Big news around here. I have a book report ready. I’m not the quickest reader and I don’t read that often because if I have free time I’ll either be golfing or posting golf blog posts…

The Scorecard Always Lies:
A Year Behind the Scenes on the PGA Tour
By Chris Lewis

The Scorecard Always Lies (TSAL) is a very interesting read by Chris Lewis. Chris Lewis started covering golf for various media outlets about the same time Tiger Woods hit the pro golf scene. Nice time to get started. Lewis is now primarily a golf correspondent for Sports Illustrated.

Behind the scenes

TSAL is a reality book. It’s a behind the scenes look at what goes on, week to week, on the PGA tour. If Lewis posted his stories online each week, it would be a hell of a golf blog. Perhaps he did and I just don’t know it.

Ever wonder about what happens in the hotels the PGA Tour players stay at? Ever wonder what the players’ wives and girlfriends do when their significant others are on the course? Wonder what the trainers, agents, press people, tour officials etc do? This is your book.

Chris Lewis essentially covers the 2006 PGA Tour season from start to finish. He starts with anecdotes from the season’s first stop, The Mercedes Championship, and ends with the 2006 Ryder Cup (complete with stories of Ian Woosnam having champagne shooting out of his mouth and nose in winning team’s celebration).

Some good nuggets I liked

I’ll highlight a couple of good nuggets which I particularly liked about the 2006 season which Lewis covered:

1. Tiger’s yacht at the U.S. Open

Lewis described the setting at the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. He covered details about where certain players stayed, either in private rented homes or hotels. But Tiger Woods brought his 155 foot $20 million yacht, “Privacy.” Tiger and his wife Elin, his caddy Steve Williams and his dogs were bunking there.

Privacy is so “pimped out” that the walls are made of white silk with marble and cherrywood accents. Of course there’s the gym, home theater and an eight person whirlpool.

Lewis wrote, “It was docked in an inlet on Mamaroneck bay, At Derecktor Shipyards, which once built the Stars & Stripes, the boat with which Dennis Conner won the 1987 America’s cup. It was there because no conventional marina could hold it–it dwarfed the thirty- and forty-footers more typically found in the bay. It also outsized the ferry parked next to it, which shuttled people to and from Manhattan. In fact, getting Privacy in and out of the harbor was a problem. Because of the water’s shalowness, movement was only possible at high tide.”

2. Zurich Classic, New Orleans

In this chapter Lewis describes a man who wanders into a Bourbon Street tattoo parlor at 11:30pm, no shoes on. He’s dazed and confused, and has no cell phone or wallet. He’d gotten into some trouble on bourbon street and nearly fell into a trap–a car full of women who would have presumably taken him to a scary part of town where who knows what would happen. He may have been lynched, killed–who knows what…

After the guy left his shop and was escorted away by the police, the tattoo parlor owner blew it off as yet another strange event on Bourbon Street. Several days later the parlor owner saw a familiar guy golfing on TV. In fact that guy won the Zurich Classic. It took the parlor owner a few minutes to figure out he recognized the golfer as the fellow who’d wandered into his parlor several nights before. That player was Chris Couch.

These are two of many very interesting PGA Tour stories you’ll read in The Scorecard Always Lies.

Critiques

I really enjoyed this book. There were however, about five typos or grammatical errors which were pretty obvious. I’m not sure if the proof-readers missed them or if my version of the book was a pre-release.

Conclusion

From Phil Mickelson’s meltdown at the U.S. Open, to Michelle Wie, The Masters, The Ryder Cup or Tiger Woods, Chris Lewis does a great job of giving some very interesting nuggets from behind the scenes on the PGA Tour. He goes into detail with some background on each player or person he highlights as well, which gives you some nice insight.

Bag reality TV and go for a reality golf read.