Customer Reviews

Unplayable: An Inside Account of Tiger's Most Tumultuous Season

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

 

 

If you like Golf - insight into the makings of a huge Superstar - and an understanding of 'the perfect storm' underlying the fall - you will love this Book. Access to Tiger, his Caddie, Reporters, PGA Professionals, and friends provides an unusual insight, which separates this Book from others.

Covering all of Tiger's 2009 Tournaments, the Author lays out Tiger's early relationship and upbringing, along with his relationships with PGA Players, the Press, Team Tiger, close friends - and - finally - the Fall. Tiger's dominance over those around him (Including the 'Golf' - really 'Tiger' Channel)ultimately undermined him. When he needed some friends and Professional Mentors to take him aside, he had none - only clinging admirers, fellow party goers, and money managers.

Delicate yet direct, this Book chronicles Tiger's 'comeback' year, which blows up @ Thanksgiving and beyond. The tournament by tournament insight builds a portrait of this insulated self centered world class superstar. The same qualities that contributed to his success, also brought him down. The 2007 wake up call involving the 'Fitness' magazine did nothing, as he paid it no heed. 'Unplayable' is a journalistic hit, which gets you under the layers of the multitude of spins and counter spins. It also brings you the Golf - which is sometimes now forgotten.

I could not put this book down. If you love golf and are curious to know the thinking of a great champion this writing gives the clearest insight I've ever read about any great player and their highly competive nature! Before you finish it you will certainly have a much better understanding of all those who surround him, especially his caddy Steve...priceless info. You will make no mistake buying this book. This is the real deal.

LM

After the barrage of media coverage following the shocking implosion of Tiger Woods' once-impenetrable personal life, Robert Lusetich's book, UNPLAYABLE, proves to be an extremely pleasant surprise. Well-written and well-researched, the book follows Woods throughout the 2009 playing year leading up to late November Escalade crash, which ultimately proved to be only the tip of the iceberg in a story far more salacious than anyone might have expected.

To his credit, while Lusetich incorporates this angle to the story, he does not dwell on it. In fact, he presents a very even-handed account of the man, one that shows a far more likable version of Woods than we are ever allowed to see in his obligatory and clearly-loathed moments with the media - and Lusetich does so with a nice serving of insider stories and snippets of his own, often-lighthearted dealings with the sports star.

Among these are insights to his ever-thorny relationship with Phil Mickelson, whose own ego and "hidden sides" often fuel the problems between them more than one might initially believe. Also, there is much insight regarding Tiger's relationship with caddie Steve Williams, whose candor both with the author and with the world in general are refreshing, but also serve to again reflect well on Tiger, who stays loyal to Williams even when the Kiwi's mouth gets them both in trouble. Another interesting throughline concerns Tiger's relationships with his various swing pros, and and reveals a shockingly unanimous opinion by fellow and pros and caddies alike that Tiger's game has suffered greatly under superstar swing doctor Hank Haney's tutelage. Finally, there is Tiger's relationship with other pros, which is almost Machiavellian in its ruthlessness during tournament rounds, while sometimes surprisingly tender in other moments - and Lusetich does a nice job of revealing whose company and work ethics Tiger appreciates (often surprising) and whose he doesn't (not so much).

Meanwhile, during the book's largely chronological detailing of the fateful year, Lusetich also entertains with details regarding the various courses, and tournament sights, and the histories of same. For a loyal golf fan who has read no shortage of golf-related books, this is yet again a treat that deserves recommendation.

Overall, Lusetich does a tremendous job with a difficult assignment and subject, and the reader will be the one rewarded for his hard work.

If you follow professional golf, you will probably enjoy this book. It kept my interest from start to finish and reminded me a bit of a book about the pro golf tour published in 1999, called A Good Walk Spoiled by John Feinstein.
It's not exclusively about Tiger, giving insight into other players, the press, sponsors, caddies and the interrelationships.

Picked it up in the store and couldn't put it down. A very interesting and insightful narrative about the illusive golfer. The fascinating story of Tiger Woods double life is revealed in the context of the competitive arena of golf that he has dominated for so long like no other player. The author does a great job of showing us the man underneath all the hype as his world started to unravel. Enjoyed it from start to finish and recommend highly.

I read this in only a couple of sittings, so it is a fast read and well written and researched. It does provide a pretty good insider's view of Tiger's 2009 campaign, but mostly focused on the actual events he played in and much less on the back story of what was going on that ultimately led to his fall from grace. It is pretty balanced, although there are tidbits here and there that provide some insight into Tiger, the person, as well as Tiger, the golfer.

If you are looking for dirt, there is not very much here and most of it is already public knowledge. This really is a pretty well documented accounting of the events he played in during 2009, but there is not a lot about what happened once the whole story broke mostly because the book was published not long after. There is some good stuff on some of the players on tour, people in Tiger's entourage, and others in his general orbit.

The author cleary had an inside seat and provided some insights only an insider could. Still I came away still feeling like I did not have much more of a sense of TIger than what I already knew from other sources or having followed him publicly. It is well written with a few nuggets, but you probably will be wanting for more once you finish the book. It's a good read, but don't expect this to be a tell all or for a lot of new insight on Tiger.

Not earth shattering, but a decent book. Appears to be written objectively and definitely a fair assessment, not tabloid writing. A major issue with this title (at least the Kindle version I bought) is a terrible flaw in which every, and I mean every, occurance of the "fl" has been replaced with with "f". Thus "flag" reads "fag", "flew" reads "few", etc. This is bad enough for any title, but for a golf book it is disastrous. Flag and flew are used copiously. I am sure the author cannot be happy with sentences such as, "he fired at the fag". I would chalk this up to a bug in the OCR software of converting a print book to digital, but as this is a brand new title that was released straight to digital format, the original manuscript was most likely created in a digital format. I cannot imagine the author did a global search and replace on a couple of valid "fl" to "f" typos, but even if he or someone else did, the editor should have caught it. So it must have happened post editing.

this book was extremely boring

the authors seems to pad the narrative with so much irrelevant info

he goes off on tangents

he is no real 'insider'

bored the whole time

you will learn more reading tiger's wikipedia entry

Good read and interesting inside stories about Tiger. i would give it a four star rating except that they took the "l" out of every word that starts fl.. It's really annoying to come upon fag and fagstick and other words that dont make sense. I want to get the corrected version download.