The Elder Statesman

A Son of the Game
A story of golf, going home and sharing life’s lesson
By James Dodson
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Hard cover $24.95 

By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review

Of all the sports, the one that fascinates me most is golf. That may sound strange coming from a guy who has never actually played the game and who only became involved in the game when he and his brother, Joe, would walk several miles to the country club in our Florida hometown to caddy for tips. It was during the depression era and we were lucky if one of those spendthrift golfers tipped us ten cents for 18 holes of lugging a heavy set of golf clubs over the course.

In the last few years, however, I have reviewed four books about golf for this newspaper and frankly each review led me to be further intrigued by the game. I received an advanced copy of James Dodson’s latest book, “A Son of the Game,” from the publisher suggesting it would be a good book to review for father’s day. I am so impressed with this nostalgic and sentimental book, written more as a memoir, than a book about golf that I decided to do an early review. Dodson, a golf writer for newspapers and magazines, is the author of “Final Rounds,” a bestseller about Dodson’s father, Braxton Dodson who taught him to play the game. “Final Rounds,” is a poignant story of his father’s last days and a planned golf tour of the father and son. The book is currently being produced as a feature film.

Dodson’s latest book, “A Son of the Game,” is to be released May 19, just in time for a Father’s Day tie-in, the publisher said. That is a sales gimmick, but I am not in the business of selling books, just reviewing them.

This is a story about doing what you love. Dodson has a dual purpose. He loves to write, has an illustrious career to prove it, and he also loves golf. He gave up big city journalism and top notch magazine writing to come back to his roots in Southern Pines, N.C. and nearby Pinehurst, the American counterpart of St. Andrews, Scotland, the spiritual home and birthplace of golf. 

He was age 55 when he decided to return to the small town where he grew up in and where he learned to play the game. He is far from retired and now writes a Sunday column for The Pilot, a local newspaper with a circulation 25,000.

Dodson still writes books, both about golf and on general subjects like travels and gardening, including his best seller “Beautiful Madness,” in which, as an amateur gardener then living in Maine, he travels through the eastern United States, England and Africa learning about flowers and plants. That is just one of seven books he was written.

There is no simple plot to “A Son of the Game,” as you can tell from the long subtitle. It is more of a rambling narrative about one man’s desire to recover his lost passion and to share that legacy with his teenage son, Jack. Dodson’s storytelling genius fills the book with anecdotes about the game and famous golfers who have made it such an intriguing game. He accomplishes this while telling his own personal story and that of his family.

His colorful writing is both serious and witty and sometimes very personal, like  remembering a high school teacher who suggested he didn’t belong in her creative writing class and gave him poor marks because he was “too conventional” and she favored “scholars who were writing elegiac poems to broken Coke bottles.”

Dodson’s story is a memoir mixed with factual events in the mystic world of golf and the characters who make the game so alive. It is a wise memoir of finding new meaning of life through the game of golf and sharing it with his teenage son, Jack. To Dodson, it is completing the circle that began with his father teaching him the gentleman’s sport of golf.

Even if you are not a golf enthusiast, this well written story is filled with interesting discoveries about life and finding the real meaning of life.

(Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@nrtoday.com or by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470.) 

An excerpt from the prologue of “A Son of the Game,” by James Dodson. 

Toward the end of a clear winter afternoon, I reached the front porch of the Pine Crest Inn and put down my travel bag. A small orange cat got up from a final patch of sunlight and walked over to greet me.

“Hello, Marmalade,” I said, stooping to scratch her behind the ears. “Long time no see. Looks like you’ve put on some weight, old girl. That makes two of us.”

“You two must be old friends,” a woman said pleasantly.

She was sitting in a white rocking chair a few yards away, dressed for dinner and enjoying a glass of white wine. A group of other well-dressed guests sat by the outdoor bar at the far end of the hotel’s porch, laughing and talking about their day’s golf adventures.

“We are,” I confirmed, “though she probably doesn’t know me from Greg Norman’s house cat.”

Marmalade’s unique talent, I explained, was an ability to recognize anyone who loves golf and keeps returning to Pinehurst year after year, which could pretty much describe every person who arrives on the porch of Pine Crest.

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