Where Golf is Great: The Finest Courses of Scotland and Ireland | James Finegan

Where Golf is Great: The Finest Courses of Scotland and Ireland | James Finegan | Outstanding Work !

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Where Golf is Grea...

	Where Golf is Great: The Finest Courses of Scotland and Ireland James Finegan Artisan, 2006 - 528 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Every golfer who?s worth his favorite putter knows where golf is great: Scotland, birthplace of the game and still its most important shrine, from the splendor of St. Andrews to the regal resort at Gleneagles; and Ireland, where the links like Ballybunion and Royal County Down are of unsurpassed beauty and challenge. Whether golfers actually make the pilgrimage or arm-chair it, Where Golf Is Great is indispensable: the most luxurious, entertaining, informative, and exhaustive book on these most important destinations. Written by the bard of Scottish and Irish golf, it combines the most authoritative information with the most beautiful prose and the most stunning color photographs?an unsurpassed celebration of the places where golf is, indeed, great.

Not only is the golf great, but so are the sights, the dining, the lodging?and it?s all here: the pub lunches and three-star dinners; the country-house hotels and full-service resorts. Jim Finegan?s singularly insightful advice includes the very best play-and-stay combinations for once-in-a-lifetime perfect golf days, in this once-in-a-lifetime perfect golf book.

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Great Pictures

Mr. Finegan has produced another in his very successful series of books about the pleasures offered by the golf courses in Great Britain and Ireland. The text is of the same high quality as the photographs by Messrs. Lambrecht and Thompson. The result is an elegant book which stimulates happy memories for those that have played the courses and which should whet the appetites of those who have not.

Outstanding Work !

In the world's "Top 100 of golf books" this is, for me, alone at #1. We are planning our fourth trip to Ireland/Scotland (3 to Ireland, the next to Scotland) and have used this book as a starting point for each. We have found Mr. Finegan to be most accurate in his assessments of the courses (along with the "Hidden Links" group), and, more importantly that he devotes the proper coverage proportionately to the proper courses. (We go for 11 or 12 days, play between 8 and 11 courses, and may not get there again, so it is important to us to put together the best group of courses possible). The photographs alone make this book a bargain. There are a ton of them. They are full-page and they are stunning. Our sincere thanks to Mr. Finegan. Extraordinary at $38.

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Beautiful Greens

If you're planning a golf trip to the United Kingdom and Ireland, check out the courses in this book. Full-color photographs will whet your appetite before you go.

Gorgeous but a wee bit tame...

As a Scot who has played most of the courses Jim Finegan has reviewed in this and his previous books, there's very little to dispute, and the pictures do convey the wonderful beauty of many of them, especially Machrie, Boat of Garten and others. However he seems to have toned down the criticisms of some courses he made in the prose books, and I find his Damascene conversion to Carnoustie a little strange; it hasn't changed THAT much since he was pretty scathing (unjustly, IMO) about it in the other book. Despite all that, Jim clearly knows what he is talking about, and I loved flicking through this so much I bought a copy for me and my golf-mad uncle.

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Will Rogers introduction to links golf

I do own this book.

I love links golf as much as anyone, but Jim Finnegan is like Will Rogers, he never met a golf course he could criticize. Larry Lambrecht's photographs are spectacular and many of the recommendations for lodging and outside activities are only safe at best. This is a fine and wonderful even feel good book, but know its limitations.

This book is lovely to look at but don't expect any critical reviews here. Jim is quite a passionate fellow but take the writings with as a starting point. Those with real experience will recognize that the book is written to highlight the highs and ignore the quirks and exacerbates the American golfer's tendency to go and notch the belt by visiting "only the best" golf courses often at astronomical prices.

There is a lot to be learned by visiting many "little" golf courses in the UK and Ireland to truly understand how links golf is a such a treasure and how it is part of local life. Links is not just some eccentricity that one must do to complete one's golf life. There is so much to be gained by just traveling willy-nilly to the "little" places such as going the 5 miles to Girvan to play the odd little half-links course there while on your Tour Bus trip to Turnberry. As an example, the book almost excludes the fine Kintyre course which Mr. Finnegan merely gives a third of a page coverage. Girvan, what Girvan? There you can meet and play with locals on their course while playing 8 of the best par 3's you will ever play and not approach the wee par of 64.

Indeed, this is where golf is great, but the book offers an incomplete elitist view of the American obsession with only the best. I do admit that for most, this is probably all they ever really wanted in the first place.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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