Golf Dreams

John Updike started playing golf at twenty-five, and the author of the Rabbit novels has spent the four decades since writing about it. His golf pieces have run in Golf Digest and The New Yorker, some in the form of short stories, and he has written for tournament programs. Several of his fictional figures, Rabbit Angstrom and Tom Marshfield from A Month of Sundays among them, appear as they work through a round. For Updike, golf is closer to an adventure than to either labor or leisure.

Many writers have covered the sport, but few have done so with such warmth and expertise about the appeal of playing badly and the rewards of a struggle that is never really won. The collection takes up the friendships formed on the course, the problems created by golf's recent surge in popularity, the etiquette of dealing with caddies, and the art of sinking short putts.

The thirty pieces gathered here come from many different places. A few appeared in Updike's other collections, while most have never been reprinted before.