A Course Called Ireland: A Long Walk in Search of a Country, a Pint, and the Next Tee (Hardcover)

by Tom Coyne (Author)

Book Details
* Hardcover: 311 pages
* Publisher: Gotham (February 19, 2009)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 1592404243
* ISBN-13: 978-1592404247
* Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.3 inches
* Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
* Rating:

Book Description
An epic Celtic sojourn in search of ancestors, nostalgia, and the world’s greatest round of golf

In his thirties, married, and staring down impending fatherhood, Tom Coyne was well familiar with the last refuge of the adult male: the golfing trip. Intent on designing a golf trip to end all others, Coyne looked to Ireland, the place where his father had taught him to love the game years before. As he studied a map of the island and plotted his itinerary, it dawned on Coyne that Ireland was ringed with golf holes. The country began to look like one giant round of golf, so Coyne packed up his clubs and set off to play all of it. And since Irish golfers didn’t take golf carts, neither would he. He would walk the entire way.

A Course Called Ireland is the story of a walking- averse golfer who treks his way around an entire country, spending sixteen weeks playing every seaside hole in Ireland and often battling through all four seasons in one Irish afternoon. Coyne plays everything from the top-ranked links in the world to nine-hole courses crowded with livestock. Along the way, he searches out his family’s roots, discovers that a once-poor country has been transformed by an economic boom, and finds that the only thing tougher to escape than Irish sand traps are Irish pubs. By turns hilarious and poetic, A Course Called Ireland is a magnificent tour of a vibrant land and a paean to the world’s greatest game.

A Course Called Ireland Review
Tom Coyne has not added to the landfill of ho-hum Irish travel and golf books. Rather, he has penned 300 pages of interesting, and often hilaroius, insights gleaned from walking more than 1,000 miles in the land of his great-grandparents with golf clubs strapped to his back.

While golfers will find plenty to love in Coyne’s four-month quest to play every one of the Emerald Isle’s links courses, the rest will laugh at his run-ins with mountain goats, Irish sausage and the British Army while gaining a better understanding for a people who have drawn the short straw throughout much of history.

Whether he’s negotiating a sideways rain with a 6 iron in his hands beside the Irish Sea or sitting at a dinner table with distant cousins he has never met, Coyne relays all the redeeming and regretful aspects of his journey with disarming honesty and great feeling.
“A Course Called Ireland” is a pleasure to read and I recommend it highly.

Kindle Edition
A Course Called Ireland (Kindle Edition)