The Bogey Man: A Month on the PGA Tour by George Plimpton

The Bogey Man: A Month on the PGA Tour Reviews

• 
  theresa

  enjoyed this AGAIN! since i'm of a certain age i can remember hearing plimpton's voice and his very dry sense of humor whan he'd be a guest on a show like mike douglas or merve griffin so as i read it was plimpton's voice rattling around in my head. completely hilarious look at what it's like to golf with some fun behind the scenes scoop on "old-timey" tournaments like the ones that bing crosby and bob hope were running back in the day.
• 
  Lou

  George Plimpton at his best. Funny stories and quips about and from the greatest players.
  
• 
  Brad

  This is, at least, the fifth best golf book I've ever read! Fantastic writing.
• 
  David Jacobson

  This book deals with the psychology of golf, especially the ways a struggling player thinks about the challenges of the game. I am a new, struggling player, and so Plimpton's description of the golfer's body as "a monstrous, manned colossus poised high over the golf ball" and his mind filled with "an unsteady group of Japanese navymen" speaks to me.
  
  Plimpton, editor of the tony Paris Review, brought the "New Journalism" of Didion and Gay Talese into the world of sports. His story of a month on the PGA tour is mainly a story of his own mind; fitting, since in what sport is one more wrapped up in one's own thoughts and demons than in golf? He tells us very little about the sport per se—his climactic interview with Arnold Palmer is a study in what not to ask an athlete—but volumes about the mental texture of whacking the ball around the course.
• 
  Pecker

  50 years later after the events, this was an interesting read. Plimpton's confessions of his bookish approach to the history of golf added some fun comments. However, It felt a little behind the leading edge in his treatment of the caddy pros, mostly black men. He wanted to portray them colorfully, and he did, but one still felt the superiority his background created in his mind. I really had trouble with that, and, as a participant in those times in the Civil Rights movement, I would have felt that way even back then. So that part was hard reading for me, and he let me down there.
  
  The story of the left-behind golfer, tho, was hilarious!
  
  It is worth reading for insights into those big name golfers who dominated the game in the 1970s.
• 
  Laura

  While not as interesting as the other two Plimpton books I've read, The Bogey Man was another humorous adventure for the professional amateur as he takes on the world of the pro-am and, by extension, that of the professional golfer. He seemed to delve less deeply into the world of big stars of golf, although amusing sidebars about golf writing and a fanciful short story add color and liveliness to this book.
• 
  Doug Sullivan

  Plimpton had a self-deprecating style that is endearing, however in this book its painful, quite honestly. But his brief encounters with the greats of the game are worth the read. Palmer, Nicklaus and others in their prime almost 50 years ago. Plimpton had a world of courage to do all the sports exploits he attempted, and this was perhaps his most vulnerable project.
• 
  Lisa

  Fun, but dragged towards the end a bit for me.
• 
  James

  The subtitle is a touch misleading as this is not really a book about playing golf, but a book about the sport in general, with the stories told by the people Plimpton meets as he plays in a few pro-am tournaments. It is timeless and doesn't really suffer from age, rather that there is quite a lot of filler.
  
  The idea was that Plimpton would play in 3 PGA events after a warm-up invitational, to give a first-person account of a novice golfer playing in tournaments. His own experience actually took up quite a small proportion of the book, and clearly a round of golf (or 12) does not provide much material, hinted at when he writes of a previous round with a pro which yielded no copy whatsoever. There is a lot more about caddies, bar conversations and an odd creative writing exercise about a golfer stranded near a railroad crossing - I could have done without this fairly dull passage.
  
  I did wonder at first whether his caddy was going to be the subject of cruel jokes, but this was generally a good-natured, humorous book rather than a caustic one, and it is Plimpton himself who is the butt of jokes. He is bad at golf, but only describes about 10 of his shots in detail and it is instead the minutiae of gift shop tat, translation misunderstandings in hotels and anecdotes pinched from his mobile library that provides the comic foil. It does give some insight into the sport and its characters, but the retelling of stories was disappointing as they tended to be rattled off one after another rather than woven into the narrative when appropriate.
  
  Yet I did find myself smiling at a few of them. This was a readable book and despite some of the passages leaving me cold, it didn't feel as though it was far too long. Ultimately, it felt like Plimpton need not have bothered playing himself at all but instead hung around a few clubhouses to interview caddies and players. He is not a bad writer but nor was the book what I'd expected and there was limited value to the social history elements of a sixties book, and the compilation of golf anecdotes from others.
• 
  Vel Veeter

  Not exactly part of a series, but part of a kind of book that George Plimpton wrote early in his career, this book involve George Plimpton, amateur golfer, mixing it up with pros for a month. Mostly this book functions as a kind of insider/outsider piece of sports journalism, really attempting to show just how truly different being world class at a sport is from being a good amateur. But in the hands of Plimpton, the book works to shed light not just on the skill sets, but the entire world itself. Plimpton is a handicap 18 golfer, which means (as best as I've ever been able to tell) that compared to a scratch golfer or a pro, he could be expected to get 18 over par on a given course. Mostly this stat is used for pairing and betting situations, like giving odds and points on a basketball game. So when he joins the PGA (he doesn't really), this shows how different he is from the pros. Really he joins a celebrity pro-am tournament which pairs him with a relatively unknown golfer, but one who is still worlds above an amateur like Plimpton. The book also explores travelling life, caddies, mythologies (legends), myths and superstitions, and downtime, as well politics and economics.  It's not a "philosophy of golf" kind of book because it really is focused on topics related to pro golfing. It's also very much of its time, so it's got plenty of casual racism, homophobia, and sexism. So be fore! warned. I am sorry.
• 
  Amanda Pettit

  This book is short but it was hard for me to get through. Let me preface by saying I grew up playing competitive golf; I played in college. I know the history of the game and I’ve read a lot of golf books. I admit I earmarked some pages because there were some good one-liners and thoughtful comments in there. But it was surrounded by a string of stories that didn’t really feel cohesive other than the fact that they were (mostly) in chronological order. There didn’t seem to be a point to the book.
• 
  Matt Moran

  Funnier than Paper Lion.
  
  Plimpton had stretched the 'participation journalism in sports' idea already. In this book he really just plays in a few pro Ams in California - it is not the same as say, playing QB for the Detroit Lions. The book is part golf experience, part PGA observation and part the odd ramblings of the author's brain. There are moment where he is definitely stretching his material to create a full length book.
  
  There is nothing at all necessary about this book - but it's still very funny at times.
• 
  Bonnie

  I am not a golfer and found this only slightly amusing. Seems a bit dated - sexist language, a bit good old boyish.
• 
  Steve Shilstone

  George delivers a plethora of amusing and nearly amusing golf stories.