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Ever wonder how to retrieve a sunken golf cart from a snake-infested lake? Or which club in your bag is best suited for combat against a horde of rats? If these and other sporting questions are gnawing at you, The Downhill Lie, Carl Hiaasen’s hilarious confessional about returning to the fairways after a thirty-two-year absence, is definitely the book for you.

Originally drawn to the game by his father, Carl wisely quit golfing in 1973, when “Richard Nixon was hunkered down like a meth-crazed badger in the White House, Hank Aaron was one dinger shy of Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, and The Who had just released Quadrophenia.” But some ambitions refuse to die, and as the years—and memories of shanked 7-irons—faded, it dawned on Carl that there might be one thing in life he could do better in middle age than he could as a youth. So gradually he ventured back to the dreaded driving range, this time as the father of a five-year-old son—and also as a grandfather.

“What possesses a man to return in midlife to a game at which he’d never excelled in his prime, and which in fact had dealt him mostly failure, angst and exasperation? Here’s why I did it: I’m one sick bastard.”

And thus we have Carl’s foray into a world of baffling titanium technology, high-priced golf gurus, bizarre infomercial gimmicks and the mind-bending phenomenon of Tiger Woods; a maddening universe of hooks and slices where Carl ultimately—and foolishly—agrees to compete in a country-club tournament against players who can actually hit the ball. “That’s the secret of the sport’s infernal seduction,” he writes. “It surrenders just enough good shots to let you talk yourself out of quitting.”

Hiaasen’s chronicle of his shaky return to this bedeviling pastime and the ensuing demolition of his self-esteem—culminating with the savage 45-hole tournament—will have you rolling with laughter. Yet the bittersweet memories of playing with his own father and the glow he feels when watching his own young son belt the ball down the fairway will also touch your heart. Forget Tiger, Phil and Ernie. If you want to understand the true lure of golf, turn to Carl Hiaasen, who has written an extraordinary book for the ordinary hacker.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4599 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-06
• Released on: 2008-05-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Hiaasen (Skinny Dip), an admittedly woeful golfer, recounts his clumsy resumption of the game after a 32-year layoff. Why did he take up golf so long after quitting at the age of 20? I'm one sick bastard, he writes. Hiaasen interweaves passages about his return to the game with diary entries covering more than a year and a half on the links. He mixes childhood memories of playing with his father, who died prematurely, with anecdotes, including the time he and a friend ejected an invasion of poisonous toads from his friend's patio with short irons. His analysis of his lessons, hapless rounds and gimmicky golf equipment is hilarious, and his vivid descriptions are vintage Hiaasen, such as golf balls that are designed to run like a scalded gerbil. Hiaasen also touches on topics he writes about in his novels and newspaper columns, lamenting the overdevelopment of Florida and skewering crooked politicians and lobbyists prone to lavish golf junkets. He finishes his journey with a detailed round-by-round account of his pitiful play in a member-guest tournament on his home course (his discouragement is cheered, however, when his wife and young son joyfully take up the game). With the satirically skilled Hiaasen, who rarely breaks 90 on the links, this narrative is an enjoyable ride. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Carl Hiaasen took up golf as a teenager to avoid church and spend time with his father. Apparently, he was a lousy and bad-tempered golfer. After his father's death, Hiaasen quit. Thirty-two years later, he ventures back onto the golf course because he's "one sick bastard." THE DOWNHILL LIE chronicles about 600 days of "relapse" with typical Hiaasen absurdity: a turtle is sent airborne, rats are dispatched to the beyond with a weighted training club, a golf cart is sunk in a pond, and desperate self-help products from infomercials are sampled. Hiaasen's tone is appropriately and hilariously self-deprecating. He is both continually surprised by his ineptitude and he fully expects it, and his voice reflects that dichotomy perfectly. A funny memoir even for those who don't play golf. A.B. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Review
His analysis of his lessons, hapless rounds and gimmicky golf equipment is hilarious, and his vivid descriptions are vintage Hiaasen . . . With the satirically skilled Hiaasen, who rarely breaks 90 on the links, this narrative is an enjoyable ride.
Publishers Weekly


It has taken Carl Hiaasen to capture the essence of a game that, like the bagpipes and the kilt, was invented by the Irish and given to the Scots as a joke. Carl's dementia is kind of exquisite. He lampoons the most banal aspects of stodgy blue-blooded American country-club life. The simple act of buying a set of clubs gets the full Hiaasen treatment, and the guilt-ridden angst of the triangular love-hate relationship between himself, his drop-dead beautiful Greek wife, and the drop-dead-you-rotten-bastard Scotty Cameron putter she bought him, is alone worth the price of one for yourself and another for Father's Day.
David Feherty


From the Hardcover edition. --David Feherty

Golf Books Are Like Putts...
...The shorter, the better. So says Carl Hiaasen, who has had a lot of success as a novelist, but as he makes clear, his golf skills are nothing to brag about. THE DOWNHILL LIE is a relatively short book; it's an account of his return to golf after having abandoned the sport for three decades. There is a lot that is laugh-out-loud funny in this book, including an incident when his cart rolls into a pond.

Mr. Hiaasen's ambivalence is something every hacker knows, and he articulates why we all keep playing golf in spite of its many frustrations: "It surrenders just enough good shots to let you talk yourself out of quitting."

He describes his bad shots in hilarious detail, as well as his quest to find clubs that make up for his lousy swing. In short, we've all been there, done that -- but Carl Hiaasen makes golf's most maddening moments an enjoyable read.

Hysterical, whether or not you're a golfer...
If you are looking for a great Christmas present for the golfers on your list, The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport by Carl Hiaasen is the perfect gift. Hiaasen takes the same skills he uses to write his zany mysteries to produce this hysterical look at his return to golfing after a 30-year hiatus.

Carl Hiaasen's dad was a fairly good golfer, and he taught the sport to his son. But unlike dad, Carl was pretty much a duffer. "At my best, I'd shown occasional flashes of competence. At my worst, I'd been a menace to all carbon-based life-forms on the golf course." As a young adult, he decided to stop torturing himself and gave up playing. But 32 years later, his friends convince him to pick up some clubs and start playing again. Hiaasen also has a secret desire to become a better golfer in his 50s than he was in his youth. He decides to keep a journal along the way. What results is a truly funny look at not just golf, but getting older and our physical shortcomings.

Hiaasen takes lessons and then takes more lessons. He starts with a used set of clubs, and then purchases new ones. He also keeps buying putters and drivers. When one starts failing him, he ditches the offender in his locker and gets something new. He has a Ping putter that "has so many peculiar curves and sharp angles that it's impossible to get it clean with a golf towel. I need to take the blasted thing to a car wash and have it detailed." The author also purchases almost every item offered to help golfers improve their game (none of them work) and reads dozens and dozens of golf magazines and books (they don't help much, either).

Hiaasen's golf swing is entertaining by itself. He calls himself "a male Sybil in spikes" and compares his swing to an "ax murderer." But there is so much more to laugh at. At one course, he manages to sink his golf cart (he claims the brakes were faulty). At home, he uses one of his clubs to kill rats. And when his wife decides to take lessons, she wants to wear flip-flips so that she doesn't get a tan line on her ankles. The Downhill Lie really had me chuckling. When he finds out that Donald Trump can drive a golf ball 310 yards, Hiaasen comforted himself "with a petty vision of the cocksure billionaire trying to tee off in 25-knot gusts, his famously surreal hair torqued into cotton candy."

There is also a little of the environmental activist that we see in his mysteries. "Golf was not meant to be played in the shadow of a high-rise; that high rises don't belong on the banks of an estuary; and that whoever is responsible for such abominations should be pounded to a permanently infertile condition with a 60-degree lob wedge."

Whether or not you play golf, The Downhill Lie is a fun read--especially if you are a Hiaasen fan.

nostalgia
Hiassen's recollections of golf with his father and golf with his young son struck a nostalgic chord. It seems that he knew he was being a real pain sometimes with his dad but at this point he cherishes the memory of Sundays playing golf with dad--- and then he enjoys watching his own son learn the game. It brought a lump to my throat. This book brought a number of audible chuckles too, particularily his purchase of all those weird golf "aids" that we always see in the back of golf magazines.
Play on!