It is may be that the best fictional golf stories were written by P.G. Wodehouse around a century ago. The Clicking of Cuthbert<\/em>, Chester Forgets Himself<\/em> and scores more are tremendous, hilarious tales of golf-related trial and tribulation as Wodehouse skewers the attitudes of club golfers everywhere – towards golf, towards women and towards their fellow-men. The \u2018Wrecking Crew\u2019, the fourball from hell, are a simply glorious creation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A sense of his writing style can be gathered from his preface to another story, Heart of a Goof<\/em>, which he wrote \u201cimmediately after I had won my first and only trophy \u2013 an umbrella in a hotel tournament at Aiken, South Carolina, where, hitting it out of the meat for once, I went through a field of some of the fattest retired businessmen in America like a devouring flame\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The subject of golf as\nfiction in general is a subject to which I shall return now and again but in\nthe here and now I would like to refer to one particular book, Why Didn\u2019t They Ask Evans?<\/em> by Agatha\nChristie. It has more twists and turns than the 14^{th<\/sup> green at\nAugusta National, although it is a lot easier to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n}

It involves (inevitably) a death, the discovery of a dying man on cliffs beside a golf course in Wales. The book begins thus: \u201cBobby Jones teed up his ball, gave a short preliminary waggle, took the club back slowly, then brought it down and through with the rapidity of lightning..[the ball] scudded along the ground and embedded itself firmly in the bunker! There were no eager crowds to groan with dismay\u2026 and that is easily explained \u2013 for it was not the American-born master of the game who had played the shot, but merely the fourth son of the Vicar of Marchbolt\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although she could not have known it, the author\u2019s use of the word\n\u201cmaster\u201d was apposite. The book was published in 1934, the year Jones founded\nthe Masters Tournament (although it did not then go by that name). But there\nwas surely no coincidence in her making young Jones 28, the age the <\/em>Bobby Jones was when he accomplished\nthe Grand Slam in 1930, the very feat Tiger Woods will endeavour to take a\nsecond step towards when, as the present Masters champion, he tees off in the\nUSPGA Championship in New York on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n