Driving Myself Crazy: Misadventures of a Novice Golfer

by Jessica Maxwell

Adventure writer Jessica Maxwell loves a challenge and decided to tackle golf the way she had tackled skiing and fly-fishing, two demanding sports she took up in her early thirties after a life as a confirmed "non-jockette." Surely golf couldn't be that much more difficult?could it?

In this irreverent memoir we have a front-row seat as Jessica struggles to learn golf's etiquette, traditions, and complex rules—from her first comical attempts to coax practice balls out of a golf ball machine, to just hitting the damn ball, to acquiring her own set of Nancy Lopez clubs!

Among her coaches are Peter Croker, a revolutionary Australian teaching pro, Cindy Swift Jones, his partner and putting guru, and Al Mundle, the Harvey Penick of the Northwest, as well as seventy-eight-year-old American women's golf legend Peggy Kirk Bell and the queen of golf herself, Nancy Lopez.

A willful celebration of what one golf coach called "the atrocious first year," Driving Myself Crazy is an often hilarious, always inspiring tale of one woman's obsession with proving to herself that golf—played right—is a beautiful game ... at least for that moment.

Genres: Sports

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Liked the last two chapters...Nancy Lopez interview and golf tour of Scotland. Was mostly about how she learned to play golf & all the private coaching she got.

[Cassi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This a great book about learning a new sport and enjoying life! Jessica Mawell will make you fall off the couch laughing and then run to the nearest golf course!

[Janine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as entertaining as others I've read by this author. Still like her, though. I'd read more of her works.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a woman who just took up golfing I found this book quite funny and entertaining, but I'm not so sure I would have otherwise.

[Dorothy]

Reread August 2002