Golf Book Club: "Bud, Sweat & Tees"by Alan Shipnuck

ALAN SHIPNUCK got lucky for his first book; not only did he find Rich Beem, the central character in this warts and all look at life on the PGA Tour in the United States, he also discovered Steve Duplantis, a caddie with a personal life straight out of a television soap series. And, in Bud, Sweat Tees, the author has succeeded in providing a behind the scenes and extremely honest look at life on tour, from both a player’s and a caddie’s shared experiences.

In many ways, this is an inspirational book in that it recounts golfer Beem’s evolution as a player with particular emphasis on his ‘rookie’ season in 1999 on the US Tour.

Shipnuck could so easily have romanticised Beem’s tale, of how a player who once was so disenchanted with the game that he reverted to selling mobile homes and, then, after rediscovering his love for the sport, played mini-tours and took a job for less than $400 a week in a club pro shop before embarking on a journey that saw him become a tour winner (and, as we know, in the following years, went on to become a major champion by winning the 2002 US PGA).

Rather than take the wishy-washy and simplistic “boy makes good” route, Shipnuck attempts – and, in the main, succeeds – to mix the bad with the good in the lives of Beem and Duplantis, a Canadian who had forfeited his own dream to be a player to become a bagman. Among his employers was Jim Furyk, who dispensed with his services because of “tardiness”, being regularly late for practice and occasionally for actual rounds of golf.

The dysfunctional lifestyle of Duplantis and the honesty of Beem makes for an extremely good read, although there are stages that are stretched and lose their way. Also, it comes across that many of the interviews which Shipnuck conducted with people encountered by Beem and Duplantis throughout the year were done by phone. This affects the flow of the book in places, and also contrasts with the obvious bond which the author established with Beem and especially Duplantis.

One of the difficulties faced by Shipnuck is that the idea for this book very clearly took place after the early part of the season had already taken place, so he relies heavily on stories recounted to him by Beem, Duplantis and others (in interviews) with the result that some sections have an easier flow than others.

The real life character flaws of Duplantis, who married to a stripper he barely knew, certainly add to the book’s appeal, and those struggles – as much as Beem’s extraordinary story in firstly winning a tour card at qualifying school and going on to win the Kemper Open in his rookie season – will have you turning the pages, even if the storyline is a decade old.

Beem is an engaging character, and this comes across very clearly. Once, when he worked as a salesman in a Hi-Fi shop in Seattle, Beem participated in a staff orientation game which involved telling two truths and a lie: Beem’s three revelations were, (1) that he lived overseas for seven years; (2) that he had a six-year-old son; and (3) that he used to be a professional golfer. The lie was that he had a son. But not one of the other 40 store employees believed he’d ever been a professional golfer.

Beem is most definitely not your archetypal tour player and is far from squeaky clean, being done for drink driving while at the British Open in Scotland among his various indiscretions.

But he’s a hugely likeable rogue with a great sense for fun . . . and enough gumption to use the gift given him to hit a little white ball around a golf course to become a major champion.

Questions for Readers

At one point in the book, Shipnuck describes a golf course as being like Angelina Jolie, “gorgeous but nothing but trouble”. Do such clichés work?

Does this book provide you with a genuine inside look at life on tour for players and caddies?

Beem’s father was a decent player who couldn’t afford to play on tour. Do you believe his father’s situation was a driving factor in him eventually deciding to chase the dream?

Why do you believe the golfer-caddie relationship between Beem and Duplantis was doomed to be a short-lived one?

How would you rate this book out of a top mark of 10?