Owen is a staff writer for The New York-er who specializes in total-Immersion experiences: he wrote a book called “High School,” for example, by actually enrolling in one for a year. This time, he freely admits that he first became totally obsessed with golf, then figured out how he could earn a living doing nothing else. “My Usual Game” (271 pages. Villard. $28) takes the reader from Owen’s first year as a born-again golfer at the age of 86, struggling to break 60 on his local nine-hole course, to his maiden trip to golf camp, to a pilgrimage to Scotland to visit the game’s oldest courses, to a weekend playing in the annual Oldsmobile pro-am at Disney World. The round-by-round account of how he and his team almost won that tournament and got a Mickey Mouse trophy may seem vaguely pathetic to the uninitiated. But to golfjunkies, it will have all the drama of a John Grisham thriller.
Golf has inspired a lot of different kinds of writing over the years; Owen’s style might be described as part John Updike and part Johnny Miller. But that’s OK: real golf nuts don’t just want to read about the majesty of St. Andrews at sunrise; they want a few pointers on how to cure that slice. (Check out the towel tip on page 47.) By the time Owen starts recalling the most memorable shots of his short midlife career, you’ll have read the best of the book and may want to sprint to the end. But up to there it’s almost as fun as a good round itself (well, OK, maybe one in the rain).
