Kurzbeschreibung

A hilarious golf memoir recounts the author's return to the fairways after quitting the game in college and waiting more than thirty years and into middle age before returning to the sport, describing how he purchased a set of clubs, joined a country club, practiced for eighteen long months, and agreed to compete in a tournament against much more talented players.

Beschreibung

Bestselling author Carl Hiaasen wisely quit golfing in 1973. But some ambitions refuse to die, and as the years passed and the memories of slices and hooks faded, it dawned on Carl that there might be one thing in life he could do better in middle age than he could as a youth. So gradually he ventured back to the rolling, frustrating green hills of the golf course, where he ultimately - and foolishly - agreed to compete in a country-club tournament against players who can actually hit the ball. Filled with harrowing divots, deadly doglegs, and excruciating sandtraps, The Downhill Lie is a hilarious chronicle of mis-adventure that will have you rolling with laughter.

Rezension

"An extraordinary book for the ordinary hacker." - The New York Times "With biting humor and painfully honest self-humiliation, Hiaasen describes his 1-1 / 2-year journey into one of Dante's inner circles of hell." - The Christian Science Monitor "A cleverly written, witty and sometimes wistful look at golf, marriage, human nature and life." - The Tampa Tribune "Hiaasen's hilarious misadventures on the golf course are all too familiar to anyone who has ever flailed at the ball in futile attempts to conquer a sport that mercilessly strips us of our dignity." - The New York Times Book Review "The foibles and embarrassments, as well as the joys, of casual and tournament golf ring true....Golfers should love this book." - Rocky Mountain News "Memoir is new territory for him, but Hiaasen is Hiaasen. Fans of his bizarro novels will find his irony and sense of humor remain unaffected on the links." - The Florida Times-Union "A return by Hiaasen to his best with the sport of golf providing the venue for his unique wit and biting humor.... You'll have many laugh-out-loud moments.... If you've never read Carl Hiaasen... if you have read him before, this is a wonderful return to the magic (albeit voodoo) that is Carl Hiaasen." - Decatur Daily "...[Hiaasen's] insights into the insane lengths a golfer will go to in hopes of a lower score are always entertaining. If you've been bitten by the golf bug, you'll appreciate every moment of Hiaasen's magnificent obsession. If you haven't, read The Downhill Lie and laugh at those of us who have." - Howard Shirley, Bookpage "Golfers in general tend to be self-critical, but Mr. Hiaasen is a self-lacerator. He doesn't curse or throw his clubs, but he sighs a lot and asks existential questions like, "Why do we do this?" and "Why are we out here?" He plays the way you imagine Samuel Beckett might have played. He can't go on, but he goes on." - Charles McGrath, New York Times "His analysis of his lessons, hapless rounds and gimmicky golf equipment is hilarious, and his vivid descriptions are vintage Hiaasen . . . With the satirically skilled Hiaasen, who rarely breaks 90 on the links, this narrative is an enjoyable ride." - Publishers Weekly "It has taken Carl Hiaasen to capture the essence of a game that, like the bagpipes and the kilt, was invented by the Irish and given to the Scots as a joke. Carl's dementia is kind of exquisite. He lampoons the most banal aspects of stodgy blue-blooded American country-club life. The simple act of buying a set of clubs gets the full Hiaasen treatment, and the guilt-ridden angst of the triangular love-hate relationship between himself, his drop-dead beautiful Greek wife, and the drop-dead-you-rotten-bastard Scotty Cameron putter she bought him, is alone worth the price of one for yourself and another for Father's Day." - David Feherty

Klappentext

Filled with harrowing divots, deadly doglegs, and excruciating sandtraps, The Downhill Lie is a hilarious chronicle of mis-adventure that will have you rolling with laughter.

Bestselling author Carl Hiaasen wisely quit golfing in 1973. But some ambitions refuse to die, and as the years passed and the memories of slices and hooks faded, it dawned on Carl that there might be one thing in life he could do better in middle age than he could as a youth. So gradually he ventured back to the rolling, frustrating green hills of the golf course, where he ultimately-and foolishly-agreed to compete in a country-club tournament against players who can actually hit the ball.

Auszüge aus dem Buch

In the summer of 2005, I returned to golf after a much needed layoff of thirty-two years.

Attempting a comeback in my fifties wouldn't have been so absurd if I'd been a decent player when I was young, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. At my best, I'd shown occasional flashes of competence. At my worst, I'd been a menace to all carbon-based life-forms on the golf course.

On the day I gave up golfing, I stood six-feet even, weighed a stringy 145 pounds and was in relatively sound physical shape. When I returned to the game, I was half an inch taller, twenty-one pounds heavier and nagged by the following age-related ailments:

- elevated cholesterol;
- a bone spur deep in the right rotator cuff;
- an aching right hip;
- a permanently weakened right knee, due to a badly torn medial
meniscus that was scraped and repaired in February 2003 by the
same orthopedic surgeon who'd once worked on a young professional
quarterback named Dan Marino. (The doctor had assured me that
my injury was no worse than Marino's, then he'd added with a hearty
chuckle, "But you're also not twenty-two years old.")

Other factors besides my knee joint and HDL had changed during my long absence. When I'd abandoned golf in 1973, I had been a happily married father of a two-year-old son. When I returned to the sport in 2005, I was a happily remarried father of a five-year-old son, a fourteen-year-old stepson and a thirty-four-year-old son with three kids of his own. In other words, I was a grandpa.

Over those three busy and productive decades, a normal, well-centered person would have mellowed in the loving glow of the family hearth. Not me. I was just as restless, consumed, unreflective, fatalistic and emotionally unequipped to play golf in my fifties as I was in my teens.

What possesses a man to return in midlife to a game at which he'd never excelled in his prime, and which in fact had dealt him mostly failure, angst and exasperation?

Here's why I did it: I'm one sick bastard.

The Last Waltz

My first taste of golf was as a shag caddy for my father. He often practiced hitting wedges in our front yard, and I'd put on my baseball glove and play outfield.

Dad seemed genuinely happy when I finally asked to take golf lessons. I was perhaps eleven or twelve, too young to realize that my disposition was ill-suited to a recreation that requires infinite patience and eternal optimism.

The club pro was Harold Perry, a pleasant fellow and a solid teacher. He said I had a natural swing, which, I've since learned, is what pros always say at your first lesson. It's more merciful than: "You'd have a brighter future chopping cane."

The early sessions did seem to go well, and Harold was en- couraging. As time passed, however, he began chain-smoking heavily during our lessons, which suggested to me the existence of a chronic problem for which Harold had no solution. The problem was largely in my head, and fell under the clinical heading of Wildly Unrealistic Expectations.

My first major mistake was prematurely asking to join my father for nine holes, a brisk Sunday outing during which I unraveled like a crackhead at a Billy Graham crusade. This was because I'd foolishly expected to advance the golf ball down the fairway in a linear path. The experience was marred by angry tears, muffled profanities and long, brittle periods of silence. Worse, a pattern was established that would continue throughout the years that Dad and I played together.

Golfers like maxims, and here's a good one: Beginners should never be paired with good players, especially if the good player is one's own father.

The harder I tried, the uglier it got. To say that I didn't bear my pain sto