that Ireland was ringed with golf holes. The country began to look like one giant round of golf, so Coyne packed up his clubs and set off to play all of it-on foot. A Course Called Ireland is the story of a walking-averse golfer who treks his way around an entire country, spending sixteen weeks playing every seaside hole in Ireland. Along the way, he searches out his family's roots, discovers that a once-poor country has been transformed by an economic boom, and finds that the only thing tougher to escape than Irish sand traps are Irish pubs.

The Iron Horse is a vivid and darkly comic tale about a girl growing up in gritty working-class New England. Horse-crazy Sunny Quinn spends her childhood toiling long hours in relentless pursuit of entry into the elite world of competitive Saddleseat Equitation. Her weight, her lack of money, her crushing shyness and her tyrannical stepfather all contribute to Sunnys spectacular failure, with harrowing and far-reaching consequences. The story takes the reader on a wild ride through the depths of addiction, crime, sacrifice and suffering set against the backdrop of scorching first love. Filled with memorable characters and encompassing the timely themes of determination and endurance, The Iron Horse is ultimately a story about the lies we tell ourselves, and the twisted road to redemption.

"All these many years down the road, Lou Gehrig's reputation still holds up as does Ray Robinson's elegant biography." –Bob Costas Lou Gehrig will go down in history as one of the best ballplayers of all time; he was elected to the Hall of Fame and played in a record-setting 2,130 consecutive games. ALS known today as "Lou Gehrig's Disease" robbed him of his physical skills at a relatively young age, and he died in 1941. Ray Robinson re-creates the life of this legendary ballplayer and also provides an insightful look at baseball, including all the great players of that era: Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and more.