Customer Reviews

Raising the Bar: The Championship Years of Tiger Woods

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have seen Tim Rosaforte on the Golf Channel and read an excerpt in Golf Digest so I was looking forward to this book. There were so many errors and typos--misspellings, wrong words, one whole section out of place--that it was hard to concentrate on the text. Many of the quotes were simply taken from Golf Channel interviews and shows. There was little evidence of research. It was clear that this book was designed to make money by capitalizing on Tiger's celebrity and was rushed to print while we were still talking about the 2000 season. Do publishers have editors and proofreaders any more? Save your money.

Raising the Bar was an excellent and easy read, but I didn't expect anything less from Tim Rosaforte.

People who follow the game of golf extremely closely may not find out much more about Woods than they already know by reading Raising the Bar. However, Rosaforte takes a different approach to his work, which makes it very enjoyable. Rather than spit out strictly facts about Woods, Rosaforte's book goes in-depth with people, besides himself, who have chronicled Woods' career by sharing anecdotes with people like Mark Steinberg (Woods' agent), Butch Harmon (Woods' coach), Scott Van Pelt (The Golf Channel field reporter and Golf Central anchor), Jeff Rude (Golf Week columnist) and various touring professionals, including Mark O'Meara.

Perhaps my favorite anecdote involved the Golf Channel's Peter Kessler, a noted golf historian. At the beginning of the book, Kessler talked about what it was like to follow Tiger around Pebble Beach during the 2000 U.S. Open:

"I was just keenly aware of what I was witnessing," he said. "I missed Bobby Jones in his prime, and I never saw Hogan, but I did see Arnie, Gary, Jack, Lee, Tom, Seve, Greg, Nick and Nick. It was my sense after following him 50 holes in the U.S. Open, that this was the best that anybody had ever played golf, and I got to see it. I felt so lucky and honored, and because I had an appreciation for what it meant historically, I started to cry. His mom hugged me and comforted me like I was two years old and then Joanna started crying because I was crying, then Kultida started crying because Joanna was crying, and then Tiger emerges from the scoring tent. Tiger looks at both of them and looks at me and says, `It's Peter's fault, he was crying first,' as we were sharing my handkerchief. Tiger hugged the girls and hugged me, and laughed at me, and went out to get his U.S. Open trophy."

The entire book was enjoyable and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the sport of golf at any level and is mesmerized by the unparalleled success of Woods. For those who haven't followed Tiger's career closely, don't worry; you'll be at the edge of your seat. Rosaforte makes Raising the Bar an easy and interesting read, by catching the golf-novice up to date. For those avid golf followers who already know about Tiger's career, Rosaforte's use of anecdotes will leave you unable to put the book down.

Boring. Boring. Boring.

I almost gave up on the book after about 30 pages, but it was given to me as a gift and I like to finish that which I start.

If this book had to be written (?) then it should have been written by someone who could at least hold your attention, if not excite.

Tim Rosaforte shows little writing talent and one wonders what he is doing to raise his own bar. His readers and Tiger deserve better.

Having read John Feinstein and having grown up with the writings of Jim Murray perhaps my bar is set too high.

To anyone who wants to take a chance on this book I recommend the public library.

I was genuinely distracted from the content as I found myself reading every page "looking for more typos, inaccurate facts, etc". Many are noted in previous reviews....Butch Harmon is referred to as Bruce....David Duval is later called Davis....etc. I do not know the publishing process but I would think an author should have a vested interested in proofing his product....as well as many others. It is obviously an effort to cash in (the book itself had interesting facts, if you can trust themmmmm)......but also seemed disjointed and like it was slapped together without connection between chapters....bottom line - an inferior quality product given it is a 24 dollar hardcopy new book......wait for the next revision......

While I find Tiger to be a fascinating individual, it amazed me that this book made it to press considering the grammar and spelling are the equivalent of a rough draft. If you can make it through all of the typos, and there are probably more typos than Tiger's career birdies, it is a pretty good read. I found myself looking for the next typo instead of enjoying an amazing story. Rosaforte, has lowered the bar for what is considered acceptable to print.

I enjoyed the book simply because I enjoy reading just about anything about Tiger. That said, I must say I was rather disapointed in this particular read. Not much original thought or insight to be found here. I was rather amused at the author's efforts to use every arcane and obscure golf term he could think of. He was a bit like a "name dropper" but in this case, he used "golf jargon" rather than celebrities. I also found I extremely difficult to follow the sequence of events. The chronology did not always work out. (I do wonder why publishers do not use editors anymore???? If I had one I certainly would not be misspelling so many words). Often times I found one event or one bit of information referred to differently, even in the same paragraph. All in all, I have read better.

We all love Tiger (at least you can assume we do, if we're reading this book), and we're all hungry for information about him, especially since he has been "handled" so carefully by those that surround him.

Thus, it is especially disappointing to encounter the typographical errors (I counted at least 30, then gave up), factual errors (Jack Nicklaus is said to be 70 years old), and fundamental writing flaws ("in lieu of" for "in light of") littered throughout this book.

I felt cheated to have paid money for this book, which was obviously rushed to press to capitalize on holiday purchases. That's no excuse for editorial sloppiness.

This is a wonderful book if you have a cursory knowledge of Tiger Woods and his brief career.

But if you're a die-hard golf fan who has read EVERYTHING written about Tiger over the last 3 years, you'll find that "Raising the Bar" contains hardly any new stuff. Almost everything is a re-hash of the quotes we've all read. There are some exceptions, but not many. If you read the book's excerpts in the Jan. 2001 issue of GOLF DIGEST and found them compelling and intriguing -- as I did -- you'll be very disappointed with the book. You can't blame the author for this; Tiger and his team hardly ever reveal anything about themselves.

As an avid Tiger watcher, I was thrilled to receive this book as a gift. However, my excitement soon waned. The book--obviously pushed through the publishing process to exploit Christmas shoppers--contains a distracting number of typographical errors. ("Earning" for "learning" and "rage" for "range" to name a few.) Furthermore, "Raising the Bar" reads like three years' worth of sports columns strung together with a hard cover slapped on. This is all old news, kids.

Rising The Bar is a book about a famous golfer named Tiger Woods by Tom Rosaforte. This book follows Tiger as he makes his professional golf career. Tiger was 2 when he started picking up the game of golf. He would watch his father when he would go golfing. When Tiger was 12 he won his first state golf tournament and by the time he was 19 he was in the Junior PGA (professional golf association). By the time Tiger reached the age of 23 he won his first professional golf title.

This book is a very easy book to read, even though it's a big book. Tim uses very easy words to understand. This book follows Tiger through every championship starting from his first one.

I would recommend this book to people who like sports and seeing people do well even though they weren't expected too. I'm the kind of person that likes books that shows how good people do coming from a not so good background. I give this book *** because if follows every detail of Tiger starting when he was a kid.