Title/Author:
“Walking with Tigers” by John Black
Tags:
Golf, professional, biography
Publish date:
January 4, 2018
Length:
246 pages
Rating:
5 of 5 stars (Outstanding)
Review:
Qualifying for the
Professional Golfers Association (PGA) Tour can be one of the most difficult
challenges in sports. Almost as difficult once a golfer gets there is to maintain that spot. Joel Dahmen lived through this and his adventure is chronicled in this informative and entertaining book by John
Black.
The book starts at the last hole of the Web.com qualifying rounds at the end of the 2016 season. A golfer must place in the top 25 spots of this playoff format in order to qualify for the PGA Tour. Joel qualified when another golfer missed a birdie putt and finished just behind Dahmen. It was a lifetime dream for Dahmen – he had survived testicular cancer as had his brother and they lost their mother Jolyn to pancreatic cancer. While this helped him place the game of golf in the proper perspective, it was nonetheless a time to celebrate for Dahmen and his longtime caddie Geno Bonnalie.
However, life on the
PGA tour was not the same glamourous life for Dahmen and his girlfriend Lona
Skutt as it was for the top players, called “Tigers” throughout the book. They had to scramble for travel and accommodations
frequently. When Joel failed to make a
cut, that meant he wasn’t paid and when he was struggling the money was
tight. When Joel finally brought home
his first check, Lorna was able to not only pay the bills but also to make
their “first major purchase…a vacuum cleaner.”
Reading that passage, and many others like that one, makes the book one
that will entertain as well as inform.
As much as Dahmen had to scurry for these accommodations, it was even more so for Bonnalie. While money was a little easier for him and his wife Holly because she had a good paying job, Geno still tried to keep his expenses to a minimum as he would only be able to earn a share of Dahmen’s earnings. His thriftiness on travel and lodging expenses were legendary. The flights Bonnalie would book when he traveled from his hometown of Lewiston, Idaho would often take strange paths for connections. These would become the “Lewiston Flightmare”.
But through it all,
both golfer and caddie were enjoying the experience tremendously. The book takes the reader through each
tourney they entered, the good shots and the bad ones and has a short write-up
about the winner at each one of them, whether or not it was a “Tiger” or
another golfer just trying to earn a good paycheck for the week. The golf writing is superb in the book as the
reader will feel the emotions of every shot, good and bad. The descriptions of the course, lie of the
ball, putts, even the gallery when an errant ball struck a spectator – all of
them are richly illustrated by the author’s talent. As for walking with a “Tiger”,
the best story of these is when Joel was playing in the same group as Dustin
Johnson, who was the top ranked player in the world at the time, and was
matching him shot for shot – easily the best experience Dahmen and Bonnalie had
on the 2017 Tour.
A golfer has to place
in the top 125 of the FedEx Cup standings in order to be assured a spot on the
PGA Tour for the next year. If a PGA
tour golfer fails to do so, then he must quality in the Web.com playoffs –
which is how Dahmen qualified in 2016 and because he was outside the top 125
golfers, he had to do again at the end of 2017.
This can be just as stressful as any tourney and this time, Joel was able
to qualify without needing a missed putt by another golfer.
This book is a
wonderful account of the ups and downs of a young golfer trying to succeed in
the grind of the PGA tour without a lot of the fancy perks that are provided to
the “Tigers”. The reader will close the book smiling for Joel Dahmen and Geno
Bonnalie and will be rooting hard for Joel to become one of the” Tigers”.
I wish to thank Black
Rose Writing for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an
honest review.
Format Read:
E-book (Kindle)
Buying
Links:
Thank you for the wonderful review, we are excited you loved this book!
ReplyDeleteIt is obvious to me that the author is both a dedicated golfer and writer. In my opinion, he takes writing about golf and the struggle to succeed to a whole new level.
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