Cinderella Story is really two books. The first is a string of outrageously digressive anecdotes about Murray's club-wielding adventures with Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer ("Incandescent ... he and Patton were born to lead armies"), Mike Ditka, John Denver, Chi Chi Rodriguez ("He had more fun playing golf than any person I'd ever seen."), Clint Eastwood, and Michael Jordan ("Relax," Murray tells himself, "his nickname is 'air,' not 'sand.'"). The prose style is mock-hepcat, insanely allusive, and very smart, like his screen persona.
This book is also the amusing, affecting autobiography of a kid who started out caddying for 60 cents a half-hour with his brothers--they got busted for giving a blind golfer three hole-in-one trophies--and wound up in showbiz. There are lots of showbiz anecdotes too, especially about Caddyshack, "arguably the greatest film ever made, although perhaps that's a drunken argument," as Murray observes. He'll get no argument from golfers, who will thrill to his expert ridicule of their mutual passion. --Tim Appelo