A Course Called America: Fifty States, Five Thousand Fairways, and the Search for the Great American Golf Course

Tom Coyne is a talented writer and golf fans should feel fortunate that he chooses to write about golf. His writing is insightful and witty and never boring. I have read his two previous books about his travels in Ireland and Scotland and while this book is a mild let down compared to those two, it is still a five star read. The only criticism I have is that he rushes through too many courses and sometimes only give the briefest of descriptions. Aside from that, it is a great story. He lives a golfers dream, playing all the U.S. Open courses and traveling to all 50 states. Along the way he plays some amazing courses like Seminole, Winged Foot, Sand Hills and the Country Club.The best and most insightful part of the book is when he focuses on the people and personalities. His day spent playing with Jimmy Dunne at Shinnecock and the National Golf Links is worth the price of the book alone, because he gives very insightful comments about the man who is a member of something like 20 of the best private courses in the country but is still one of the nicest and most generous guys in the golf world. He provides similar insights into the pro at Oakmont and Seminole Bob Ford.Coyne shows his own generosity in his great story about Cypress Point, which I won't spoil for the prospective reader. The book reflects what is so unique about golf in that you can bond and become lifelong friends with people you have never met before after playing golf with them. Tom does a better job explaining what makes this magic formula than I have ever read.

Tom Coyne has delivered another fantastic read with "A Course Called America". With his easy flowing style and vivid descriptions he brings you along on another amazing adventure, but this is more than just a golf book. It's about people and priorities and remembering what's important in life. If you haven't read anything of his before, start with this book and you will quickly want to read A Course Called Ireland and Scotland...

Amazing book

I really wanted to like this book, having read all other books from Tom Coyne I was confident also to like this one. It seems the publisher was really keen on doing this book and Tom Coyne agreed without being really committted. Unfortunately this shines through, the author wasn't really in this project wholeheartedly, it reads more like "I have done Scotland and Ireland, well, I have to do the US and the potential audience is even bigger...You don't really get to know the people playing with Tom and neither is there good travel stories and a recurrent theme, like in his Ireland and Scotland books is really missing. If you want to know details about the golf courses played, then you might find the book interesting, but even there you could find better information on e.g. gold digest. At the end the book was borderline boring and I had to push myself to finish it. I guess the next book is about Australia, let's see...

I enjoyed reading this book as I love Tom’s perspective on golf and life. He seems like a great guy to play a round with and I loved reading his stories and learning about some new courses in the US. But having read both of his books on Ireland and Scotland, I found this one lacking the sense of adventure, without a single storyline threaded throughout. In Ireland, it was to walk around the entire country to get to Ballybunion, which created tons of interesting stories. In Scotland, it was again one trip with an end goal of the Open qualifier at the end.In this book, I’m not really sure what the common thread throughout the book was. It was more of a compilation of various mini-trips around the US, but they seemed to lack cohesion. Additionally, since he covered so many courses, it seems the detail on many of them was somewhat superficial and not too in-depth. Really great courses only received 2-3 sentences, whereas in Scotland and Ireland they received chapters. I’m sure it has to do with the breadth of courses in the US, but if he published a long-form versions of his detailed notes from his trips, I’d love to read it.I still give it 4 stars because I consumed the book in a week and enjoyed my time reading. It just felt lacking something that the Ireland and Scotland books had.