The Dewsweepers: Seasons of Golf and Friendship [Hardcover]

James Dodson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 11, 2001

James Dodson, one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved golf journalists of all time, tells the story of an eclectic, eccentric group of men who call themselves the Dewsweepers-so named because they are the first players off the tee every weekend morning at an old club in upstate New York. "Adopted" by the Dewsweepers, Dodson sets out through the seasons of one all-too-brief golf year to try and get back in touch with the simpler joys and uncomplicated leisures that once made him fall madly in love with the royal and ancient game. As friendship deepens and each man's tale movingly and sometimes hilariously unfolds, the author's own life is ultimately tested, examined, and changed-for the better. Through laughter and tears, he reveals intimate details, and finds that each Dewsweeper-including and maybe especially the author himself-needs golf and friendship at the core of his life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dodson, author of bestsellers Final Rounds and the Arnold Palmer bio A Golfer's Life, confronts his own mid-golf-life crisis in a sprightly study of the "royal and ancient" game. Now in his mid-40s, Dodson finds his handicap has slipped from a two to a nine (on a good day); more importantly, golf has ceased to be fun. Personal and professional commitments (he writes an award-winning column for Golf magazine) have left him little time to play. He decides to work less and play more for one year to reconnect with the game he loved so much before he made writing about it his career. Dodson is aided in his quest by the "Dewsweepers," a group of "white, rich, Republican" men (some retired, some not), who live in Syracuse, N.Y., and are the first two foursomes off the tee at their home course every weekend thus "sweeping" the dew from the fairways. Dodson pays homage to the camaraderie, dirty jokes and male bonding during the year as he joins the Dewsweepers, finds a fianc?e, loses his mother, is estranged from and then reconciled with his brother and eventually rediscovers the joy of golf as his young son decides to take up the game. Despite entertaining writing and the truly humorous banter of the Dewsweepers, Dodson himself admits his problem may appear "shallow." A thin read that loses track of the appealingly curmudgeonly Dewsweepers, the book strays into personal revelations that were perhaps better left to a memoir. (Oct.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

James Dodson is the author of Final Rounds, the 1996 bestseller that was named the "Golf Book of the Year" by the International Network of Golf. He is also the author of Faithful Travelers and A Golfer's Life, a collaboration with Arnold Palmer that was a New York Times bestseller, a four-time winner of the prestigious Golf Writers of America Award for his column in Golf Magazine, and the recent recipient of the 1998 "Golf Reporter of the Year" Award by the International Network of Golf.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult; 1ST edition (October 11, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525945822
• ISBN-13: 978-0525945826
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,525,751 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Jewel!!, December 11, 2003

By 

John R. Linnell (New Gloucester, ME United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dewsweepers (Mass Market Paperback)

"Golf, and sometimes life, are full of new beginnings." So starts one of the most charming books on the subject of golf and life that I have read in quite some time. For this is not a "golf book" any more than Seabiscuit was about a horse race. The author, a former 2 handicap realizes as he advances into his 40's that "I wasn't just losing my ability to play the game the way I once had...Golf was ceasing to be fun."

Dodson discovers the group of guys that become The Dewseppers when he is enveigled to travel to Syracuse to speak at a charity fund raiser. The fellow doing the inviting had read his previous book "Final Rounds" and thought the author might have something worth listening to about golf forging lasting relationships. One thing leads to another and the antics and follys of The Dewsweepers become a thread which runs through the book, but the story is about much more than them.

It is about relationships of all kinds. A son and his mother. A boy and his father. A lovely lady named Wendy. Arnold Palmer. Aging friends. A chance meeting on a magical golf course. Brotherly love gone sour. And so many more.

Dodson has the most interesting way of making how we relate to each other, the humor, the sorrow, the mundane and the magificent all come alive in a very real way. I found the book enthralling.

Those who have reviewed this book and sniffed about some of the name dropping that occurs in it are missing the point entirely. People like Arnold Palmer just happen to be a real part of Dodson's life. To leave out the "names" is to fail to tell the story to it's fullest.

In the end he finds that the joy he had gotten from golf during his life was not lost. As he puts it, it was "merely waiting for me to catch up..."

There is a lot to learn about life and relationships in this book and I doubt there are any of us who could not benefit from that.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Dewsweepers, December 10, 2001

By 

Ed Holmes (Riverside, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dewsweepers: Seasons of Golf and Friendship (Hardcover)

James Dodson has an innate ability to perfectly describe how a golfer really feels about courses, clubs, and the friendships that develop over years of playing the game. Inside the pages of this book are some of the most hilarious and wonderful accounts of men being boys and vice versa that the reader will ever stumble across. There is a mix of golf history, travel, family psychology and the tormenting trials of trying desperately to master a game that is impossible to master. If you play golf, at any level of capability, you will enjoy this book!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book Like A Round Of Golf., December 24, 2005

By 

Welshman (Wales, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dewsweepers (Mass Market Paperback)

I found that I was recommending this book on the Democratic Party Daily Kos site - not your usual Internet blogging venue for talking about a book based on what some here have called four Republican golfing buddies.

I linked my comment to Amazon and started to read some of the reviews and I guess that I just want to redress one or two of the comments about the book.

To those who find that the book is somewhat unstructured, then they don't play a round of golf like most of us high handicappers. We have our birdies, but we also have our fair share of double bogies. This book is a bit like this - a book reflecting the game of golf in the way that it is actually played, and in how we actually live our lives.

Dodson takes us all over the place in terms of highs and lows in golf and the personal events surrounding his games. We are immersed deeply in domestic events, in what he admires and what he dislikes and what matters to him. It is a patchwork affair and you feel the integrity of the writing because of this fact.

It is like those guys you meet for the first time in club knockout competitions. Over the round, you learn who they are, what concerns them, how they think. It all comes at you in unexpected intervals as you wait on each tee to drive off or that brief interval walking off the green. You can't predict what is going to be said next but over a round of golf you get the feeling of what the guy is about. The game is the focus, what is said is an aside and probably the most sincere glimpses that one person will reveal to another because it is not said for effect and there is no agenda to the conversation. You are privileged to talk like this with another person. Win or lose, you shared a game of golf and a bit more. It is this "bit more" that you share that makes golf a special game to play.

Read this book and you have that same feeling. You get glimpses of how your partner is feeling, what is affecting his game and learn something about another person's life that is a bit deeper than you would get from a literary presentation designed with this as its main purpose. Sure he drops names of some of the great golf courses that he has been privileged to play and some of the great golfers he has been privileged to know. How can he not, when he plays these courses and knows these people? Yet you get the feeling that it is his golf buddies that matter to him and, by the end of his year re-playing the game like he used to play it before becoming a golfing writer, it is those early morning games with them that have endured the most.

A unique book; an honest piece of writing and highly recommended to all those who play the game in a way that they can see the funny side of their huge slice off the seventh tee and yet who can also take genuine pleasure in seeing their opponent hitting a beautiful 5-iron approach shot to within two feet of the pin.

I am sure when you finish reading this book and put it down at the end you will feel privileged to have played these rounds with the author.