The hysterical story bestseller about one
man's epic Celtic sojourn in search of ancestors, nostalgia, and the
world's greatest round of golf
By turns hilarious and poetic, A Course Called Ireland is a magnificent tour of a vibrant land and paean to the world's greatest game in the tradition of Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods.
In his thirties, married, and staring down impending fatherhood, Tom
Coyne was familiar with the last refuge of the adult male: the golfing
trip. Intent on designing a golf trip to end all others, Coyne looked to
Ireland, the place where his father has taught him to love the game
years before. As he studied a map of the island and plotted his
itinerary, it dawn on Coyne that Ireland was ringed with golf holes. The
country began to look like one giant round of golf, so Coyne packed up
his clubs and set off to play all of it-on foot.
A Course Called Ireland
is the story of a walking-averse golfer who treks his way around an
entire country, spending sixteen weeks playing every seaside hole in
Ireland. Along the way, he searches out his family's roots, discovers
that a once-poor country has been transformed by an economic boom, and
finds that the only thing tougher to escape than Irish sand traps are
Irish pubs.