…in a bunker, wet sand, 218 yards from the green, blocked from going for the green by bushes, an oak tree, a lake, and common sense.
It’s those last three words that reminded me what Rick Reilly is all about. He was my favorite writer on golf through the 1990s, eclipsing even Dan Jenkins. I lived to hold Sports Illustrated in my hands, to take in his last-page column of the week. Back then, if you were really somebody, you had the final say in a digest, always on the last page. When Reilly left SI, I felt abandoned, and sought his writings elsewhere.
In 2022, Rick Reilly offers a collection of golf experiences, collisions, shell games, and even a phantasm on distant pages. So Help Me Golf: Why We Love The Game is the title of his amalgamation of stories collected over the years. If Harvey Penick had his Little Red Book, Reilly’s is something else. Perhaps not a book, perhaps not defined by a color, but important to the canon of golf’s literary humor.
In January of 2022, we lost the great Tim Rosaforte to early onset alzheimers. Rosaforte was renowned for having two or more, working cell phones with massive contact databases in each. He had an in with everyone that was, or was not, someone. I suspect that Rick Reilly has the same contact chops. He is welcome to drop in on DMs across the golf world. In So Help Me Golf, Reilly dances from Michael Jordan to his inveterate chums, with the grace and evident frustration of the professional in every Dancing With The Stars pairing.
No, no, no. I do not blame you for this. I blame me for hiring you. That’s Reilly, quoting the late and great, Severiano Ballesteros, on the subject of the caddy. The pearls of hilarity and wisdom that fill this volume, like pebbles in a jar, come from all across the world of golf. Reilly collected stories first-hand, second-hand, and sleight of hand for this collection. He celebrates the success and the struggle equally. He shares the adventures of the aggrieved and the rapturous. These pages and words are about us, as much as they are about them.
Yep, you don’t have to look far in this tome to find what frustrates Rick Reilly. He is candid, even as he tells a story about someone else. He likes Phil, until he doesn’t. He dislikes Tiger, until he stops. Along the way, Reilly reveals who he himself is, and what made him that way, until he changed. And what changed him.
Even as an established writer of celebrity, Reilly is not above taking a new tack, and borrowing from someone else. I’ve long enjoyed Tom Coyne’s golf travels, and devoured A Course Called Ireland and A Course Called Scotland. I even made an appearance in A Course Called America. Reilly offers a new take on challenges; all I’ll say are these two words ~ mini-golf & mulligans.
Writing isn’t just about having the words. It is about knowing whether to use them or not, and where to place them, once you opt-in. It’s a lot like golf in that way. Remember those three words and common sense that concluded my opening salvo? Imagine that Reilly were to place them anywhere else in the fragment. Would they have the same impact and punch? Of course not. Just like the quote from Seve is not the funniest Ballesteros anecdote that the writer included.
If you enjoy reading about Bryson, the Trashmasters, golf addicts, Two-Down O’Connor, golf food, and stuff that Reilly hates (plus many pages more on many other topics) this book is for you. A massive, online retailer suggests that the release date is May 10th of this year. I completed my review copy over the course of a week, on outbound and return flights of a recent trip, and had no need to listen to any of the flight attendant admonitions. All the instruction I lacked was written down, ahead of departure.
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