Open and shut! Check out these new books

Seve -uncovered

Inevitably the annual Open Championship - which starts at Hoylake near Liverpool on July 19 - attracts a bunch of new books for us to ponder long after the final putt has been holed.

I'm particularly looking forward to one by my former colleague Alistair Tait, who kindly loaned me his clubs when my name, instead of his, came out of the ballot to play Augusta National in 1991.

I always said I owed him a favour and let this be it, with a little personal promotion of his warts-and-all, illuminating Biography of Severiano Ballesteros (paperback by Virgin Books, price £9.99), who makes a sentimental return to the Open championship next week.

With anecdotes and tributes from Seve's contemporaries and former rivals, Alistair plots the charismatic Spaniard's swashbuckling route to fame, fortune and controversy, during a career blighted by injury. We may not see Seve's like again so with this definitive record, best we not forget it.

Daly - controversial

Controversy also stalked John Daly throughout his career and in his book My Life Out of the Rough (hardcover HarperSport £18.99), the 1995 Open champion reveals how the extremes of being hugely gift on the course (with the occasional outrageous behaviour) conflicted with the demons that touched him as a gambler, drug-user and alcoholic.

There's never a dull moment in the wild man's account of his life, so if you like the voyeurism of celebrity in a goldfish bowl, the inevitable fines for bad behaviour, the battles with the media, Big John spills the beans, big time.

Amateur ideals

It's an entertaining insight into the game and a celebration of the spirit of golf and its amateur ideals with experiences, from the sublime to the ridiculous. The former Walker Cup captain has also seen the world's greatest players grow up and is able to lay some myths to rest along the way.

He can also look caustically at the pro game and predicts who will be the next great names to emerge in Europe. From each sale, £2 will be donated to the Golf Foundation.

Jones remembered

With great craft Frost reveals how Jones fought to keep his fragile condition a secret from a country suffering from the Depression, but at the age of 28, after winning the US Amateur, he retired. His abrupt disappearance at the height of his renown inspired an impenetrable myth, which to this day is still fiercely protected by family and friends.

Public perception

It's an entertaining journey celebrating the eccentric and historical public and pay-and-play courses - from picturesque honesty box tracks in the Highlands, to converted potato fields in Essex and over-crowded city parks.

Here, he discovers how regulars play in all weathers and traces the history of why the game's origins have been so badly relegated in status.

Heart of Scotland

But surely, 'golf is a game for posh people?' the uninitiated might claim and to visit some clubs - many north of the border - you'd think so, too. However, Bannockburn-born (try saying that after a couple of pink gins) Andrew Greig, who grew up on the East coast of Scotland, says playing golf here is as natural as breathing.

With great eloquence, he writes about the cultural manifestations of the game, the essence of it, in poetic fashion in 'Preferred Lies: A journey to the Heart of Scottish golf (hardback Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £12.99)

He plays alone, with friends and brothers, with ghosts and reflects between shots about the sense of being there, to experience the physical, emotional and intellectual side of the game.

500 lost balls!

You may recall we reported how he quite his job as a civil engineer at 35 to fulfil and ambition to hit golf balls from one side of the country to the other - a distance of over 1200 miles (2, 171,505 yards) hitting 12,170 shots in 90 days.

Though he lost over 500 balls, he was dubbed 'Golfer of the year' by the New York Times and one of the world's '25 Coolest people' for his escapade which is colourfully recorded in his journal.

Golf thriller

He discovers sinister undercurrents, festering grudges and unscrupulous blackmail among its members (no change there, then!) while trying to unmask a murderer.

Golf is letting off steam

His 'Golf and the Railway Connection' (£14) and 'Scotland's Golf in Days of Steam' (£9.99) from Scottish Cultural Press are extremely well written recapturing high drama on some of the most stunning courses in England, Wales Northern Ireland and Scotland, transporting the reader to a world of steam trains and plus-fours.

Both reveal through anecdote and recollection how railways played such a vital role in the development of golf, transporting the game's greatest players to the big events and leaving a legacy of steam at some of our greatest courses which remains major venues.