Fr. 21.90

A Course Called Scotland - Searching the Home of Golf for the Secret to Its Game

English · Paperback / Softback

Shipping usually within 1 to 3 weeks (not available at short notice)

Description

Read more

Zusatztext 76176800 Informationen zum Autor Tom Coyne Klappentext A funny and affectionate celebration of the place of golf in Scottish history and culture, in which Coyne sets out to play golf on every course in Scotland. Leseprobe A Course Called Scotland Spero His bones arrived by shipwreck. In life he was a fisherman, but he did not die at sea. He persuaded his executioners to tie him to an × of wooden beams and expired after two days lashed to his crooked cross. He considered himself unworthy of being crucified by the same design as his savior. Accounts describe his gratitude for martyrdom. As death approached, he proclaimed, “Receive me hanging from the wood of this sweet cross . . . . Do not permit them to loosen me.” And history records the travels of a Greek monk, St. Rule, to whom God gave instructions to move the martyr’s bones for safekeeping. Rule was to sail with the relics to the edge of the known world and build a church where the faithful would flock, finding health and hope. Storms pushed the monk aground near a tiny fishing village that would be transformed just as Rule’s visions foretold. A cathedral would be built, and a castle and a university, and it would become a place of learning and pilgrimage. A visionary cleric and a divine storm would turn a rocky bit of coastline at the fringe of civilization into a place that, eight centuries later, is still visited by six hundred thousand hopefuls every year. I’m one of them, though my route here was different than most. I designed my own shipwreck of a journey and prayed that my bones would land somewhere near the onetime resting place of St. Andrew. Whether golf owes its origins to bored shepherds searching out diversions in the dunes or to itinerant wool traders who brought a Flemish game to Scotland, the home of golf would probably be a modest village today if a holy mission hadn’t sent an apostle’s remains ashore there. Maybe that’s why the world’s perfect town feels so divinely inspired, as if God wants you to be there. When you stroll the medieval streets of St. Andrews, with its mix of ancient history and college youth, its gentle bustle of golf and restaurants and golf and pubs and golf and museums, you walk with a sense of destination that St. Rule must also have felt. And since he could have simply sent the bones to Constantinople as the great emperor Constantine decreed instead of washing up on a stretch of sublimely golf-suited land, the saint’s mission stands as proof that God is good—and that He’s a golfer, too. I want to believe all of that, just as I want to believe that one morning in the ninth century a Scottish king looked up and saw St. Andrew’s diagonal cross in the sky above—white clouds against a blue sky—and took it as a sign to march outnumbered against the Angles. His vision and victory gave birth to the Scottish flag—white × against a blue backdrop—and is too good a story to not be true. And I want to believe that the patron saint of golfers did actually utter St. Andrews’ town motto as his final words, the Latin phrase now stitched into my putter cover and the only tattoo I might ever get: Dum Spiro Spero. While I breathe, I hope. I’m not sure I actually believe any of that, but I do breathe, and I do hope. And maybe hope will be enough, or maybe it will be too much. When does hope become the dream that becomes a mistake? Do the clouds ever steer you wrong? Is your morning perspective sometimes slanted? What if you walk into battle while the miracles stay home? Dum Spiro Spero, but how many have hoped their way right out of breath? I can’t ...

Product details

Authors Tom Coyne, Coyne Tom
Publisher Simon & Schuster USA
 
Languages English
Product format Paperback / Softback
Released 30.06.2019
 
EAN 9781476754291
ISBN 978-1-4767-5429-1
Dimensions 140 mm x 213 mm x 20 mm
Subjects Guides > Sport

Golf, Scotland, TRAVEL / Europe / Ireland, SPORTS & RECREATION / Golf, Travel & holiday, Travel and holiday, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs

Customer reviews

No reviews have been written for this item yet. Write the first review and be helpful to other users when they decide on a purchase.

Write a review

Thumbs up or thumbs down? Write your own review.

For messages to CeDe.ch please use the contact form.

The input fields marked * are obligatory

By submitting this form you agree to our data privacy statement.