The Eternal Summer

De: Curt Sampson

Narrado por: Dennis McKee

Was there ever a year in golf like 1960?

It was the year that the sport and its vivid personalities exploded on the consciousness of the nation, when the past, present, and future of the game collided. Television, still a new medium, provided a fresh window to this fascinating show and enabled this "rich man's sport" to win over millions of new fans. Here was Arnold Palmer, the working man's hero, "sweating, chain-smoking, shirt-tail flying," winning, it seemed, every tournament with a last-second charge; grim Ben Hogan, Arnie's opposite, the greatest player of the '50s, a perfectionist battling the twin demons of age and nerves; and, making his debut in the big time, a chunky, crewcut college kid who seemed to have the makings of a champion: twenty-year-old Jack Nicklaus.

©1992 Curt Sampson (P)2001 Blackstone Audiobooks

Good blow-by-blow account of the 1960 Golf Season

I enjoyed reading this book several years ago, and I also enjoyed listening to the audio version just recently. The book is essentially an earlier version of John Feinstein's The Majors centered on the 1960 season. The portraits of Palmer and Nicklaus as well as some of the minor characters are excellent.

It would rate higher if McKee's performance were better. I found his attempts to speak in accents a bit forced. The worst was his Gary Player. Although he did a good Nicklaus.

Overall, it is a good book and worth a listen.

1960: A Seminal Year in Golf

Curt Sampson delivers a solid recounting of 1960. While not his best work, it does inform and entertain . A good read/listen for all acquainted and interested in the history of golf.

A good story poorly written.

This was such a broad, shallow writing of a story is the foundation of modern golf. It’s almost like a series of bullet points just in paragraph form. There are so many characters that have little to no value in the overall story. The book just ends with a made putt. That’s it. Over. No summary, no tease of what came after this.

Thrilling from first to eighteenth

Story is mostly on American golf but a vivid picture of when golf went trully professional. Well written and well read, the recording has a few glitches though, which you excuse given the extremely interesting narrative.