Q&A With Bob Smiley

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Bob Smiley is a television writer moonlighting in the world of golf literature, producing an entertaining new book on his pursuit to watch every hole Tiger Woods played in 2008.

Released today by HarperCollins, Follow The Roar is a fresh and decidedly novel approach to the genre of golf books where an author takes us inside the ropes for a year. Smiley was mostly outside the ropes and media centers (explaining his clear eyes and thin physique), yet he captures so many entertaining moments in Tiger's epic half-season.

The impressively produced book features end sheets with all of Bob's tickets along with a lavish photo insert that includes several indelible images taken by some of the best in the business.

Bob hosts his own blog here, and kindly answered a few questions about the book.


GEOFF: The idea for Follow The Roar really started with an email from an ESPN.com reader?

BOB: It really did.  During the 2nd round of last year's Target (now Chevron) World Challenge, I decided to dive into Tiger's mob for the day and write about the experience.  I'd seen Tiger play at Riviera a couple times, but never from start to finish.  I stuck with him from the second he stepped out of his beige Buick Enclave until he signed his card for a tournament-record 62.  The piece triggered a wave of response from golf fans who had braved crowds to see Tiger and loved reliving the experience or those who had never seen him in person and wished they'd been there.  Buried in the emails was a woman who asked me whether I would be following Tiger the whole year.  It was a ridiculous idea.  Until I realized it was a brilliant idea.
 

GEOFF: And when did the book deal come into play?

BOB:  Twenty-four hours before Tiger began his season.  I was up early and starting to pack for the trip to the Buick Invitational in January when the news came through that HarperCollins had made an offer on my book proposal to help me do this.  I would have gone to San Diego with or without a deal and chronicled the tournament.  But the following week Tiger would be in Dubai, and that would have been a little tough without some outside help.
 

GEOFF: An accountant friend had you not making it past July without going broke. I take it you were the one person grateful for Tiger's knee needing major surgery? Or would you rather have continued on?

BOB:  Well my mom thought my airfare budget was way off since, in her mind, Tiger would be letting me travel with him for free on his jet by the end of the year.  But no, I would always have loved to have seen more.  I'd love to know how Tiger would have navigated the wind and rain during the first two rounds of the British Open.  That said, he went out with such a finish at the U.S. Open that it's hard to imagine that even he could top it.  
 

GEOFF: In most instances you were covering him without the aid of a press credential?

BOB: The only press pass I ever received was in Dubai of all places.  And only then because I was surfing around the tournament's website, found an online application for a credential and hit send.  But I'm not a reporter by anyone's definition.  From the beginning, Follow The Roar was always intended to be an everyman's adventure with Tiger and his world.  I wanted every reader to start pick up the book and think, "this could be me."  
 

GEOFF: Do you think it made your quest more uniquely informed because you were viewing him outside the ropes and without the pleasure of free food accompanied by depressing lunch room discussions about the demise of newspapers?

BOB: Inside the ropes or out, most reporters aren't walking 18 holes with any one group.  It's just not a good use of their time.  What that meant for me was there were shots Tiger hit and things he said throughout the season that I know no other writer witnessed or wrote about but I. Being on the outside also meant being free from any journalistic pressure to be impartial and civil.  My feelings about Tiger over the course of the year ran the gamut from disdain to adoration and back again.  
 

GEOFF: Was there a favorite character you encountered along the way?

BOB: In Tucson, I had an extra ticket and put it on Craigslist for free, the one rule being that whoever took it had to follow Tiger and Tiger only with me for the day. No complaining, no long beer lines, no bathroom breaks.  It ended up going to a tough Tucson taxi driver who gave me a free ride to the tourney and broke the ice by showing me the gun he had hidden away in his glove compartment.  
 

GEOFF: Any brushes with Stevie?

BOB:  Nothing a little facial constructive surgery didn't heal.  
 

GEOFF: Have you sent a copy to Tiger? 

BOB: The supremely naive part of me would like to believe that Tiger will bounce out of bed one morning this week, drive to the bookstore and buy it.  The realistic part of me knows that Tiger Woods is so powerful that he probably saw a finished copy before I did. 
 

GEOFF:  Anything you'd like to ask the big guy?

BOB: Plenty. But my guess is that given the opportunity to spend time with the greatest golfer ever, our conversation would quickly devolve into me making swings with an imaginary club and asking him what in the world I'm doing wrong.  

Dodson On Drum

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Jim Dodson recalls the role Bob Drum played in creating the modern grand slam and also offers this, which got me thinking...

Bob Drum continued being, well, Bob Drum -- literally the loudest, largest, hardest-drinking character in the press caravan bumping along the Tour Trail and various by-waters of the game for the next two decades -- until a CBS producer had the crazy idea of making Big Bob Drum the color man on a celebrated broadcast crew that included the likes of Jack Whittaker and Ken Venturi.
Legendary CBS golf producer Frank Chirkinian later told Drum's wife, "M.J., this could be the best idea I've ever done -- or the worst."
Almost overnight, at age 68, however, six-foot-three, 290-pound Bob Drum became a large-than-life TV star -- a mountainous, rumpled, oddly comforting presence who spoke the language of the everyday golf fan. For eight years on a two-minute segment called "The Drummer's Beat," Drum's gruff and salty Everyman commentaries on the vagaries of golf and life in general -- most of which sprang from his oversized head only minutes before airtime and were recorded in one take -- comprised some of the most entertaining moments in golf broadcasting. He was eventually nominated for an Emmy.
Wouldn't it be fun of CBS posted some of these online or even put a DVD together of the best of Bob Drum?

Q&A With Dan Jenkins

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Today marks the launch of The Franchise Babe, the 18th book by Dan Jenkins.

Published by Doubleday, the novel features a new "Sports Magazine" writer so bored with the PGA Tour he heads for the LPGA Tour where life is a lot more exciting. There's no shortage of smoking, drinking, wise-cracking and commentary (the politics lean hard right). Gary Van Sickle noted in this golf.com review, "it’s great to see that Jenkins still has his fastball. He ranks with the best and most influential sportswriters of the 20th century."

Before leaving to cover next week's U.S. Open for Golf Digest, Dan answered a few questions via email.

GS: The Sports Magazine's Jack Brannon is the main dude in The Franchise Babe. He's twice divorced and smokes more than the Universal Studios back lot. So what's happened to the great Jim Tom Pinch of You Gotta Play Hurt and your last two golf novels?

DJ: Jim Tom was Jack's guru and idol. He mentions it. I needed a young guy for this one. Jim Tom's getting up there.
 
GS: The opening quote from Bryan Forbes and some early comments give the impression you aren't going to go easy on the media in this one. Your take on the state of golf coverage?

DJ: I'm not real fond of golf coverage, or the current state of the media. Nobody ever asks the right follow-up question anymore, nobody has a sense of history, nobody wants to "caretake" a sport, young people think golf started with Tiger Woods, for Christ sake. "Babe" hits on some of this.

GS: Do you really prefer watching the LPGA over the PGA Tour these days?

DJ: I don't much like to watch golf anywhere any longer, except in the majors. I do follow the LPGA closer than the PGA Tour on the net, and watch it occasionally, because they've turned cute on us, there's some hot babes out there who also play golf, they aren't too spoiled yet. Yeah, they lack for quotes, but so do the guys. The men's tour sucks. Everybody drives it 340 and shoots 63. I've never heard of half their names, and don't care to know them until they get back to me with two majors. My fee for talking to Tiger Woods is going up every day. I've tried for 10 years to get a one-on-one with him---and can't. Why? Because Mark Steinberg says, "We have nothing to gain."

Can you imagine what the men's tour would look like if Tiger and Phil both suffered career-ending injuries? I'll tell you. It would look like what it looks like today when they aren't in the field. It would increase interest in polo.
 
GS: In skipping a few pages ahead I saw that the commissioner is someone named Marsha Wilson who has a thing for businesspeak. What do you make of all the real LPGA Commish and her branding obsession?

DJ: The real LPGA commish did a few stupid things at first, but she seems to have survived. I've never met her, so the fiction commish is exactly that. Fiction. But obviously inspired by the real one.
 
GS: Besides Feherty, anyone else you like listening to on a televised golf tournament?

DJ: I rarely listen to golf on TV. I still think Miller is good. I like what he does because the pros hate it. Feherty is a very funny guy in person, but I don't hear him enough on the air to have a comment.

GS: Who makes you want to heave one of your old typewriters at the screen?

DJ: I would need hundreds of typewriters to throw at the screen if I watch golf regularly. Every time some slug said that was a great shot when it was ordinary and that somebody was a great player when he hasn't won shit, and every time somebody said what a great golf course it was when the Tour has ruined it and set it up to be a pushover.
 
GS: It's about time for a Tiger-Phil showdown at a major. Maybe Torrey Pines?

DJ: The best thing about the majors is that they're important no matter what. Of course they make more sense when Jack Fleck doesn't win, but they're still historic and important. I don't give a shit whether Tiger recovers form his knee or not, frankly. You'd think he was the only guy who ever had a knee, a baby, or a dead father. Which, I suppose, is another comment on today's media.
 
GS: Are you excited about visiting California, where we treat smokers like lepers?

DJ: I would be more excited about going to California if I was 20 years younger and sitting in the Polo Lounge.

GS: Does the Masters still start on the back nine Sunday?

DJ: The Masters will always start on the back nine Sunday because I said so.

"To me Darwin was to journalism what Arnold Palmer was to golf on television"

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John Hopkins profiles David Normoyle, who has just finished a Cambridge thesis on Bernard Darwin and discusses Darwin's impact.
I asked Normoyle to explain Darwin's continued appeal. "I think it lies in his influence," he replied. "What Herb [Wind] said at the end of his profile in The New Yorker was that he thought Darwin knew more about golf than just about anyone, that he was able to get to the soul of the game that golfers experienced, to identify things that people will take for granted about the game. Peter Ryde [Darwin's successor on The Times] said Darwin's thoughts were held to the glare of daily journalism because he wrote for 50 years and he had to come up with a topic other than how to make three-foot putts. I think Darwin's appeal was a little of both.

"To me Darwin was to journalism what Arnold Palmer was to golf on television," Normoyle continued. "He was the right person in the right place at the right time. In The Times and in Country Life he had educated, interested and sophisticated readers who were willing to take the time to read a Darwin essay. They would understand the cultural references and literary allusions to Sam Weller and Pickwick and Holmes.....and if you knew all these things and you saw them applied to a game of golf then you had a connection to that game that you never had before.

"I think the internet would have been good for him. On the internet you are not confined by space and if he wanted to be indulgent then he could be. If he wanted to create a following of people who wanted long, florid essays full of wit and reverence, he could find the space.

"Darwin would hate modern golf because it is all professional. He would deal with the pseudo amateurs of today who are just training ground professionals. I think he would still enjoy the Walker Cup. I think he would be appalled by the standard of golf at the University matches, including my own. I don't think he saw himself as a writer. I think he saw himself as a member of the golf fraternity who happened to write about golf for a living. He was not an ink-stained wretch. He took a great deal of pride in not understanding the ongoings of Fleet Street and the workings of Printing House Square [where The Times was printed]. But were he around today then I think he would take comfort in the fact that in the world of golf there are still places where fireplaces are welcome and where tea is on the menu."

New Stanley Thompson Book

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It sounds promising...

 Stanley Thompson is one of golf's most acclaimed course architects. Almost a half-century after his death, Thompson's genius is still recognized by the notable position of the courses he crafted in the list of Canada's top-100 courses. He still has more of designs on the list than any other architect.

In honoring Canada's most famous golf course architect, Photoscape Publishing has just released a 192-page, full-color, coffee table-style book. The stories and pictures in "The Golf Courses of Stanley Thompson" provide insight into the methods, techniques and genius of the fabled designer.

Thompson is responsible for four of Canada's top-10 golf courses, twice as many as the next architect. The book provides details on 25 of his courses, including: St. Georges, Highland Links, Jasper Park, Banff Springs, Capilano and Westmount. Each course is showcased in a six-page layout with stories by noted Canadian golf writers and the photography of Mike Bell.

In addition, the book contains a series of 11 two-page mini-essays on the eccentricities of Thompson and the timelessness of his work as described by industry writers. The book is a must for any golf aficionado's library.

Dwyre On Murray

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Bill Dwyre remembers Jim Murray in his Friday column:

When it was time to get to know a new young sports editor in 1981, Murray set up a golf game at Riviera. The new kid didn't play much then and was fairly overwhelmed just standing on the first tee at Riviera. Soon, on the par-five first hole, the group found itself on the green with everybody else putting for five or six and Murray somehow lying three.

His birdie putt was about 50 feet, with one of those Riviera double breaks to start and then a break to the left before flattening out at the hole. Murray, in his late 50s then, but always a bit feeble after battles with eye problems and a malfunctioning heart valve, hunched over his putt, stroked it and watched as it went left, then right, then left again before straightening into the cup. Slowly, he walked to the hole and picked the ball out, then stood silently as the others focused on staying out of double figures.

When all had putted out, he quietly walked to the cart, sat down and waited for his guest to join him. The drive to the second tree was short, but by then, Murray could stand it no longer.

"Sometimes, I miss those left," he said. His huge grin foreshadowed what was to come. He shot 112.