Books

Forget All That Zen Stuff--Here's the Golf Book the Golf World
Really Needs

In David Feherty, we've found at last not only a true Renaissance
man but also a writer with the guts to address the important
themes of the 21st century. In A Nasty Bit of Rough, the operatic
singer turned pro golfer turned witty golf commentator turns into
a golf novelist and discusses the world's most vital
issues--flatulence; alcohol consumption in vast quantities; male
genitalia getting whacked, bitten, lanced and shot; and more
flatulence. This book, a virtual literary whoopee cushion, does
not make you ask, "Papa Hemingway, is that you?"

A Nasty Bit of Rough is a raunchy, randy, riotous farce. It's one
long, slightly off-color joke. It's the kind of book Dan Jenkins
would write if he were Irish and demented. It is exactly what
you'd expect from Feherty, a mischievous, well-educated Irishman
who once joked that he went on a diet and lost 40 pounds--150
pounds if you count his wife. Ba-da-boom! He's the same impish
rogue who wrote a recent Golf Magazine column about singing in
the choir at a Christmas church service that was loudly
interrupted by the nativity scene's live donkey going, well,
number two in explosive fashion. Now that, ladies and germs, is
literature.

Feherty is in the right place at the right time with this often
hilarious nonsense. I'll yack if I have to page through one more
tome about the Zen of golf (only suckers and novices fell for
that Golf in the Kingdom crap), a son and his
dying/aging/estranged father hitting the links one last time, or
yet another newcomer taking his first trip to St. Andrews or
Ballybunion. Instead, God bless him, Feherty delivers original
foolishness about two clubs in Scotland resuming their ancient
rivalry, a once-every-50-years match for which the trophy is the
petrified middle finger of St. Andrew. It's class warfare as the
upper-crusty denizens of the strict, upright and impossibly
exclusive Scought's Wood Golf Club take on the low-class,
contemptible McGregor clan in a no-holds-barred contest that
features single malt Scotch, bloody kilts, an inept and
hard-luck sergeant whose last name is Finkter (which rhymes
with, oh, I don't know, what?), a horny dog, bizarre antique
clubs with amusing uses, a par-23 hole, treachery and, say, did
I mention the flatulence? If Spielberg makes this thing into a
movie, he'd better film it in Smell-O-Rama.

The overly serious world of golf writing needed a good
gut-buster, and Feherty has supplied it. So that you don't draw
stares for chuckling out loud, you may want to read A Nasty Bit
of Rough in the privacy of your own bathroom. Also, it would add
to the atmosphere.

COLOR PHOTO: MAURICE HARMON (FEHERTY)

COLOR PHOTO: RUGGED LAND

A Nasty Bit of Rough
by David Feherty
Rugged Land, 224 pages, $23.95