The Golf Club: 400 Years of the Good, the Beautiful & the Creative [Anglais] [Relié]

Good craftsmen never blame their tools. Yet here we have 400 years of golfers searching for better tools. The evolution of golf's "tools" is a tribute to the maddeningly subtle difficulties of a game that motivates players to search endlessly for the putter to alleviate yips, the driver to straighten out a chronic shank, and a sand wedge to compensate for the damn driver that dumped them in the trap in the first place. Ellis is an accomplished amateur golfer who also wrote the highly acclaimed The Clubmaker's Art (1997). The format here is deceptively simple: Ellis provides a brief overview of an era and the trend clubmaking took within it. He follows with beautiful color photographs of dozens of clubs, with brief comments on each, including designer and manufacturer. The information is fascinating, and the photography is beautiful, but what will draw golfers to the book is the connection it will provide to kindred souls of centuries past, who are passionate about a sport in which one's only competition comes from within. Wes Lukowsky
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Ellis' latest book, an exquisite book with splendid photography, is a "best value" you won't be able to resist.

THE GOLF CLUB presents over 450 of the most magnificent, historical, and valuable golf clubs ever devised to strike a golf ball during the past 400 years.

Inside are rare treasures made by Scotland's Old Tom Morris, known as "The Grand Old Man of Golf," and Hugh Philp, often called the Stradivarious of clubmakers. You will also find modern masterpieces by Ping, Spalding, Callaway, MacGregor, Titleist, Nike and others. You may even find a club that you own!

You will see the club that Alan Shephard used on the moon, the 1-iron made famous by Ben Hogan when he won the 1950 US Open, the putter used by Willie Park to win the British Open in 1863, the Calamity Jane putter Bobby Jones used to win the Grand Slam in 1930, and the putter Jack Nicklaus used to win 15 of his 20 majors.

Recent Sales prices are given for a number of the clubs shown, and the clubs are accompanied by photographs of over 60 vintage golf balls from across history

Jeff Ellis is the foremost authority on antique golf clubs in the world. He has appraised many antique golf collections, including those of the Royal Canadian Golf Association and the Los Angeles Country Club. In 1998 he brokered a single antique golf collection with a sale price in excess of $4 million.

In 1997 Ellis's first book, "The Clubmaker's Art" was published. It took 10 years to complete and received widespread critical acclaim. It was named Golf Book of the Year in 1998 by THE GOLFER magazine. In 1999, GOLF WORLD magazine named "The Clubmaker's Art" to its list of "Top Ten Golf Books of The 20th Century." In Great Britain, Ellis was awarded "The Murdoch Medal" for outstanding achievement in the worold of golf literature.

His New book, "The Golf Club: 400 Years of The Good, The Beautiful & The Creative," builds on the foundation established by "The Clubmakers Art." It takes the reader on a fascinating journey that begins with clubs made as far back as the 1600s and culminates with clubs made as recently as 2002. Readers will marvel at the ingenuity and craftsmanship of the clubs awaiting them on these pages