A Feel For the Game: To Brookline and Back

Given the sweep of two-time Masters' champion Ben Crenshaw's career, there's an irony to the fact that he'll be better remembered for captaining the 1999 Ryder Cup team to its cardiac comeback than for anything he accomplished between the ropes. It's an irony not lost on Crenshaw. He devotes a full fourth of his graceful memoir, A Feel for the Game: To Brookline and Back, to that remarkable event in which, when all seemed lost, he still professed a feeling for victory. Kneeling on the edge of the 17th green as Justin Leonard prepared to hit that cross-country putt on the final day, Crenshaw had the perspicacity and faith to accept that "the impossible was unfolding in front of me." And he let it.

But then, there was much in Crenshaw's career that seems, in retrospect, impossible, like the emotional second Masters' crown won just days after the death of his mentor, the beloved teacher Harvey Penick. Still, it's the Ryder Cup captaincy that defines Crenshaw now, and he turns his prodigious grasp of golf history and tradition--the Cup's Brookline venue is particularly significant to him--into a lively and analytic portrait of the event. In both broad strokes and telling detail, he lifts the curtain on his thinking and the Cup's mysteries--from player pairings and those wild Sunday shirts to the remarkable phone call a week later from British captain Mark James essentially accusing the Americans of cheating. In reaction, Gentle Ben belies his nickname. Nor is he gentle in his final screed on how advanced technology is threatening the game. "For centuries, golf has had a strong enough backbone to hold onto its beliefs. I hope it continues." With backbones like Crenshaw's stiffening for battle, there's reason to believe it will. --Jeff Silverman