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Looking for the perfect golf present? You won’t go wrong finding a great read in this round up
Who doesn’t love a good book? You’re here on this page for a start, which suggests you are literally a connoisseur of a great read. But what are the best golf books?
You’ve come to the right place to find out. Whether it’s golf fiction, or fact, architecture, or instruction, there are so many fascinating tomes out there and we’ve rounded up the best of them.
Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a beginner, reading golf books can be a great way to improve your game and gain inspiration from some of the sport’s greatest players. With a range of options available in the market, finding the right golf book is easier than ever before.
Even so, deciding on the best golf book can still be a challenge. What are the must-reads? What are the titles you just can’t afford to miss?
So get yourself a cuppa, curl up on the sofa, and check out this list of the best golf books. If you’re suitably inspired, we’ve got a golf book for you…
The best golf books
The best golf fiction books
Amen Corner (Rick Shefchik)
The only thing better than a good crime book is a good crime book about golf.
Even better, one that discusses all the small little ridiculous political golf rules that often go unspoken.
Sam Skarda is a police detective who has won the US Publinx and with it an invitation to play in the Masters. On the morning he arrives at Augusta the body of the rules committee chairman is found near the 12th green.
Evidence suggests the murder may be linked to an ongoing protest by a women’s group demanding the club admit women members. Skarda is tasked with finding the killer before the investigation invades Augusta National’s privacy.
Shefchik uses the scene of Augusta and the game of golf as a brilliant background to a smart fiery plot line. Not only did I find the whole thing extremely entertaining, I also learned a new thing or two about Augusta National.
There is no better time either to revisit or to discover this inimitable collection of short stories from another age.
The pure escapism of Wodehouse’s genius can rarely have seemed more appealing.
Yes, the social constructs he describes have long passed; yet there remain many universal truths. The world may have changed but human nature is a constant.
The Oldest Member is almost invariably the star of the show but barely a story passes without telling us something profound about ourselves – all encased within quintessentially English silliness and frippery.
Famed for his “Rabbit” Angstrom, a Pulitzer Prize winning series, he is as average a golfer – his best ever handicap was 18 – as he is a great writer.
But his love of the game is perfectly encapsulated in this wise and hilarious collection of 30 essays in three parts, ‘Learning the Game’, ‘Playing the Game’, and ‘Loving the Game’.
The Daily Telegraph said “Updike has anatomised the greatness of golf with an eloquence only Wodehouse has matched”.
Golf Dreams is worth reading for Updike’s flights of fancy on swing thoughts alone, but its comprehensive and compassionate view of all aspects of this game of the highest highs and lowest lows, makes it a classic.
Not strictly speaking fiction, as Tom Cox draws on his experiences as a junior golfer in Nottinghamshire to weave this wonderful tale of adolescence and discovery.
But anyone who grew up amid golf clubs in the late 1980s and early 1990s will recognise the scene, one Cox describes as a world of male-bonding rituals and curious trousers.
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It is a gloriously entertaining story of messing around in the pro shop, scoffing plates of cheap food, and mammoth stretches of golf that ran almost from dawn until dusk.
It’s a new era for the PGA Tour, with internet savvy players looking to assume the mantle from yesteryear’s fading legends.
Shane Ryan spent 2014 tracking the up-and-coming stars and, even though there are a fresh new crop of players to fawn over now, Chasing the Legends remains as relatable as it was then.
Ryan is to John Feinstein what Rory McIlroy is to Tiger Woods, and it shines through in this thoroughly entertaining inside-the-ropes look at life on the tour.
But Shipnuck’s biography is not simply shock and awe. It is a thoroughly researched account of what makes this enigma tick – and it needs to be in every golf enthusiast’s library.
Few can tell a story better than John Feinstein. Even though it’s 30 years since it was first published, and the game has changed beyond measure, his ability to capture the personalities of those plying their trade on the PGA Tour means A Good Walk Spoiled feels as vivid as ever.
Even though he’s profiling dozens of them, you’ll feel you know the players personally and this is the book that changed everything for golf writing.
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When you’ve finished, the delights of The Majors, Q School, Caddy for Life and The First Major will continue to keep you enthralled.
The meeting of Harry Vardon and Francis Ouimet at the 1913 US Open is the moment when American golf began its inexorable path to dominating the world game.
Here was the five-time Open champion from Britain, and the young American amateur who lived across the road from the course, battling it out for one of the sport’s biggest prizes. Even in the age of telegraph and newsprint, it grabbed the attention of the American sporting public.
Mark Frost details the social and historical contexts of this championship, just a year before the Great War began, as well as forensically describing the event itself, which took place at the Country Club, near Boston.
Crucially, it is just a fantastic story, and one that is richly and engagingly described by Frost, who shows himself to be a superb chronicler.
Once you get through this, don’t miss out on The Match. Frost’s account of the encounter of the fourball between Ben Hogan/Byron Nelson and the amateurs Ken Venturi/Harvey Ward at Cypress Point in the early 1950s is another wonderful account of golf in a bygone age.
Granted, it doesn’t take much to make us pick up a book about a) golf, and b) Dornoch, but in another way that just adds to the expectations.
For many of us, this tiny Highlands town has become a place we think of often and fondly. Proprietorially even. It is to Lorne Rubenstein’s eternal credit, then, that he captures the spirit of the links and the region so accurately.
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A Season of Dornoch details Rubenstein’s return to the north-east corner of Scotland to spend the summer in a place he had visited only once before almost a quarter of a century earlier.
Partly a book about golf and partly a book about what knits the people who live in a small, remote settlement together, perhaps Rubenstein’s greatest achievement is to convey the incredible richness of the climate and natural world in the Highlands.
First we appreciate the annual ritual of the days lengthening, the gorse blooming, the conditions softening and the shadows lengthening on those late-spring and early summer evenings when it feels like the days will never end. Then the gradual journey towards the winter sets in as Rubenstein’s time in the Highlands approaches its end.
This page turner is regarded as one of golf’s seminal books. You’ll all know Michael Bamberger now as a venerable golf writer – a true voice of a generation.
Back in 1991, he took a leave of absence from his job as a newspaper sportswriter and jetted off to Europe, along with his newlywed wife, to discover this great game.
He found himself caddying for Peter Teravainen and criss-crossed the continent rubbing shoulders with the greats of European golf.
It’s 30 years since this voyage of discovery first hit the bookshops, and an anniversary edition has a new afterword from the author.
The story of 2023’s tumultuous DP World Tour season from the unique perspective of a veteran tour caddy.
The Secret Caddy started caddying at their local golf club when they should have been at school. Eventually, they ended up caddying on the European Tour (now the DP World Tour), where they have worked ever since.
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The story of their life inside the ropes includes:
Unique insight into the world of a professional tour caddy and what the job of a pro tour caddy entails – from what it’s like to be in contention on the stretch to what happens when things go wrong
A glimpse into what life amongst the best golf players on the planet is really like
A behind-the-scenes look at the tumultuous 2023 DP as it happened in real time
A different view of LIV Golf and the merging of the world’s tours under the PIF
The Covid pandemic was a strange time, wasn’t it? Some of us spent hours jumping around in front of the telly to Joe Wicks or hitting plastic balls into a newly bought net in our back yards.
Sam Cooper decided to go on a road trip. It wasn’t just any old journey. With a set of clubs, a camper van, wife Harriet and their dogs, they spent the next two years visiting every one of Great Britain’s 225 links courses.
He is now chronicling the experience in Links from the Road. Starting from his Hoylake home, he is recounting his adventures in 18 volumes. With detailed essays of each course, beautifully accompanied by Sam’s own photos and illustrations from Will Eager, Links from the Road will build into the definitive account of the links treasures of England, Scotland and Wales.
The first volume, covering The Wirral, Liverpool and Southport, is available now with further editions coming every quarter.
The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses: Great Britain & Ireland (Tom Doak)
The original guide, written by Tom Doak for friends in the early 1990s, achieved notoriety for a bluntness about golf courses that was both withering and wry.
For those not well versed in the measures of strategic, penal and heroic holes, who might not necessarily be comfortable talking about topography, what this revised first volume does is break down, in quite simple terms, whether a course is worth playing.
That makes it a highly valuable travel guide, but Doak also discusses the architectural merits of each course featured and why certain holes – like the famous 1st tee at Machrihanish for example – came into being and are so special.
Time has blunted his sword to an extent, but when he feels a course isn’t worth playing he’s still not afraid to say so – cue his now infamous criticisms of the Castle course at St Andrews, a course that he gave 0 out of 10. That makes him a voice of truth in a cluttered marketplace.
So if you want to know where to play, and why, this book simply has to be among those on your golf shelf.
Alister MacKenzie’s decision to swap medicine for golf course architecture can be linked to his strong conviction that golf had very real benefits for patients.
He famously said: “How frequently have I, with great difficulty, persuaded patients who were never off my doorstep to take up golf, and how rarely, if ever, have I seen them in my consulting rooms again!”
The man who started his design career at Alwoodley in Leeds and went on to create the likes of Augusta National, Cypress Point and Royal Melbourne believed that the Old Course at St Andrews embodied everything that was significant about golf course architecture and here he explains its many virtues.
He also goes much further, sharing his own design principles and what it is that makes a course worth playing.
It’s all written in a digestible style, his language precise and free from jargon. And he’s discussing universal topics. Yes, the length the golf ball travelled was even a thing back in the 1930s.
For anyone interested in scratching the surface of golf course architecture, and learning more about one of the greatest designers in the game’s history, The Spirit of St Andrews is essential reading.
The Golf Courses of the British Isles (Bernard Darwin)
Some books are just utterly timeless. Bernard Darwin’s account of the major courses in Great Britain & Ireland – an early 20th century rankings list if you will – isn’t just a jaunty trawl down memory lane. Much of what he says about some classic layouts remains as relevant today as they were a century ago
That said, the joy in this volume is in Darwin’s beautifully detailed descriptions, and his marvellous anecdotes, delivered in a style that was beloved by readers of The Times for half a century. You almost feel like you’re on the course with him or in that railway carriage as he embarks on another factfinding mission.
Harry Rountree’s illustrations became instant collector’s items and there’s a reason why first editions now cost hundreds of pounds to pick up.
The Lost Art of Golf series (Gary Nicol and Karl Morris)
Declaration of interest: We have edited these books, writes Dan Murphy.
Over the years, you might be surprised to learn how many people have approached me with their ideas for golf books and I can tell you that my heart sinks every time. That was the case when I first chatted to Gary Nicol, the long-time coach on tour who is based at Archerfield. I’d known Gary a while so I was happy to hear him out. That’s all it was going to be, but then he took me outside and handed me a putter and a ball and asked me to hit a putt.
“Where to?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said.
“How odd,” I thought, and clacked the putt across the green, while Gary recorded the action, such as it was, on his phone.
“How did that feel?”
“Um, fine,” I said. When I thought about it later, I realised it had come off flush. But we never think about putting in terms of ball-striking, do we?
“Now hit another putt and see how close you can get it to the first one.”
I went through my pre-shot routine, took aim and rolled it to within 18 inches.
“How did that feel?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
“Well, it looked different.”
“What do you mean?
“Let me show you.”
It was instantly apparent that the stroke on the first putt was freer and smoother; you could see how my forearms had tensed up during the second putt. Embarrassingly, I was still judging and lining the putt up while I was over the ball, which makes you wonder exactly what my pre-shot routine was achieving.
“Imagine,” said Gary, “if you could hit every putt with as much freedom and flow as you did your first one.”
I’ve been working on it ever since.
There’s an awful lot more to The Lost Art of Putting, and its stablemates The Lost Art of Playing Golf and The Lost Art of The Short Game. All three have the power to change fundamentally the way you go about your golf.
Five lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf (Ben Hogan)
Anthony Ravielli’s illustrations are sensational, bringing Hogan alive more than 60 years after it was published and long after the great man’s death.
Who doesn’t dream of swinging like Ben – a movement that was a combination of both grace and brutish power (and if you don’t believe me, check out videos of that transition on YouTube)?
Hogan, of course, was a notorious perfectionist – a man who would quite happily spend all day, every day, beating balls to fine tune strike and rhythm.
And he applies the same fundamentals to his lessons. If you’ve ever wanted to know exactly how you should grip the club, for example, it’s covered in nearly 20 pages.
If this book can’t help you shore up some of your fundamentals, perhaps you should consider trying another game.
Golf Is Not A Game of Perfect (Bob Rotella and Bob Cullen)
Get out of your own way. Have fun and focus your mind on every shot. Learn to love the challenge. These self-help instructions can be found in almost any golf book focusing on what goes on in our minds.
But back in 2004, when Dr Bob Rotella published Golf Is Not A Game of Perfect, these lessons were revolutionary and transformed the careers of some names that are now legendary.
Nick Price, Brad Faxon, Tom Kite, and later, Padraig Harrington and Darren Clarke, can all attribute significant success to working with the ‘Doc’ and you can too.
The beauty of Rotella’s delivery isn’t so much in what he’s saying – although it’s compelling content – it’s how says it. You can visualise exactly what he wants you to do, as if he was in the living room with you.
While some elements of the book have dated in the two decades since its publication – Rotella wasn’t averse to dropping a name or two to reinforce his message – the messages remains just as intact and relevant.
The success of Golf Is Not A Game of Perfect spawned a successful series, but this remains the quintessential golf self help book.
A classic in the world of golf literature, “Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book” is a timeless collection of golf wisdom from one of the game’s legendary instructors.
Penick imparts his knowledge in a simple and easy-to-understand manner, covering everything from swing fundamentals to course management. This book is a must-read for golfers of all skill levels.
Listen to The NCG Golf Podcast episode on golf books
Steve Carroll and Tom Irwin go into much more detail about some of their best golf books and why they like them so much. It’s an interesting listen if you’ve still got presents to buy!
Now have your say on the best books for golf
What do you think of our list of the best golf books? What have we missed? What would you include? What is the best book on golf? Let us know by leaving us a comment on X.
