Customer Reviews

The Dewsweepers: Seasons of Golf and Friendship

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"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.

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!

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.

The fundamental flaw of this book is that the author tries to pass himself off as everyman. We are supposed to be able to identify with his golf buddies and feel a kinship with the friendship he feels with his fellow Dewsweepers (the guys he golfs with). The problem is that most of us don't get to golf all over the world and at the most prestigious golf courses in our own country. He continually name drops throughout the book. He golfs with his buddy Arnold Palmer and seems to know many of the influential names in the world of golf. If his intention was to show us an example of golf friendships that we could identify with, he fell short.

I golf with my golf buddies every Sunday at a course where we pay ($$$) to play eighteen holes. We only dream of being able to hop on a plane and fly to Europe or Pebble Beach at the drop of a hat (like the author does with his fellow Dewsweepers). For most of us, a round at Pebble Beach is a lifelong dream that will probably go unfulfilled. For the author of this book, it is just an average day and a prelude to better rounds to come.

If you are a wealthy country club member and enjoy reading about the lifestyle that you are currently enjoying, this is the book for you. If you aren't, skip this book, call three of your buddies, and head out to the nearest public course. It will be a better way to spend your afternoon.

I cast my vote with the reviewers here who loved this book. Those that are sniffing about the "name dropping" and other such distractions have missed the point of the book entirely. "Golf, and sometimes life, is full of new beginnings," Dobson writes as the first line of the first chapter. And that is what this book is about. His love of the game has started to dry up; he is living in Maine while his girl friend lives in Syracuse (or Zerocuse as those who golf there call it for part of the year), his dear mother (Mrs. Congeniality) is slipping deeper into dementia; his brother has betrayed his trust and his ten year old son, after his final losing hockey game of the season looks at his father and says, "Dad, would you mind if I took golf lessons?" As Dobson then noted, "When you least expect it, the sun suddenly emerges from the gloom."

That is what this book is really about.The "Dewsweepers", while a real bunch of golfing nuts from Zerocuse, are really the prisim through which the author sees his life and deals with it, piece by piece as he finds that the joy of life has not been lost. It was merely waiting for him to catch up with it.

This slice of the author's life is told with humor and insight. Many doors have been opened to Dobson during his life experiences that are not easily open to most of us. Yet, he takes us through them with the supreme talent of an accomplished story teller and leaves you feeling better for the experience of having been there. That's a fine recommendation for any book and this is one not to miss.

Dodson conveys the true feelings of playing golf with people who you can come to love almost as much as your family. I truely felt like buying copies for the other 3 guys in my foursome after I was done with it. Just like Final Rounds which I bought for my father. Not for the hard hearted it can bring tears to your eyes at times and cause outrageous laughter at others.

My name is Al Cece and at the age of 61 now I have been a member of a group very similar to James Dodsons for sevferal years now. It is fabulous to see how they share their lives as they play the rounds. It also took me many years of golf to now realize that it is so much more about the friendships, experiences, jokes, the bad shots ( as well as the good), the walks, the noises in the backswing, the 19th hole and the weeklong e-mails and chatter between the rounds.

We too are like a band of brothers and help each other with family problems, health issues, and, of course, solving world problems! One thing we do not do is mess with each others swings....but we do take lots of pride getting into each others "heads".

I also have set up a bowling team (before I read the book) of my golf friends to see each other during the winter in Berkshire County, Massachusetts and a Breakfast Club of the Taconic golf club members during the winter also to see each other every other Saturday morning for a couple hours.

Am reading the book again now and can't wait to share things at the next breakfast club meeting.

fabulous...
al

One need not look any further than the magical pages of The Dewsweepers (or Final Rounds) to understand why those of us play this beautiful game. The Dewsweepers takes the reader to far greater places than the golf course (freudian slip). Instead, it is a journey into life's unexpected twists and turns -- yet always returning to peace and tranquil feeling that only golf provides. It reminds all -- that Friendship is more important than breaking 80. Like Final Rounds, The Dewsweepers is eloquently written. The diversity of characters can be a bit confusing but all in all it is a very good read. I'd really rate this 4 1/2 Stars, falling just short of Final Rounds.

Wow. I have read some of James Dodson's previous novels, namely Final Rounds and Faithful Travelers, and once again he paints a charming and smoothly-flowing story about his life between his divorce and trip with daughter Maggie (as described in Faithful Travelers) and the not-yet-occurring adventure in Europe with his son Jack (in The Road to Somewhere). This period of his life finds him rekindling his passion for golf and love while undergoing more trials and tribulations within his family... and not the somewhat-expected kind he dealt with in Final Rounds. What surprised me greatly about this book was the shoddy editing and/or proofreading I discovered. Three different golfer's names were mispelled, and on several occasions a double letter turned into a triple lettter (yes, just as I demonstrated). I suppose if I didn't expect books to be grammatically perfect it wouldn't be such a big deal, but come on... the guy shouldn't settle for such sub-par post-writing work on what is another great story. In fact, it's the lack of proofreading that keeps me from giving it the five stars this book probably deserves.

Not exactly as advertised. The book was written as a diary of 1 particular year in the author's life. Yes, he found friendship. Yes, he is a namedropper. Yes, it will keep you interested enough to see if there is an epiphany. (Will let you read to discover.)