Royal and Ancient: Blood, Sweat, and Fear at the British Open

No one who saw it will likely forget French golfer Jean Van de Velde's catastrophe at Carnoustie on the 72nd hole of the 1999 British Open. "Such theater!" writes Ben Hogan biographer Curt Sampson in Royal and Ancient, his stunning chronicle of the event. "Character is destiny, the ancient Greeks believed. And to many people--at Carnoustie and elsewhere, then and now--Van de Velde's unfolding disaster looked like an unmistakable expression of French style: cavalier, ironic, and more concerned with style than substance. He seemed to be treating the beloved Jug like a chamber pot." In one golf hole, what had been a tour de force devolved into a tour de farce. What writer could ask for more?

Not Sampson, who deftly uses Carnoustie as a prism to refract the history of golf's most storied tournament. Weaving back and forth through time, Royal and Ancient links the 1999 champion--playoff winner Paul Lawrie--to champions past, from the first--Willie Park in 1860--to Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and to those such as Ben Hogan, Gary Player, and Tom Watson who've conquered the wind-wracked Carnoustie track before him. In his detailed recounting of '99 affair, Sampson certainly reports on the shots, but goes well beyond them into the minds of such competitors as veteran Steve Elkington; Zane Scotland, the youngest qualifier ever; and even John Philp, Carnoustie's proud, beleaguered superintendent, who constantly battled the elements and carping of the players and the press. Fittingly, the last word goes to Van de Velde, a fine golfer who chose the one moment the world was watching to come utterly undone. "It took a lot of bad luck for me to lose," he tells Sampson months after the tournament. "When I think about it now, I'm a little nostalgic.... It's not like I burn emotionally... but... I left more over there than I expected." Sampson brings it, and a good deal more, back for us. --Jeff Silverman