Barrett Erin - Al Capone Was a Golfer

Copyright 2002 by Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact: Conari Press, 2550 Ninth Street, Suite 101, Berkeley, CA 94710-2551.

Conari Press books are distributed by Publishers Group West.

Cover Illustration: Colin Johnson

Cover and Book Design: Claudia Smelser

Author Photo: Jen Fariello

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barrett, Erin.

Al Capone was a golfer: hundreds of fascinating facts from the world of golf/Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo.

p. cm.(Totally riveting utterly entertaining trivia)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-57324-720-0

1. GolfMiscellanea. I. Title: Hundreds of fascinating facts from the world of golf. II. Mingo, Jack. III. Title. IV. Series.

GV967.B325 2002

796.352dc21

2002000888

Printed in the United States of America.

01 02 03 DATA 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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C learly, it's easy to lose perspective about a game like golf. Golf combines so many variables, from weather and course design to individual players' physical abilities and mental attitude, that every round is different. Are fanatic golfers best envied or pitied? Have they found the secret of living large, or are they escaping from it? Are a driver, a putter, and a sunny day the keys to wisdom or the distractions that will forever keep someone from attaining it?

These are all questions that every golfer must grapple with. Thank heavens, however, we don't do that here. Instead, we offer arcane trivia, celebrity anecdotes, fun facts, and quotes from the best and worst golfers you've ever heard of. If you want to wrestle with the meaning behind the game of golf or learn how to psychically become one with your driver on a par 5, go buy another book. But if you want to know why they're called duffers, who has driven a golf ball more than a mile, and what it took to make Groucho Marx throw his golf clubs over a cliff at Cypress Point well, this is your book. (Or at least it will be, when you take it up to the register and actually pay for it.)

Enjoy!

Erin Barrett
Jack Mingo

G olf is a puzzle without an answer.

Gary Player

Golf is an expensive way of playing marbles.

G. K. Chesterton, author

Golf is the Lord's punishment for man's sins.

James Reston, journalist

Golf is a game with the soul of a 1956 Rotarian.

Bill Mandel, Berkeley radio legend

Golf is a game of expletives not deleted.

Dr. Irving J. Gladstone, golfer

Golf is an ideal diversion, but a ruinous disease.

Bertie Charles Forbes

Golf is the hardest game in the world to play, and the easiest to cheat at.

Dave Hill, pro golfer

Golf is so popular simply because it is the best game in the world at which to be bad.

A. A. Milne

Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.

Winston Churchill

Golf is like faith: It is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Arnold Haultain, Canadian author (18571941)

Golf is the most fun you can have without taking your clothes off.

Chi Chi Rodriguez

Golf is a wonderful exercise. You can stand on your feet for hours, watching somebody else putt.

Will Rogers

Golf is essentially an exercise in masochism conducted out of doors.

Paul O'Neil

Golf is war. And like all wars, if you're not looking to win, you probably shouldn't show up.

Capt. Bruce Waren Ollstein
, author and golf strategist

Golf is a game where the ball always lies poorly and the player always lies well.

Anonymous golfer

Golf is not just exercise: It is an adventure, a romance a Shakespeare play in which disaster and comedy are intertwined and you have to live with the consequences.

Harold Segall, golfer

Golf is a game that creates emotions that sometimes cannot be sustained with the club still in one hand.

Bobby Jones

Golf is 20 percent mechanics and technique. The other 80 percent is philosophy, humor, tragedy, romance, melodrama, companionship, camaraderie, cussedness, and conversation.

Grantland Rice, American sportswriter

Golf is the hardest game in the world. There is no way you can ever get it. Just when you think you do, the game jumps up and puts you in your place.

Ben Crenshaw

Golf is an awkward set of bodily contortions designed to produce a graceful result.

Thomas Armour, golfer

Golf is good for the soul. You get so mad at yourself you forget to hate your enemies.

Will Rogers

Golf is like a cat chasing its tail. You're never going to catch it. The day you think you've got your game down pat, something goes awry and you're back to square one. That's one reason why I love the game so much: the soul-searching, and the never-ending search for the perfect swing.

Greg Norman

Golf is an exercise which is much used by the Gentlemen in Scotland. A large common, in which there are several little holes, is chosen for the purpose. It is played with little leather balls stuffed with feathers, and sticks tipped with horn. A man would live ten years the longer for using this exercise once or twice a week.

Dr. Benjamin Rush (1770)

Golf is not a game of great shots. It's a game of the most accurate misses.

Gene Littler

Golf is like a horseIf you take your eye off it, it'll jump back and kick your shins for you.

Byron Nelson

Golf is a game of endless predicaments.

Chi Chi Rodriguez

Golf is not a fair game. It's a rude game.

Fuzzy Zoeller

Golf is 20 percent talent and 80 percent management.

Ben Hogan

Golf is not so much a game as it is a creed and a religion.

Arnold Haultain

Golf is meant to be fun.

Jack Nicklaus

Golf is just a game, and an idiotic one at that.

Mark Calcavecchia (after failing to make the cut at the British Open)

Golf is a game where guts, stick-to-it-ness, and blind devotion will get you nothing but an ulcer.

Tommy Bolt

W ho invented golf? We could go with the Scots, but it's not that easy. The simple fact is that hitting a rock into a hole in the ground is such a no-brainer concept for a game that dozens of nationalities can lay claim to having invented it. Evidence shows exactly thatthat the basic game was invented over and over again all over the world.