Life Swings

by Nick Faldo

For many years in the 1980s and 1990s, Nick Faldo was the most feared competitor in world golf. Relentless and strong-willed, he would wear down his opponents with his determination to win. It was these attributes that brought him six Major championships; Harry Vardon, a century ago, is the only European to have won more and no one has been more successful in the Ryder Cup. But Faldo's success came at a his unyielding search for perfection, working with David Leadbetter, took him away from home, leading to divorces and media attention on his private life, as well as criticism for being a loner. Now he feels the time is right to talk not just about his golf, but about his whole life and how he has achieved a new calm in recent years, and to reveal the private man behind the public face.

Genres: Sports, Autobiography, Biography

384 pages, Hardcover

First published July 4, 2005

About the author

Sir Nicholas Alexander Faldo MBE is an English professional golfer on the European Tour, now mainly an on-air golf analyst. A top player of his era, renowned for his single-minded dedication to the game, he was ranked No. 1 on the Official World Golf Ranking for a total of 97 weeks. His 40 professional wins include 30 victories on the European Tour and six major championships: three Open Championships (1987, 1990, 1992) and three Masters (1989, 1990, 1996).

Faldo has since become a television pundit for major golf championships. In 2006, he became the lead golf analyst for CBS Sports. In 2012, Faldo joined the BBC Sport on-air team for coverage of the Open Championship.

Reviews

[leonard powell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Op shop find - I’ve actually got a lot of time for this guy. Would %10000 percent reccomend listening to “The Shotgun Start” podcast episode doing a deep dive into his life. Will add some more colour from the outsiders perspective. Good book to fall asleep to

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

The world of non-golfers tend to see both the sport and the players as the epitome of middle-class boredom, so enter Nick Faldo to not shake that opinion by one micro-millimetre. This is a book that won't offer much, if anything, to people who have no interest in the sport but then a lot of sporting autobiographies are like that. What did you expect Nick Faldo's life story to be about? Anyone who knows anything about sport played at the highest level knows that it's not much more than hard graft, practice, practice and more practice, occasionally interrupted by tournament play. Faldo was the best British golfer ever, and makes no apologies for the fact that golf was his life, often coming before friends and family. If you want to win then that's the sacrifice that has to be made. This book concentrates heavily on the golf tournaments Faldo played in, with a healthy emphasis on the Ryder Cups, and gives a good idea of the pressure and pain of striving to compete at the top.
Faldo doesn't avoid trying to face up to the personal cost of this golfing life. Broken marriages, seldom-seen children, friends alienated, colleagues sacked (rightly or wrongly) money squandered and scores settled. He struggles to understand why he rubs people up the wrong way and it does come across as genuine bemusement. The Press he can understand, but fellow golfers? He looks at some of his more famous disputes but seems none the wiser after trying to analyse them. The book ends in 2004 with Faldo admitting that he's found the book tremendously difficult to write, but looks forward to a positive future with his new wife. He really does seem devoted to her, but a quick search on Wikipedia proved that the future wouldn't be a bed of roses either.
It may have been difficult for Faldo to write, but it's an easy and interesting read for anyone with an interest in golf.

[Tracy Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a lot of respect in Faldo as a championship golfer and have enjoyed watching him over the years. But, he always struck me as a bit of a jerk -- and this book didn't do anything to dispel that. Constant and consistent whining about how people did him wrong and misinterpreted his interview gaffes, etc. etc. I got the thought at one point half-way through this book that maybe he should re-examine his position. Seems everybody but himself (and his paid side-kicks) thinks he did something wrong, maybe he did something wrong. Its not like he is against saying he was wrong -- he does that also plenty of times in the book, but gee- it just seemed that he was wronged by so many people.
Other than that, I found the book a bit hard to follow. It tries to go along a chronological path, with the golfing year and the four majors featured prominently, but I kept losing track of where he was and what he was about at the time. There often wasn't really any good lead-up to the major if he didn't feature prominently.
All in all, maybe this book gets you into the mind of a championship golfer, but I'm not sure it does anything but reinforce the negative impression one would have of Sir Nick. This book copyright is 2004 so no mention of his travails as European Captain in 2008 Ryder Cup.

[Bart · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book reveals a great athlete who is characteristically wide and not deep.

It also has the feel of an apology tour to the author's children and third wife. It is triumphant at odd times, and the final 65 pages of score-settling and defensiveness are nigh unreadable. Nick Faldo's singleminded concentration on himself and the game of golf, as an extension of himself, comes alive in this tome.

Even for a Faldo fanatic, this book is 100 pages too long.