Review by Booklist Review
New books about the Masters, golf's annual rite of spring, always get fans' juices flowing, and this year brings a particularly satisfying entry. Barrett's year-by-year chronicle of the tournament focuses almost exclusively on the on-course drama, from 1933 through 2020, with three-to-four-page chapters detailing the action. Most golfers are familiar with the landmark moments (Jack Nicklaus' come-from-behind win in 1986 at age 46, Tiger Woods' stunning debut in 1997, Woods' equally remarkable comeback from injury in 2019), but the real pleasure in Barrett's account comes from the way he shows the narrative flow of the tournament over the years (from the Nelson-Hogan-Snead era in the '40s and '50s, through the even-more-dominant Player-Palmer-Nicklaus years in the following two decades, and on to the dominance of international players in the '80s and early '90s (Ballesteros, Faldo, Olazábal), and finally the emergence of Woods and Phil Mickelson in the late '90s and 2000s). Fans will also glean from the yearly recaps a strong sense of the countless near-misses and fluky turns of fate that so often determine who's where on the final leaderboard. An ideal warm-up for another golf season.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Golf writer Barrett (Miracle at Merion) draws on his decades of experience covering the Masters in this intelligent yet perfunctory account. He begins in 1934, when the only attendees were cofounder Bobby Jones's closest friends, and continues through the rise of star golfers Arnold Palmer in the late 1950s, Jack Nicklaus in the 1970s, and contemporary up-and-comers Bubba Watson and Jordan Spieth. Barrett also notes the emergence of international golfers in the 1980s, including Spaniard Seve Ballesteros, who took the title in 1980 and 1983. In recounting Tiger Woods's legendary 1997 win, Barrett quotes Woods's competitor, Nicklaus: "This kid is absolutely the most fundamentally sound golfer that I have seen." Readers hoping for an examination of the tournament's troubled history with race will be disappointed; while Barrett notes the significance of Lee Elder, who in 1975 became the first Black man to play in the Masters, he overlooks an infamous statement attributed to Clifford Roberts, cofounder and longtime chairman of the Masters, that "as long as I'm alive, all golfers will be white and all caddies will be Black." Similarly, Barrett skims over the fact that female players weren't allowed to compete until 2012. This is a decent enough survey of the tournament, but it doesn't break new ground. (Mar.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
