The incredible true story of Tiger Woods's dramatic return to glory at the 2019 Masters following his humbling and very public personal, physical, and professional setbacks. One publicly imploded marriage. Two car accidents. Eight surgeries. And now, a miracle of hard work and storied talent: five Masters wins. Once hailed as "the greatest closer in history" before he fell further than any beloved athlete in America's memory, Tiger swung at the world's wildest expectations and beat all the skeptics by earning an unlikely fifth green jacket in April 2019. Roaring Back chronicles his road to Augusta and the improbable, phenomenal comeback of one of the greatest golfers in history. New York Times bestselling author Curt Sampson details the highs and lows of Woods' career in four gripping acts. Beginning with his stunning arrival at the 1997 Masters and culminating with his dramatic, come-from-behind victory to secure his fifth green jacket, Sampson traces Tiger's extraordinary arc to include his startling loss at the 2009 PGA Championship, his detrimental obsession with his swing, his innumerable injuries, and the infamous late-November night involving a furious ex-wife and a nine-iron. Featuring exclusive interviews with past instructors, caddies, notable golf scribes, Augusta locals, and PGA tour peers, and gleaning insight from valuable secondary sources, Roaring Back places Tiger's comeback in context with the greatest in golf's rich history. In the end, Roaring Back finds the forty-four-year-old golfer alone on Augusta's eighteenth green as he achieves victory against all odds. As this enthralling book reveals, Tiger Woods never doubted the perseverance of the winner he saw in the mirror. Read it to find out how.

The most outspoken and combative coach in NBA history--and one of the most successful, amassing more than 1,175 victories, the sixth best winning record ever--reflects on his life, his career, and his battles on and off the basketball court in this no-holds-barred memoir A man of deep passion and intensity, George Karl earned his bad boy reputation while playing at the University of North Carolina, a rap that continued through the five years he spent with the San Antonio Spurs--and long after he stopped playing. Karl's beery nights, fistfights, and barking followed him into a thirty-five-year coaching career. In a game defined by big stakes and bigger egos, rabid fans and an unforgiving media, Karl was hired and fired a dozen times. After leading a team beset by injuries and with no superstar to its best season of all time--an achievement that earned Karl the title NBA Coach of the Year--he was dumped by the Denver Nuggets in 2013. Less than a year and a half later, Karl was at the helm of the Sacramento Kings, snarling and bellowing on the sidelines before being cut loose in May 2016. Intense, obstinate, and loud, Karl has never backed down from a confrontation, whether with management, officials, or star players, as NBA legends from Allan Iverson to Gary Payton to Carmelo Anthony to Demarcus Cousins can attest. Telling his story, Karl holds nothing back as he speaks out about the game that has defined his life, including the greed, selfishness, and ass-covering he believes are characteristic of the modern NBA player, and the rampant corruption that leads all the way to the office of the NBA commissioner, David Stern. Karl also reveals how he's learned to deal with the personalities, the pressure, and the setbacks with a resilience he acquired from his three bouts with cancer. Raw, hard-hitting, and brutally honest, Furious George is as thrilling, unpredictable, and entertaining as the game that has defined Karl's life.

Of all the games ever played in a sporting competition, never has an event been so bizarre and yet so fitting for its historical moment: the 1968 Masters. Anger gripped America's heart in April 1968. Vietnam and a bitter presidential contest sharpened the divides between races and generations, while protests and violence poisened the air. Then an assassin's bullet took the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Cities burned. The smoke had barely cleared when the Masters began. Never was the country more ready for distraction and escape--but could the orderly annual excitement of Palmer versus Nicklaus provide it? For a while, it could and it did--except that instead of a duel between golf's superstars, several unlikely members of the chorus stepped forward with once-in-a-lifetime performances. There was blunt-talking Bob Goalby, a truck driver's son from Illinois and former star football player; loveable Roberto De Vicenzo from Argentina, who charmed the galleries and media all week; and Bert Yancey, a Floridian who'd dropped out of West Point to face his private demons of mental illness. Just as the competition reached a thrilling crescendo, it all fell apart. The Masters, the best-run tournament in the world, devolved into a heart-wrenching tangle of rules, responsibility, and technicality. In a fascinating narrative that stops in Augusta, Buenos Aires, and Belleville, Illinois, bestselling author Curt Sampson finds the truth behind The Lost Masters. It's a story you'll never forget.

All eat from the bowl of life -- Tiger Woods just has a bigger spoon.

So writes Curt Sampson in his groundbreaking account of the current state of golf and the man who changed the game forever -- Tiger Woods. With a mix of power, skill, and business savvy, Woods has become the biggest sports figure since Michael Jordan, wielding a competitive edge of equal parts inspiration and intimidation. As for the rest of the golfing world -- including other players, junior golfers and their parents, corporate America, agents, instructors, fans, and the media -- it's either catch up or give up.

As in his controversial bestsellers "Hogan" and "The Masters," Sampson digs deep to tell stories that wouldn't otherwise be told. From the Austin golf course worker whose admiration for Woods leads him to spend every waking minute mimicking him, to the unemployed talk show host whose website stretches the bounds of hero worship, to the other end of the scale, where up-and-coming pro Charles Howell III -- tapped by Nicklaus to be the next great challenge to Woods -- continues to close the gap.

By turns moving, hilarious, and eye-opening, Chasing Tiger is an affectionate yet wary account of one extraordinary man's impact on the world of sports, and the game of golf as it moves into a new era.

Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Ben Crenshaw, Judy Rankin, Tom Kite, Fred Cobb, Harvey Penick, Babe Zaharias, Lee Trevino...the list of Texas golf legends reads like the leader board of an imaginary 20th-Century Golf Greats Invitational. The Lone Star State has spawned more than its share of golf heroes, and fifty of the best are featured in this collection of portraits and interviews. Milosevich deftly illustrates each golfer with compelling head-and-shoulder portraits and action views. Sampson's brief vignettes of the golfers capture the dramatic incidents and illuminating details that help make each person a legend on and off the links. Ben Crenshaw: nineteen eighty-six Buick Open, thirteenth hole, final round. Again Crenshaw is fighting to hold a one shot lead, but he hits a wild four-iron second shot on this par five that stops against the trunk of a tree. He has no shotor does he? 'My only shot was with a nine iron, upside downleft handed' says Crenshaw. He hits the damnedest pressure shot anyone has ever seen: from forty yards and between trees, Crenshaw's left-handed hack stops four feet from the hole. He makes the birdie putt, of course, and wins the tournament. Lee Trevino: on the first tee, a laughing Trevino held up a rubber snake he kept in his golf bag. The gallery laughed too, feeling the same release from the drama and tension of the moment that Trevino did. Nicklaus sat quietly, at the back of the tee on a spectator's chair while his mugging opponent dangled the toy reptile at the end of the club. Nicklaus joined in the merrimenthe asked to see the fake snake, then flung it back to Trevinobut his smile seemed forced. Trevino won the playoff [with Nicklaus], sixty-eight to seventy-one, for his second US Open title. Three weeks later he won the Canadian Open and the week after that, the British Open. Tom Kite: What would Kite hit? Surely he would play away from the water, with a two or three iron. Perhaps he would gamble and hit a three wood. He looked at his caddy, Mike Carrick. 'What do you think about a driver?' he said. The color drained from Carrick's face. Wind billowed the legs of Kite's grey pants as he got set to hit. 'It's a driver!' whispered the television announcer. He nailed it...'Best swing I made all day', said Kite to no one in particular as he walked off the tee. Harvey Penick: Dave Marr calls him 'one of God's people'. He is indeed a gentle man, this patriarch of Texas golf, but he is also humorous and sly. ""I'd like you to meet Mr. Ammanex', Penick says, as a confused-looking member introduces himself as Roane Puett. Ammanex? 'Well, whenever I see you, you say, 'Am I next?"" explains Penick. How are you today, Mr. Penick? asks another member, loudly compensating for the old gentleman's hearing loss. 'I'm Mister Penick's son Harvey', he deadpans, not answering the question. 'Babe' Zaharias: 'I remember playing in one of those first tournaments with Babe, and I was nervous', recalls Marilynn Smith. 'So Babe put her arm around me on the first tee and said in a loud voice, I always like playing golf with you Smitty. You really bring out the crowds'. The gallery laughed, of course. They were there to see the Babe. But the humor relieved Smith's tension and made her a Zaharias fan for life. When he's not out on the golf course trying to improve his five handicap, Paul Milosevich is in front of an easel sketching, drawing, or painting. A thirty-year retrospective of his work, ""Out of the Ordinary"", was published in 1991 by Texas Tech University Press. Curt Sampson was 'broke and disgusted' at the end of a four-year stint as a club and touring pro. So he traded in the trials and tribulations of a golf pro for the woes of a writer, thankful that he can stay close to the game he loves. He is a frequent contributor to national golf magazines and the author of ""The Eternal Summer"". Each collector's edition is prefaced with signature pages bearing original ink signatures of more than two dozen golfers, including Tom Kite, Judy Rankin, Ben Crenshaw, Sandra Haynie, Byron Nelson, Kathy Whitworth, and Dan Jenkins. ""The Eagle Edition"" is a handsome book and slipcase of hunter green accented with gold stamping. These fifty numbered books are signed by twenty-three golfers, including Ben Hogan and Harvey Penick, and each book is priced at $750. ""The Legends Edition"" is bound in smoke blue with silver stamping on the slipcase. This edition of 398 numbered books is signed by twenty-nine golfers and each book is priced at $350.

Ben Hogan won four U.S. Opens in six years, three of them after a near-fatal head-on automobile collision. Driven by an obsessive dedication to the game, legend has it, he practiced until his hands bled. The concentration and precision he exhibited on the course awed spectators and fellow players alike.



In this extraordinary book--the first full-scale biography of the enigmatic Hogan in twenty years--Curt Sampson explores the milestones of Hogan's life--his father's suicide, his miraculous comeback after his brush with death, his many triumphs on the Tour. Sampson draws on interviews with fellow golf legends Byron Nelson, Jack Nicklaus, and Sam Snead to present an in-depth portrait of a man with bullet-proof confidence and singlemindedness, a man who turned the negatives he encountered into a life of glory and achievement.