AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 ROUNDS

Yet another humorous memoir from some guy who likes to play golf—but this one’s actually funny.

No matter how modest their writing talent, an alarming number of golf enthusiasts feel impelled to share their on-the-course tales with the general reading public, as witnessed by last year’s spate of golf-soaked memoirs (e.g. Alice Cooper, Golf Monster and Sports Illustrated contributor Steve Eubanks’s breezy Golf Freek). So, what’s Wood’s angle? Well, he spanned the globe for one full year in search of links Nirvana and in the resulting book chooses to focus on the people and the places as much, if not more than, he does on the sport itself. Formerly a standup comic and currently a regular contributor to Grand Tour magazine, Wood is an affable, down-to-earth sort with a keen eye for detail and a sharp ear for dialogue. He does a fine job of bringing us into the heart of whatever locale he’s visiting at the moment, be it the Australian outback, the hinterlands of Uruguay, the lush panorama of Victoria Falls or the remote hills of Kathmandu. His snappy prose is filled with gentle jokes, clever asides and general goofiness. (For instance, on the subject of an apparent rash of ailing chickens in Laos, Wood wonders, “If a chicken was actually sick, would chicken soup make it feel better?”) This J. Maarten-Troost-meets-John-Feinstein approach should have readers looking forward to the author’s next tee-off.

Charming and accessible, Wood’s debut scores a solid eagle.