Loopers: A Caddie’s Twenty-Year Golf Odyssey by John Dunn (Broadway Books, $15.00, 279 pages)
He dug into his golf bag, pulled out a little rolled-up zip-lock sandwich bag, and handed it to me. Then he pulled out a pair of glow-in-the-dark golf balls and four fresh light sticks. I opened the ziplock bag and peered inside. It contained two big, perfectly formed magic mushrooms – powdery white with purple veins running down the stems. Carlo smiled. “Psychedelic night golf!”
I had hoped that this book would provide some interesting and inspirational insights into the maddening and fascinating sport of golf. I had found such insights in two earlier published books, Paper Tiger: An Obsessed Golfer’s Quest to Play with the Pros by Tom Coyne, and Moment of Glory: The Year Underdogs Ruled Golf by John Feinstein. Unfortunately, John Dunn’s work falls quite a bit short of the standard set by Coyne and Feinstein. (He fails to make par.)
Loopers is basically a lightweight diversion by a man who seems to have never matured. And instead of being a tribute to the traditional game of golf, Dunn tries to convince the reader that strange and amateur variations of the sport are to be admired. Believe it or not, he advocates the virtues of golfing, alone, in the overly heated deserts of Utah and Nevada, and of playing golf at night while high on alcohol and drugs. You might think he’s joking but he’s not: “…backcountry golf and mushroom night golf are as true to the nature of the game as any stuffy country club championship.” Nonsense. (The statement sounds dumb and dumber.)
Dunn has apparently read a bit too much of Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) – who appears to be one of his key role models, and he loves to use the word psychedelic. He does tell a few interesting tales based on his work as a caddie all over the United States but they simply do not go anywhere. The book has no theme, no structure, and no “feel”. And yet it’s Dunn who writes: “This is the part of the game (of golf) that is hard for nongolfers to see. You have to play it to feel it.”
Far better to spend one’s time tackling the classic and challenging game of golf than attempting to read this confused collection of meandering, trippy stories.
Joseph Arellano
A complimentary copy of this book was received in exchange for an honest review from Blogging for Books ( http://www.bloggingforbooks.org/ ).
You can read reviews of the books by Tom Coyne and John Feinstein here:
Joseph's Reviews 