This month’s pick is a follow-up from May and my Trap Draw podcast conversation with Alan Shipnuck (Episode 30). It is Michael Murphy’s classic, Golf in the Kingdom. It has a tie-in this month with the British Open (even though it’s being played in Ireland at Royal Portrush).
The back cover reads as follows:
When a young man en route to India stops in Scotland to play at the legendary Burningbush golf club and in twenty-four hours, his life is transformed. Paired with a mysterious teacher named Shivas Irons, he is led through a round of phenomenal golf, swept into a world where extraordinary powers are unleashed in a backswing governed by “true gravity.” A night of adventure and revelation follows, and leads to a glimpse of Seamus MacDuff, the holy man who haunts a ravine off Burningbush’s thirteenth fairway—the one they call Lucifer’s Rug.
A classic, originally published in 1972, this novel is a must read for all golf fans, especially those (like me) bemused by the philosophical and etherial elements of the game. I mentioned Alan Shipnuck and I discussed the book on a Trap Draw, and shortly following that conversation Alan published a piece about a day spent with Michael Murphy at the US Open.