How to Quit Golf: A Twelve-Step Program [Hardcover]

Craig Brass (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 25, 2001

All golfers know they don't need to play golf. The problem is they don't know how to quit. Golf has a beginning, a middle, but no end. The game has no exit strategy. Every time you even think of quitting, golf entices you back with a 250-yard drive down the middle, an unfathomable recovery shot to the green, or a birdie on the hardest hole, as if to say, "You're almost there, just a little more work and you'll get it. Any day now you'll have the game figured out, and when you do you'll be the envy of all."

But it's not going to happen. You know it. Your partner knows it. Everyone knows it because no one gets any better at this game (except that guy you're playing against this Sunday).

How to Quit Golf offers the guidance, counseling, and tough love that is necessary to rid your life of the most addictive, demanding, and maddening game known to man. If you haven't been able to break the cycle of golf addiction, this is your bible. And if quitting isn't an option, Craig Brass's "12-Step Program" makes clear that laughing is.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Golf is... a nasty, vicious game, played mainly by educated people who, quite frankly, should know better." In this hilarious send-up of 12-step programs and golf-buffs alike, Brass challenges golfers to ask themselves 15 questions to determine if they are "problem golfers." For example: "Do you count going to the driving range with your [spouse] as a night on the town?" or "Do you envy people who can golf without getting into trouble?" Approximately six million golfers play more than 21 rounds of golf a year; they are benignly labeled "avid" golfers. Brass contends that if those same people shot up heroine 21 times a year, they would not be considered "avid" drug users; they would be called junkies. With that analogy in mind, he calls on all amateur golfers to admit they have a problem and seek the help they need before it's too late. Chapter titles mimic AA steps: "Admit you are powerless over golf that your life has become unmanageable" and "Come to believe that a Power greater than yourself could restore you to sanity." Of course, in this case, that power would be named Jack Nicklaus. This is a quick airplane read, a perfect stocking-stuffer and a great gag gift from any and all golf widows or widowers. A foreward by actor and fellow problem golfer Jeff Daniels recommends reading the book to quit golf instead of having a frontal lobotomy: "It's cheaper and won't leave a scar."

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

How to Quit Golf is so funny, you may laugh to death; ergo, your problem is solved. -- Gary McCord, Senior PGA Tour player and author of Just a Range Ball in a Box of Titleists and Golf for Dummies

A perfect stocking-stuffer and a great gift from any and all golf widows or widowers. -- Publishers Weekly

A tongue-in-cheek take on guiding the self-hating golfer back to sanity. -- Sport Detroit

Brass offers the...counseling and tough love...to ridding your life of the most addictive...and maddening game known to man. -- Golf Illustrated

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult (October 25, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525946292
• ISBN-13: 978-0525946298
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,124,335 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How To Quit Golf: A 12-Step Program, November 20, 2001

By 

J. (Traverse City, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Quit Golf: A Twelve-Step Program (Hardcover)

This is hilarious reading for anyone who has ever golfed. It answers so many questions about this frustrating game and does so in a totally entertaining way. I read the book in an afternoon. It is not a lengthy tome, and will be easily understood by the most pathetic of all creatures...the avid golfer.

The author's version of renowned 12-step programs, adeptly adapted to golf, explains not only how but why one should quit this constantly humiliating game. Written for adults, it is irreverently relevant and poignantly pithy. Addressing golf from several perspectives (including but not limited to golf history, Greek mythology, yesterday's golf legends and today's hottest PGA Tour pros) it educates and informs by covering subjects that will touch the heart, the mind, and the funny bone of all who endeavor to chase a little white ball with a stick.

Buy this book for weekend duffers, golf league members and champions, country club members, or any person in your life who plays golf. They, men and women alike, will be happy you did, and best of all, it will get them off the darned golf course (at least while they're reading it).

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read and be saved!, December 3, 2001

By 

Bubbleshaft (South Bend, IN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Quit Golf: A Twelve-Step Program (Hardcover)

Mark Twain once described golf as "a good walk spoiled." Accurate as Twain was in revealing the insidiously evil nature of this addictive pastime, he stopped short of explaining why so many people were willing to spoil their walks despite vowing at the end of each round never to touch another club.
Craig Brass, mercifully, has done what Samuel Clemens could not. He has exposed golf for what it is: a heroin derivative. What else could explain the shakes I get when the weather is nice, the grass is green, and I'm stuck in the office? What else could explain my need to sneak out on a weekend with the flimsy and transparent excuse, "I'm going to run some errands," as my wife gives me a shameful stare?
I admit it. I'm addicted. Author Brass has empowered me to face the problem and do something about it. Namely, quit the game.
No longer will I suffer the humiliating laughter of "friends" after gagging on an 18-inch birdie putt. No longer will I helicopter a 3-wood into the top of Indiana's tallest tulip poplar after worm-burning a brand new Titleist into a mosquito-infested swamp. No siree, not me. No more. I quit. I can do it. Just follow the 12 steps and keep the faith. I can quit.
Alright... well, no I can't. No one can. As Brass explains, we're all just puppets at the end of strings being pulled by the golf gods. We are at their capricious mercy, and they have precious little. Oh sure, they give you the occasional chip-in from off the green. But that's just to keep you coming back.
I read Craig Brass's book in one evening, and I laughed til I cried. I cried because a) the book is funny, and b) I recognized that Brass was describing me - and many of my friends. His writing is cynically witty (like Twain) and, thank heavens, he does not just resort to the same dried-up old golf jokes you've heard a million times. His approach is fresh. His evidence is convincing. More than a few golf widows will want to stuff their husbands' stockings with this gem. It's probably the next best thing to professional intervention.
In fact, I'm writing this review having just come in off the golf course. Now on a beautiful 55-degree December day in South Bend, Indiana (where it's normally closer to 55-below), I could have been stringing Christmas lights on my house, or finishing some holiday shopping for my wife. But no. I played golf. I pretzeled a driver around a yard arm after cold-topping a Nike Tour Accuracy into a lake. I vowed never to play again. But the weather report for tomorrow looks pretty good . . .

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars On the money!, November 14, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: How to Quit Golf: A Twelve-Step Program (Hardcover)

How to Quit Golf was given to me by a friend to read on my plane trip.

I could not put it down. It was too close to home for me.....and my family. I gave it to my wife to read and now she's pointing out how I resemble the characters in the book.

It was a great read.