There are many books that detail the lone golfer's ever-failing battles with the golf course. While Fluffed Chips Shouldn't Count again shows how the courses, despite their different natures and settings, continue to triumph, it also shows there is much solace in the companionship of good friends who frequently suffer similar fates. Fluffed Chips Shouldn't Count traces the developing friendship of four aspiring golfers over a period of forty years when they met while working in Nassau in those idyllic Bahamian islands. Between the years of 1972 to 1980, they somehow scraped through (sometimes literally) a long initiation at the hands of the brutal Coral Harbour Golf Course (RIP) and became firm friends. In the late 1970s, they returned to their native lands and became involved in the chores of domesticity and fatherhood. But the friendships were strong and survived distance and time, and in 1994, with the obligations of family waning slightly, they met again to play golf in Scotland. Such was their enjoyment and renewed camaraderie that they made a commitment to meet and play every two years in different parts of the world. In that period, from 1994 to the present, they have played in England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, America, and the Bahamas. They have aged and become more realistic about their golfing abilities, but they remain unbowed, and Chris still harbours hopes of turning pro.

Every player has beaten balls on the driving range working on his or her game, either alone or with a teacher. Everyone has paged through a copy of Golf Digest looking for the latest tip. Or watched an instructional video looking for the easiest way to lower scores. But all of that access to top-tier instruction, video swing analysis and game improving equipment hasn't made golfers any better as a group. The average handicap hasn't budged in 30 years. It's still the same 19.1. Why? Because the information is being delivered inefficiently-even if it's ideally suited to the player. Any player from beginner to aspiring tour player can improve in a much more direct and enjoyable way using a time-tested and results-proven method backed by cutting-edge research in human learning and brain function. It's a technique used by the Marine Corps, Harvard Business School and the NBA. Unlike the dozens of other instruction books that come out every year, Real Golf isn't a collection of mechanical adjustments, tips and drills. It is a complete guide to sorting, evaluating and successfully integrating the instruction players are already receiving from a teacher, magazine, book or a video. It is instruction on how to use instruction. Using the sophisticated, personalized self-scrimmage strategies detailed in the book, players can make dramatic scoring breakthroughs immediately, and see massive handicap improvement in eight to 10 weeks. Most players improve their game to a point, then stall at a certain handicap. The scores they shoot stubbornly cluster in five or six shot comfort zone. Real Golf is rooted in cutting edge research on human behavior and learning, but the results aren't theoretical. Joe Bosco has been developing these techniques for nearly 20 years as an award-winning golf instructor in the Chicagoland area. Trained by a high-level management consultant, Bosco has built his reputation as a complete game teacher. In addition to teaching alongside Stan Utley-who will write the foreword to the book-Hank Haney and Mike Adams, Bosco has helped dozens of competitive players earn club championships and Division I scholarships. A nominee for Golf Magazine's 2012 Top 100 Teachers list, Bosco has led the North Shore Country Day Raiders boys' golf team to the last two state championships, and has personally coached seven individual high school state champions in the state of Illinois. Many of the techniques shared in Real Golf have been incubated in Bosco's high-performance "golf classroom" for junior players. He is also a regional board member of the Positive Coaching Alliance-a non-profit organization dedicated to helping youth and high school athletes receive a character-building and positive sports experience.

There is little doubt that most average golfers have too many "swing thoughts" swirling around in their heads when preparing to hit a golf ball. Our natural desire to analyze, dissect and try to improve on everything we do and often overthink something which should be natural has resulted in much golf instruction being just too complicated. Having a mental picture of a good golf swing as a "swinging motion" from start to finish is a positive thought but trying to break that movement down into dozens of parts just doesn't work. In this book I have tried to limit conscious thoughts as much as possible by focusing on the three necessary basics of GRIP, ALIGNMENT and POSTURE at address and the three basics of CORRECT WRIST HINGE, ROTATION OF THE ARMS though the impact area and GETTING OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY through to a finish position. You will read nothing about "swing plane" "spine angle" in this book but will instead learn to let the various body parts react to the swinging motion of the golf club. "Club focused" instruction is not new and was described some ninety years ago by the great teacher Earnest Jones in his book "Swing the Clubhead." This very simple and uncomplicated way to learn to swing a golf club has since been modernized by Manual de la Torre and Jim Flick and a growing number of younger instructors. The idea of simply training the body to react and respond to the "swinging motion" of the golf club will be dismissed by many as being just too simple. After all, golf is not supposed to be simple. I agree that It is necessary to learn to hold the golf club in a way that will get the best results, line up toward the target and have reasonably athletic posture but after that there should be little need for conscious thought of where certain body parts are as the golf club is swung back and through toward a green or fairway. If you are frustrated and tired of trying to remember all those memorized body positions and "swing planes" you read about, see on TV or may have been told were necessary, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE SOURCE OF INFORMATION IN PRINT ON THE MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIPS OF GOLF This is the ninth book by Alun Evans on Golf's four biggest events - the Masters, The US Open, The Open Championship and the PGA of America Championship since the original, now comparatively scratchy, survey saw the light of day in 1998. In order to make the review as close to an annual update as possible, much material form older editions has been omitted to save space and to keep costs down. For those readers who want to know about the first 150 years of Majors in detail, ie from 1860 to 2010, you are pointed to the jam-packed 750 pages of the author's From Old Tom to the Tiger, which was nominated in 2012 for the British Sports Book of the Year. The years 2011 and 2012 are covered in depth in the author's year books of 2012 and 2013, now suitably discounted, of course. Alun Evans' Golf Majors Book, 2014 does exactly as it says on the tin. It covers in detail the Majors of 2013, when Adam Scott deservedly won his first Major at the Masters; Justin Rose became the first Englishman to win the US Open since Tony Jacklin in 1970; Phil Mickelson at last added the Old Claret Jug to his portfolio; and super-cool Jason Dufner mugged everyone at Oak Hill to collect the PGA Championship - and, like Scott and Rose, became a Major Champion for the first time. Details can be found in this edition of the golf courses to be used in the 2014 round of Majors, based on first-hand information gleaned from the host sites and/or the organizing committees of each. Particularly of interest in 2014 will be the back-to-basic topography of Donald Ross' Pinehurst No2 in the US Open after the Coore and Crenshaw overhaul. And of course, there are the Records. Fully updated stats and full players' records are to be found for those appearing in the 21st Century; plus the expected CVs of those greats of golf who became Major Champions before the change in millennium and the Hall of Fame compiles for comparison the records of the top 100 performers in Majors.