Michael Bamberger writes a love letter to golf
Golf is a sport that will humble even its most skilled players. Persistence is required to unlock the game’s considerable rewards.
In his new book, “The Ball in the Air,” the award-winning golf writer Michael Bamberger tells the stories of three very different golfers, each of whom is a model of persistence.
Pratima Sherpa learns the game growing up in Kathmandu, where her family lives in a maintenance shed on the grounds of Royal Nepal Golf Club. Sherpa develops her game to the point where she attracts international media attention. She comes to the United States and earns a spot on the golf team at Santa Barbara City College in Southern California. Sherpa ends up meeting Tiger Woods, who takes a liking to her and praises her swing.
Sam Reeves, a Georgia native who made his fortune as a cotton tycoon, becomes the oldest amateur to make the cut in the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Reeves owns a house near Pebble Beach at which he has hosted numerous golf luminaries, as well as Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. He has shared meals with at least 25 Masters winners and has bodysurfed with the author Bamberger.
Ryan French is a former college golfer from Alpena, Mich. French’s life spirals out of control thanks to some fast living, leading him to move back home with his parents. In the most affecting of the three stories, French and his dad bond over caddie trips together around the U.S. and into Canada. Ryan French creates a Twitter account about aspiring pro golfers chasing their dream and eventually becomes a writer for the Fire Pit Collective, a golf website that also employs Bamberger.
Bamberger also weaves in a few chapters about the place of golf in his own life. As a gifted golfer and accomplished journalist, he has played all over the world and gotten to know many of the game’s luminaries.
The book’s title, “The Ball in the Air,” suggests two meanings. Bamberger writes that golfers at all levels “know what it’s like to marvel at a white ball in a high sky and get lost. What a gift that is.”
And keeping balls in the air describes the deft juggling act that Bamberger accomplishes in weaving together the three main stories of golfers in very different circumstances.
The author participated in a five-question Q&A over email.
Five questions with Michael Bamberger
Do you have a short list of favorite sports books or authors, ones that inspired you in your writing?
I read the sports section as a kid growing up in Patchogue, on the South Shore of Long Island. We all did. I read Red Smith, Dave Anderson and Steve Cady in The New York Times (among many others), Joe Gergen and others in Newsday, Herb Wind and Roger Angell in The New Yorker. George Plimpton, in SI and his books. That's a very short sports list. Reading has always been my main hobby. I loved reading first-person sports books. Books by (or about) Cleon Jones (baseball), John Wooden (basketball), Frank Beard (golf), Gale Sayers (football) and others come to mind. I loved a book called "The Year the Mets Lost Last Place." It's about the '69 Mets. The title is an understatement. (The Mets won the World Series.)
“The Ball in the Air” has such an original format, the way it weaves together the stories of Pratima, Ryan and Sam, along with your own golf story and a sprinkling of Lee Trevino. How did you come to choose that narrative form?
My editor at Avid Reader Press, Jofie Ferrari-Acler, publishes Lisa Taddeo. Ms. Taddeo wrote a book called "Three Women" that studies the lives of three women. The three lives don't overlap, but each of the women has an interesting sex life which the author explores. I stole that format for "The Ball in the Air, though I have no sex scenes, graphic or otherwise. There is some good live-action golf.
The amount of detail you unearthed about your subjects, particularly Ryan and Sam, is amazing. Did you embed yourself with each of them for three months, or how did you gather so many details about their lives?
On detail, thank you. I do ask a lot of questions. Also, as a reporter, I try to keep my eyes open, and try to use other senses, too. A friend, Mark Bowden, read a book of mine called "Wonderland" in manuscript form, about a large public high school. This was years ago. He said, "Can you put in some smells?" I added some smells, and have been ever since. The New Yorker had a brief review of "Wonderland" and the reviewer (unnamed) noted that the school's hallways "smelled like grapefruit disinfectant." Bowden is a genius.
Golf becomes a kind of connective tissue in the families of the three main subjects of your book. Has it played a role like that in your own family?
We are a family of four. My wife, Christine, is not a golfer but has walked many courses with me, and sometimes has collected wildflowers along the way. I stumble onto them now and again in the pages of old books. Our daughter, Alina, and I once had a grand time fishing balls out of streams but she did not get bit by the golf bug. Every four years or so, our son, Ian, asks me if I'd like to play nine holes. He has run more marathons and half-marathons than he has played rounds of golf. So, no, golf does not run in my immediate family.
If you could gain access to any living person in order to write a book about them, not limited to the world of sports, whose story would you want to tell?
My wife. She says amusing things like, "The plot thickens." I am working on the access, but I doubt I have the skill to fully capture her.
