Best Golf Books: 12 books every golfer should read at least once

Golf is a game rich in both stories to tell, big characters to profile and incredible landscapes to showcase. As such, it's one of the most written-about sports ever conceived.

There are countless great golf books out there, ranging from in-depth biographies to coaching manuals and coffee table books highlighting the greatest, most picturesque courses in the world. 

Some, as we're about to expand upon, are legendary both for their enduring popularity and relevance to today's game, imparting decades old wisdom that even brand new golfers in the 21st century can draw upon. Others are more modern, dialing down on the stories that have made golf a global sporting juggernaut and the new modes of thought helping unlock hitherto unseen performance in the sport both at an amateur and a pro level.

As such, with Golf a sport as fun to read about as it is to play, we thought we'd round up some of our favourite golf books ever written, covering everything from how to make the perfect golf swing to modern day journalistic classics profiling the greatest players to ever play the game. All would make outstanding golf gifts, and all we firmly believe should be read by every passionate golfer at least once.

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The best golf Books for coaching and strategy

How to Play Your Best Golf: Strategies From a Tour Pro by Nick O’Hern

As you'll find further down below, Golf is full of storied manuals imparting timeless advice about how to play the game. No modern book, however, channels the insights of a modern day tour pro quite like this manual from Australian former tour pro Nick O'Hern. 

In it, O'Hern covers all the concepts required to plan, play and analyse your golf in a modern environment, covering everything from plotting your way around the course to scoring techniques and modern mindset coaching. Every page is full of wisdom you'll remember out on course for years to come.

How to Play Your Best Golf: Strategies From a Tour Profrom $12.14 at amazon.us

Harvey Penick's Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime in Golf by Harvey Penick

Perhaps the most iconic golfer's manual of all time, Harvey Penick's Little Red Book is the best-selling book in the game's history, full of short and insightful tips from a coach responsible for more hall of fame careers than perhaps any other, and a man Sports Illustrated called the “Socrates of the golf world”.

Written by Penick co-author Bud Shrake as the former entered his ninth decade of life, it distills generations worth of golfing insights into a digestible format, arming golfers of all levels with practical and mental insights they can take out on course time after time.

Harvey Penick's Little Red Book: Lessons And Teachings From A Lifetime In Golffrom £18.77 at amazon.uk

Ben Hogan's Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf by Ben Hogan

Gone are the days when golf coaches spent lessons trying to get amateurs to swing like picturesque tour pros, but Ben Hogan's Five Lessons still remains the definitive manual to the golf swing, written of course by the owner of one of the game's prettiest ever swings.

Millions of golfers have turned to Hogan's manual over the years, which breaks the swing down into five simple steps that can be optimised and adjusted according to the player. Working its way through grip, stance, backswing, downswing and the swing process, it's full of swing wisdom that, even with modern advancements in golf equipment, will be invaluable for golfers for generations to come.

Ben Hogan's Five Lessonsfrom £16.39 at amazon.uk

Golf is Not a Game of Perfect by Dr. Bob Rotella

Released in 2002, this book, alongside Dr. Joseph Parent's Zen Golf, brought mindset coaching into the golfing mainstream. Taking the focus away from the swing and the course and instead dealing with the mental side of the game we all struggle with from time to time, sports psychologist Dr. Bob Rotella draws upon his own work with some of the world's best golfers to provide insight into mindset that everyone can use to play calmer, more enjoyable golf.

Golf Is Not a Game of Perfectfrom £8.64 at amazon.uk

The best books about golf history

Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian

Perhaps the greatest biography of a single golfer ever written, Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian's sprawling work on the game's arugable GOAT is meticulously researched and unrivalled in its detail. 

Released in 2018 and covering his early life all the way to his downfall and eventual comeback, Tiger Woods draws on more than 400 interviews and three years of research to unspool the the mindset and driving motivations that shaped a young boy from Cypress, California into golf's most dominant force ever.

The Playing Lesson: A Duffer's Year Among the Pros by Michael Bamberger

Golf.com senior writer Michael Bamberger is one of the game's great chroniclers, having penned iconic modern works of golf literature like The Ball in the Air and Men in Green. His most recent work is also his most ambitious, following Bamberger as he embarks on a year not just watching, but playing, caddying, competing, volunteering, and interviewing inside the ropes alongside pros from the PGA, LIV and LPGA tours. 

It's golf's answer to Paper Lion, and full not just of incredible stories but invaluable wisdom imparted on the author by some of the game's modern greats.

Golf Wars: LIV and Golf's Bitter Battle for Power and Identity by Iain Carter

The conflict between the PGA Tour and breakaway upstart LIV Golf has come to define the last half-decade of the sport's history, and BBC Golf Correspondent Iain Carter's account of the entire struggle up to and including the 2025 season is as comprehensive and well researched as any fan of the pro game could ever hope to read.

Featuring insights and interviews with the likes of Rory McIlroy, Jay Monahan, Greg Norman, Keith Pelley and Tiger Woods, it's the definitive snapshot of a game still very much locked in an identity crisis.

from £17.59 at amazon.uk

Arnie & Jack: Palmer, Nicklaus and Golf's Greatest Rivalry by Ian O'Connor

Spanning more than decade and defining what came to be known as golf's arguable golden era, the enduring struggle between Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, two of the sport's most decorated ever players helped lay the foundations for the way we consume golf today.

In his account of this tumultuous, often bitter rivalry, Ian O'Conner details exquisitely just how the stoush between Palmer – a handsome veteran entering his twilight years – and calculating upstart Nicklaus, came to encompass a fifty-year duel both on and off the course, propelling them both to the status of sporting icons along the way.

Arnie & Jack: Palmer, Nicklaus and Golf's Greatest Rivalryfrom $9.59 at amazon.us

The Greatest Game Ever Played, The: Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, And The Birth Of Modern Golf by Mark Frost

Perhaps as well known for its Disney movie adaptation as its work telling one of golf's great formative stories, The Greatest Game Ever Played is nonetheless an essential read for anyone even remotely interested in the quaint charms of the game's early history. It tells the story of legendary six-time Open winner Harry Vardon and French amateur champion Francis Ouimet, whose winding, often parallel career paths would eventually lead to them contesting one of the sport's first great showdowns at the 1913 U.S. Open.

Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump by Rick Reilly

No US President has ever been as intrinsically linked to the game of golf as Donald Trump, who outside of his life in the White House famously owns multiple courses ranked among the world's finest places to play the game. 

With his life on the course as open to scrutiny and conjecture as his life in the West Wing, Rick Reilly's forensic account details Trump's often questionable on-course behaviour – as well as his disregard for many of the game's modern conventions – and how it has come to mirror his fractious relationship with established rules and truths throughout his controversial life as a statesman.

Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trumpfrom £10.53 at amazon.uk

The Golf 100: A Spirited Ranking of the Greatest Players of All Time by Michael Arkush

The Golf 100, penned by bestselling author Michael Arkrush and released back in April, aims to get to the bottom of one of golf's trickiest questions: who really is the GOAT? 

To form his answer, Arkrush provides a definitive ranking of the game's 100 greatest ever players, taking into account major victories, tournament wins and, importantly, the impact each has had both on and off the course. 

The result might change your mind about certain players, affirm your opinion of others, and make you aware of some you'd never heard of.

The best golf coffee table books

Lofted: Remarkable & Farflung Adventures for the Modern Golfer by William Watt

Put together by acclaimed Australian golf photographer William Watt, Lofted is a golfing photography book slightly different in its approach. With golf coffee table books chronicling the majesty of courses like Pebble Beach and Cypress Point a dime a dozen, Watt's work instead takes a look at the raw, uncatalogued beauty of some of the world's most far flung and under appreciated courses. 

On the way, Watt's lens takes in tracks on remote Australian islands, Malaysian Jungles and windswept crags on the Outer Hebrides.

Lofted: Remarkable & Far-flung Adventures for the Modern Golferfrom $32.55 at amazon.us