Book Review

I got the Darren Clarke book in the mail today and I've already read it. Well, most of it. Some of the player profiles I skipped. I mean really, I don't need to read Tiger's profile. But here's my view of Heroes All: My Ryder Cup Story 2006:

First, it looked as though the book had been booted around the floor of a warehouse - the dust jacket was scuffed quite a bit. But I blame Amazon for that.

As for the book, my one pet peeve is the very inconvenient spots the publisher chose to insert the color picture groupings. There are two sets of color pictures and the first one not only interrupts a chapter, but it interrupts a sentence in the chapter. The second grouping separated Brett Wetterich's picture from his player profile.

The pictures are very good pictures, especially the picture of the course that opens and closes the book.

The writing: I have only one thing to say - Americans write like I do and Darren Clarke writes like this: "When I came out of my room, dressed in black trousers, white dinner jacket, white shirt and red bow tie, all I needed to look like a proper magician was a top hat and three rabbits tucked up my sleeve." I really think America is making a mistake by focusing more on math and science and letting language skills slide. Whether you're reading Peter Allis' book, David Feherty's column in Golf Magazine or Darren Clarke's book, you just get the feeling that there are some aspects of their respective countries' educational systems that are just plain better than America's, for all of America's No Child Left Behind rhetoric.

Contents of the book: The book cover's Darren's personal thoughts on Ryder Cup week, contains team profiles, a hole-by-hole guide of the K-Club course, a some history of the Ryder Cup which also includes some of Darren's comments about the previous teams of which he was a member.

Overall, my money was well spent on this book. There was a moment when I allowed the stray "agenda question" to run through my mind. You know the question - it's the same one you get when you read Greg Norman's book. You wonder what the other side of the story is. Being an American in this day and age, I have grown accustomed to automatically looking for the angle or political point of view of any and every news report I see or read - the Trust No One philosophy. So, it was unfortunately natural for me to wonder if there was some sort of underlying purpose for this book. Then, after a second, I banished that glimmer of cynicism from my mind and embraced the story for what it is - Darren Clarke's account of the 2006 Ryder Cup. It's probably a great help that I don't know much about Darren Clarke and wouldn't know if there's a particular slant to the facts.

So, go buy the book. Read the book. I doubt that you'll be disappointed.