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The Madding Game

by Wilson Brown

250 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #05-1896; ISBN 1-4120-6985-8; US$20.00, C$23.00, EUR15.59, £10.34

Big-time Golf takes more than talent. A teacher and daily practice will help, but the courage required to make great shots in front of the world cannot be taught.

About the Book

It is the summer of 1939 in hilly Western Pennsylvania, Scotty Roberts, a former assistant pro at Merion and present owner of a nine-hole course he'd built himself, is excited for two reasons. First, the touring pros are coming to the private Clear Valley Country Club to help inaugurate a brand new tournament and second, his nineteen year old son, Jed, is the only local pro to qualify for the tournament.

To everyone's surprise, the famous pros on the tour are surpassed by three unknown pros; Denny Carano, youngest of the golfing Carano clan; Victor Hurley, a young Englishman with great promise; and Jed Roberts, who by beating everyone with a fantastic 2-wood onto the green for a one-putt eagle of the final hole, catches the eyes of Chalmers Winslow, millionaire backer of the tournament and owner of the country club, who later meets with Roberts and tells him that he wants to back him on the tour. "We're going to put you and the Clear Valley Country Club on the map".

Sadly, the three young pros never play together again. Carano and Hurley are both killed in WWII. Fate intervenes with Winslow's plans for Jed who is eventually drafted. He survives the War, but no one in golf knows or wonders whatever happened to Jed Roberts; it's like he fell off the face of the Earth.

Forty-four years after that Sunday, Richard Prescott, who as a young lad had caddied for his cousin Victor Hurley in that golden summer before the War, is now the golf writer for the London Times and has come to Clear Valley to cover the Open. In the club bar, he runs into J.E.David, the great trick shot artist, and soon they and other golfers begin discussing who is the greatest golfer of all time. Many greats are named, but, as usual, it comes down to either Bobby Jones or Jack Nicklaus; however, Prescott casts a lone vote for Jed Roberts because he still believes he saw greatness in Roberts that long ago June and he has always wondered whatever happened to him.

That night over dinner with J.E. David and after several Scotches, J.E. says that he and Roberts had been friends as kids. With the Scotch flowing, J.E. tells Prescott things that reveal as much about J.E. as they do about the long forgotten Roberts which helps Prescott to know, and perhaps J.E., to understand why Roberts never became a golfer on the professional tour, let alone becoming a world- famous tournament player. Both finally realize, that in the end, it was Roberts' own God-given courage and character that had stopped him from becoming a real golfer.

About the Author

Wilson Brown has always been interested in writing, music and fascinated by the game of golf. A former caddy, he gave up the grand game to pursue a career in music. Tired of the night life by thirty, he became an apprentice typographer and by 1964 became a Journeyman. In 1980, he relocated to Austin, Texas and ended up working for the Austin American-Statesman from where he retired in 1991. Retirement gave him time to write and since then he has finished The Madding Game, three other novels, some short pieces, a memoir, and is currently working on his latest novel. It is called Arco which is about the thugs, mobsters, cops, dancers, hookers, dealers and users who surround the unusual death of a famous New York City Jazz bassist.

Excerpts