Somewhere in Ireland, A Village is Missing an Idiot

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY APR 28, 2003

As a broadcaster for CBS Sports, Feherty (A Nasty Bit of Rough) injects a most welcome dash of humor into his play-by-play of professional golf tournaments, a sport not well known for hilarious hijinks or colorful characters. This "best of" collection of columns from Golf Magazine, the British publication Golf Monthly and Golfonline.com by the expatriate Irishman is equally entertaining, but Feherty in large doses can wear a bit thin. With a schoolboy's delight in all things scatological, many columns honor the author's digestive tract or lack thereof; he also spends time with vomiting fans and African animal excrement. But Feherty's place in golf literature is assured by his sprightly refusal to accept an image of the game as dull and unexciting, with colorless players who all look and sound the same. Feherty is a black sheep golf character who enjoys a game different from the one projected by the media and earnest sportswriters who wax poetic about azaleas, sportsmanship and traditions. His golf is that of Everyman, where expletives, immaturity and the occasional ingestion of alcohol combine to make it a fun and infuriating game. Reading in their entirety the 300-plus pages of intense efforts to be funny will require some fortitude, but if you like your golf writing irreverent, dicey and honest, you will certainly enjoy this.