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by William M Fletcher
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by Roger Bernhardt, David Martin
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by John Wesley Howard
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(Larger Image)
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Blue Fairways: Three Months, Sixty Courses, No Mulligans
by Charles Slack
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (1999-11-09)
ISBN: 0805059938
EAN: 9780805059939
Dewy Decimal #: 796.35206874
Hardcover: 320 pages
SKU: mon0000022234
Condition: Good
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
A duffer's odyssey on the public links from Maine to Key West.
A golfing everyman takes us on a pilgrimage, playing public golf courses along Route 1 down the east coast of the United States. From his first round with French-Canadian partners amidst the potato fields of northern Maine to his final round against a setting tropical sun in Key West, Charlie Slack chronicles the best and worst of the public-golf experience. Each round introduces a new set of partners and opens a window onto a new locale, whether it's the manicured suburbs of Connecticut, the worn-down urban centers of the Northeast Corridor, or the sun-drenched golfing havens of the South. Here in the land of new beginnings, Charlie Slack lives out every golfer's fantasy, a fresh start and a pristine fairway each and every morning. An utterly charming tale of a quintessentially American journey of discovery.
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Amazon.com Review
Perhaps the Royal and Ancient game's most majestic appeal is simply this: Stand up on the first tee and what you survey down the fairway is a beckoning landscape of possibility, renewal, improvement, and hope. All mark the scorecard of Blue Fairways, a lovely pilgrimage that begins in Maine, ends in Florida, and in a journey of three months plays 60 public courses from one end of Route 1 to the other. It's a chronicle that inspires envy. Every duffer dreams of dropping out and devoting himself wholeheartedly to his golfing jones; Charles Slack actually lives it. Like all good golfing odysseys, Slack's doesn't take place solely on the golf course. There's plenty of golf, sure, and Slack does a fine job of capturing the flavor of each of the outposts he tees off from--be it a track as grand as Pinehurst or as modest as the short municipal pitch-and-putter he navigates with the mayor of Jersey City. But the story of Blue Fairways is really the story of the people he meets and plays with, the nongolfing lessons he takes from them, and the senses of place--some elegant, some hopelessly threadbare--he experiences from city to suburb to town. Some 2,200 miles after the first drive, he's shaved a few strokes off his game, felt an explosion of midlife freedom, and come to grips with more than his clubs. "It took sixty golf courses," he writes, "to convince me of a truth about golf and life so obvious and facile sounding, I probably could have gotten it from a fortune cookie or a Salada tea bag: Getting there is nothing; the journey is all." The fun of Blue Fairways is that he indeed reached that conclusion through a golf ball, and not through one of its crystal cousins. --Jeff Silverman
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Customer Reviews
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A fun book for duffers or pros.
Rating  (4)
Date: 2002-08-03
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
When I read the description on the jacket I thought, "No way will this work. He's going to tell us about the 60 rounds he shot, stroke by stroke, such as.... and on the seventh, a tough par five, I got out my trusty three wood etc., etc., etc." It is that but it is more. Slack shares with us the feeling of what it is like to stand at the first tee of a course you have never played on a beautiful spring morning in New England. He introduces us to the people he meets on the course, from the potato farmers of Maine to the Florida "snowbirds" who flew South to escape the Northern winters. Did the book work? I'm getting my clubs ready to try a West Coast version.
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Two Words for Charles Slack: "Keep Driving"
Rating (4)
Date: 2000-12-31
A perfect blend of of travel journal and salute to public golf. Anyone with a high handicap, who has played with bare-chested strangers with even higher handicaps, on crowded bald fairways with bumpy greens, will appreciate this book.
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Slack scores an ace
Rating  (5)
Date: 2000-07-05
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
If you've ever topped a drive off the first tee or missed a three-footer on 18 while trying record your career low round, you'll be able to identify with Charles Slack's golf game. When it comes to writing, though, he's scratch. One brief example will suffice. Describing the contrast between the front and back nines at the Ponce De Leon course in St. Augustine Florida, he says, "The back nine plunges into the jungle with the suddenness of a Disney ride, into a lush, dark, secretive world of mangrove swamps and ponds curving tantalizingly like lost lagoons. Moving from the ninght to the tenth holes is like putting down a volume of P.G. Wodehouse and picking up Heart of Darkness, all in one morning."The book is filled with wonderful insights like that one and reminds us on nearly every page of the real reasons why golfers love this sometimes maddening, often magical, game. For those of us who never will have the pleasure of sharing a round with Charles Slack, this book is a delightful substitute.
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Even Bessie the Cow would Enjoy this Book
Rating (5)
Date: 2000-04-24
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Blue Fairways is thoroughly enjoyable. Slack's sense of humor, coupled with his self-deprecating writing style, make this a must read -- golfer or not. I laughed out loud and also cringed as he described some less-than-stellar golf moments. For those of us who do golf, who couldn't identify with The Look of Pity? Non-golfers will enjoy the way Slack captures what most of us will never have a chance to witness first hand -- the essence of what remains of small towns and hospitality as they teeter on the brink of chain restaurants and cynicism.
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Could have been better
Rating (4)
Date: 2000-04-14
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Great book on golf. Gives a great look at courses up and down the east coast. There was, however, too much on the history of the towns instead of more on the history of the course and more on the actual rounds he was playing. Was "On The Road" for the golfing enthusiast.
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