Caddy for Life

April 5, 2004
Sportswriter Feinstein (Open
; The Majors
) delivers another solid look at the world of golf and its many interesting personalities, and this newest is his most intimate work so far. His subject is Bruce Edwards, who has been known within golf's tight-knit world as the caddy for over 40 years for legendary pro Tom Watson. Edwards's life story is a microcosm of the changes in modern professional golfing, and this book will thoroughly entertain golf fans. The personal edge in Feinstein's writing comes from the fact—acknowledged immediately in the book's introduction—that Edwards was diagnosed in 2003 with ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, and that he found this out only 15 days after proposing to the longtime love of his life. Fortunately, Feinstein is skilled at looking at Edwards's professional and personal challenges without becoming mawkish and delivers a solid testament to a life well led. Feinstein nicely captures how Edwards, by caddying for Watson, "became the public face of those changes"—from Edwards's teenage years, working only at individual clubs for small change with a range of golfers competing for purses that were one-thirtieth of what they are now, to today, when a caddy can make an annual income well into six figures working for a successful player. The book, in effect, also offers a fine bio of Watson, as Feinstein recounts in energetic detail the many important tournaments that Watson won with Edwards's assistance. Agent, Esther Newberg.
(Apr.)

Correction:
Due to an editing error, our review of Samuel Huntington's Who Are We?
(Forecasts, Mar. 15) misattributed to the author the belief that "mixing of races and hence culture is the road to national degeneration." Mr. Huntington does not hold this view, and PW
apologizes for the error.

December 1, 2003
Famed sports writer Feinstein celebrates famed caddy Bruce Edwards, now suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2004
More than a factotum who lugs clubs, a professional caddy has to mesh psychologically with his boss. This ineffable necessity comes out in Feinstein's biography of a caddy who is well-known in golfing circles through his employment since 1973 by a top name in the sport, Tom Watson. Feinstein recounts on-course anecdotes that illustrate Edwards and Watson's working manner. Their relationship dwells in the average golf fan's memory thanks to a video clip, infinitely relooped during the U.S. Open every year, of Watson celebrating with Edwards after holing an impossible chip to defeat Jack Nicklaus at the 1982 Open. But the reason television loved that loop in 2003 was not joyous; it was valedictory, for Edwards had been diagnosed with a fatal affliction, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), popularly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Asked by Edwards to write his life story, Feinstein has done so with thoroughness and insight into the itinerant world of caddies and how they make it on tour, and, when the news arrived of Edwards' bad break, with subdued frankness about the tears and anger such news provokes. Feinstein's golf books--lately, " Open: Inside the Ropes at Bethpage Black" [BKL My 1 03]--are highly popular with fans, and Edwards' tragedy is bound to widen readership to those involved with ALS.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)