Recommended Golf Books

The most widely read instruction book ever written, and still the clearest account of grip, stance and plane. Nearly seventy years on, teachers still hand it to students.

A lifetime of teaching notes from the coach of Crenshaw and Kite, in short passages rather than a system. The best-selling sports book of its time.

The book that took sports psychology mainstream in golf, built around accepting a bad shot rather than fighting it.

The strokes-gained statistic explained by the professor who invented it. It changed how tours, coaches and broadcasters measure the game.

A round with a mystical Scottish pro at a fictional links. Either the most profound golf book ever written or the most self-indulgent, depending who you ask.

A season inside the tour, mostly with the players who miss cuts rather than the ones who win. The template for modern golf reporting.

Francis Ouimet, a twenty-year-old amateur caddie, beating Vardon and Ray at the 1913 US Open — the result that made golf an American game.

Hogan and Nelson against two amateurs at Cypress Point in 1956, reconstructed shot by shot.

Bobby Jones writing about his own game three years before the Grand Slam. Still the most literate first-person account by a great player.

Nicklaus explaining his own method in full, including the pre-shot visualisation that most players quote without having read the source.

A coach's account of six years with Woods at his peak. Controversial on publication, and the closest look anyone has had at how he worked.

The Bhagavad Gita transposed onto a 1931 exhibition match in Georgia. Better than the film it became.

Buddhist practice applied to the space between shots. The most useful of the many mental-game books that followed Rotella.

Rotella narrowed to the club that causes the most anguish, and the one where attitude matters most relative to technique.

How courses are actually designed, by an architect who writes plainly. Changes what you notice standing on a tee.

The Augusta and Cypress Point architect's own manuscript, lost for decades and published long after his death.

Jacobs taught that ball flight tells you everything about the swing that produced it. The foundation most modern teaching is built on.

The first serious scientific study of the golf swing. Decades old and still cited by researchers.

A son takes his dying father to play the great British courses. The one golf book people admit made them cry.

Walking the entire coast of Ireland with clubs on his back, playing every links on the way round.