‘Out of the Rough’ by Bernard Darwin Enters Classics of Golf Library


“Out of the Rough” is a superb collection of Bernard Darwin's columns from the early 1930s. The pieces appeared in “The Times” and “Country Life,” the magazines where Darwin made his fame. The columns include some of Darwin's all-time classics, including “Old Pawky,” where he talks about Willie Park's wooden putter; “Hail and Farewell,” in which Darwin discusses Bobby Jones' retirement, and “The Best Ever,” where Darwin describes the best golfer in history.

Darwin's observations on golf are unfailing, which help make him a great read today, some 70 years after these columns were written. Henry Longhurst wrote the Foreword for “Out of the Rough,” and described Darwin once at work in a crowded golf club lounge:

"In an arm-chair amid the Babel sits a bowed, greyish figure in his early sixties. He is writing in a small, spidery hand on some crumpled sheets of paper, and his pen, save when he stops to peer vaguely over his glasses and puff smoke from his cigar, pushes on without pausing. Nothing is corrected, not a word crossed out. His concentration is complete. He might be alone in the silence of his study at home."

This book is a faithful reproduction of the original, beautifully captured in a traditional Smyth-sewn, hardcover binding. Early editions of the book sell for $700 and more. The new version is priced at $29.

Publisher Michael Beckerich and Classics of Golf faithfully publish a cost-effective, attractive library of 66 volumes of the works of Bernard Darwin, Herbert Warren Wind, Bobby Jones, and many significant authors, keeping in print the great literature and history of golf.

For more information about Darwin’s book and others, visit www.classicsofgolf.com.

“Out of the Rough” by Bernard Darwin, Classics of Golf, 2005, $29, 336 pages, ISBN: 0-940889-64-1