Evangelist of Golf: The Story of Charles Blair MacDonald Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Not QUITE the usual coffee-table sized book, this rich volume taught me more about golf course architecture - really, the thought behind a thinking-player's course - than anything else I've read. Yes, it's a professional biography of one architect, with a lot about his protege, Seth Raynor, but MacDonald was the consummate perfectionist, studying the subject and contemplating his creations perhaps more deeply than anyone else.
The result of his research and reflection was a career marked by the quality rather than the quantity of his work. His courses are timeless, incorporating a similar "menu" of classic holes modified and improved to fit the local terrain and prevailing conditions.
Bahto's account of MacDonald's life and work is refreshingly frank and conversational. He makes no attempt to gloss over MacDonald's cranky arrogance, perhaps because such a temperament is so often linked to genuis. In my opinion this gives the text extra credibility, as do Bahto's wonderfully precise schematic diagrams of so many of MacDonald's creations.
My only complaint is that the quality of the photographs is very uneven and often poor. It's a shame that the publisher couldn't have waited a year or two and sent a professional to shoot the holes with a high-res camera in good light. I wouldn't have wanted to see calendar-style glossies, but I would have enjoyed higher contrast, less grainy photographs to match the clear and illuminating prose.
Despite this minor quibble I'm giving the book a top rating, for it illustrates the Purpose behind deliberate, elegant - yet always playful - golf course design at its highest level. If you can, give this to someone who loves golf and takes it seriously. It would be a wonderful way of showing them how much you appreciate their passion for the game.

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