April 28, 2003
Feinstein (A Good Walk Spoiled) chronicles the years spent renovating "chewed-up" Bethpage (N.Y.) Black for the first-ever U.S. Open held on a municipal course—and the biggest ever net profit, at $13 million. Many of the behind-the-scenes people he describes (such as former U.S.G.A. president David Fay), though colorful—and colorfully drawn—don't quite pull readers into the 2002 event. Feinstein swings for significance, too, complete with references to September 11, which seldom land near the flag of portent. But unlike his earlier golf bestseller, crossover appeal fades fast. His account is impeccably researched and written with you-are-there clarity, yet the buildup stretches over three-quarters of the text, leaving the best for last but not rewarding readers' patience. Successive chapters—"Countdown," "Last Rehearsal," "Final Preparations," "D-Day"—keep putting off the moment until late in the book when Feinstein writes, "It was time to start playing golf." The skirmishes over which network gets broadcast rights or how 42,000 spectators can be accommodated just don't excite the way a neck-and-neck round does. With so many anecdotes devoted to politics and economics, even devotees may skip ahead to the later chapters centering on Tiger Woods, as the narrative fails to generate much game of its own.
May 15, 2003
Feinstein, a talented and prolific author of sports books, here offers his third work on golf (after A Good Walk Spoiled and The Majors). This time out, he assays the 2002 U.S. Open, which was a historic benchmark as the first time the Open was held on a public golf course, Bethpage Black on Long Island. Bethpage is run by the state of New York and as such created a host of unique logistical problems in the staging of the tournament. Feinstein focuses on behind-the-scenes particulars such as the site campaign for the tourney, the effort to get the course itself up to par, and details like pairings, tee times, and crowd control. Coverage of the tournament itself, which was again won by Tiger Woods, does not begin until three-fourths of the way into the book. As usual, Feinstein profiles a large cast of both the famous and the essential going about their jobs to produce a championship event. This book will find a large audience and is recommended for any sports collection. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/03.]-John Maxymuk, Rutgers Univ. Lib., Camden, NJ
Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
May 1, 2003
It's almost inconceivable that the administrators of a large organization could ever be cast as heroes in the modern world, but that's exactly how best-selling sports reporter Feinstein portrays the employees of the United States Golf Association in this remarkably compelling portrait of how the 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black came to be. What made Bethpage special was its humble status as a state-owned municipal golf course, the first ever to host a U.S. Open. The idea of playing the Open at the Black course, as it's called by the Long Islanders who arrive before dawn to stand in line for starting times, was the dream of USGA president David Fay. Feinstein tells the story from the points of view of those men and women who made Fay's dream a reality: Dave Catalano, manager of Bethpage Park, home to five golf courses, including the Black; Craig Currier, course superintendent at the Black, who managed the multimillion-dollar refurbishing necessary to make the course suitable for the Open; Tom Meeks, who ran the Open "inside the ropes"; and a cast of hundreds who did the advance work, handled security in the post-September 11 era, and oversaw thousands of other nitty-gritty tasks. Amazingly, Feinstein turns the day-to-day operations of the USGA into the stuff of high drama. It works because the Black was such a dramatic venue; never before had the Open been staged at the home course of the cops and the maintenance workers who labored at the site. And, yes, Tiger Woods--who grew up on public courses--won the Open, but the real winner was the course itself: only Tiger finished under par. Feinstein does the impossible here: he writes a blue-collar tearjerker about a purportedly blue-blood sport.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)