Travel writing Ireland and ScotlandGeorge Kimball talks to Jim Finegan, whose latest book looks at some of Scotland and Ireland's finest courses

On his frequent visits to Ireland over the past several years, Jim Finegan was often asked "What are you working on now?" "I'm writing a book," he would somewhat ruefully reply, "that very few people will ever actually read."

Finegan needn't have fretted. Although, unlike his earlier works about golf in the British Isles, his latest is lavishly illustrated with Larry Lambrecht and Tim Thompson's colour photographs, the accompanying 130,000-word text represents his most ambitious work to date, the sort of straightforward golfer's-eye journey encompassing history, travelogue, and sheer delight. In short, the sort of book his coterie of devotees on both sides of the Atlantic has come to expect from a Jim Finegan book.

Besides the photography, what sets his latest apart from his predecessors is its sheer heft. Where Golf Is Great tips the scales at an even 10lbs, a coffee-book designed to test the limits of all but the sturdiest coffee table.

One afternoon last month Finegan had arranged to meet with a couple of old pals at a restaurant near his suburban Philadelphia home. Having just received a shipment of books from his publisher, he decided to take one along to show to his friends. "By the time I found a parking space, I was two and a half blocks from the restaurant," recalled the 76 year-old author. "I realised somewhat to my chagrin that there was no way I could carry it that far. I had to invite them back to the car to have a look at it after lunch."

It has, in fact, belatedly occurred to Finegan, if not to his publisher, that producing the world's biggest golf tome could have its drawbacks. It's not the sort of book, for instance, that one is apt to tuck under one's arm and move on to the next shop.

"Obviously, this book was designed for the gift-book market and brought out in time for the Christmas season," said Finegan. "I recently read that something like 50 per cent of books bought as gifts are purchased by women, but how many ladies are going to be able to lift this one, much less carry it home with them?"

Although he has come to be renowned for his folksy but knowledgeable travelogues, Finegan's second career came relatively late in life, and almost by accident. A lifelong golfer (for many years Finegan played to a two handicap), he made his first visit to St Andrews' Old Course as a 21-year-old Navy Ensign, when he and a shipmate slipped away from the carrier USS Wasp, at anchor in the Firth of Clyde, to play a round at the home of golf.

His first visit to his ancestral homeland didn't come for another two decades, when he and his wife Harriett travelled to Ireland for a nine-day golfing vacation. "Just as I'd been a golfer all my life, I'd always considered myself a writer," said Finegan. "I'd written a novel. I'd written a Broadway play. I'd written a film script. Nothing ever came of any of them, of course."

After leaving the service Finegan put his writing talents to use as a copywriter for a Philadelphia ad agency. His career in advertising paid the bills while he raised a family.

When he returned from that mid-70s trip to Ireland, Jim pieced together a first-person account of his golfing experiences, which he sold to Golf Journal, the official publication of the USGA.

"Thirty years ago there were very few golf-travel writers as such," he recalled. "I was able to sort of carve out my own niche" - one that would both satisfy his yearning to see his words in print and defray the expenses for what came to be yearly transatlantic excursions to Ireland and Scotland.

Some of his pieces wound up in Golf magazine, others in the travel section of his hometown Philadelphia Inquirer.

"Then in 1990, when I retired from the advertising business, the opportunity arose to do books. I'd never even thought about it," confessed Finegan.

After editors at Simon & Schuster expressed interest, Finegan assembled his first, and, in short order, second golf books.

Blasted Heaths And Blessed Greens took its readers through Scotland, while Emerald Fairways And Foam-Flecked Seas did the same for Ireland.

"Then a few years later, they let me do England," said Finegan. All Courses Great And Small: A Golfer's Pilgrimage to England and Wales completed the trilogy.

Assembling the books proved easier than he had expected.

"About 50 per cent of the material relied directly on travel articles I'd already written," he revealed. "The other half came from the notes and journals I'd kept on our trips. I'm an inveterate note-taker, and I'd saved everything."

Finegan's Everyman approach proved a delight to readers, those contemplating an overseas golfing journey as well as those who had already experienced one. Although he possessed a firm grasp of golfing history and an understanding of design concepts, his narratives were characterised by an eager curiosity bordering on naivete and a constant willingness to be surprised.

In Where Golf Is Great, for instance, he relates an incident which took place at dinner following his first visit to The K Club a dozen years ago.

"The first evening at dinner, in the Byerley Turk Restaurant, Harriett sat down and promptly lowered her handbag onto the carpet beside her chair in this romantically lighted room. It had scarcely settled there, discreetly out of sight, when a staff member silently materialised at her elbow with a tiny square bench - in olden days, m'lady's footstool - upholstered in gray silk. He unobtrusively placed it next to her chair, put the handbag on it, bowed, and withdrew."

A more sophisticated travel writer might have been every bit as startled as was Finegan, but he'd never have let on as much.

But then Jim Finegan isn't and wasn't a professional golfer, and initially, anyway, he wasn't even a professional golf writer. He would more accurately be described as a storyteller of the first order, and his refreshingly homespun approach in relating his adventures evinces the same tone he might have adopted in relating his adventures to his playing partners back in Villanova over a post-round beer in the clubhouse grille.

The notion of expanding his earlier works into one massive volume hadn't occurred to Finegan, but it had to Peter Workman, the owner-publisher of Artisan. Workman had engaged the services of long-time golf editor George Peper as a consultant, and the two of them had discussed the project before they even approached Finegan with the idea of one humongous Ireland/Scotland book, replete with the finest photography money could buy.

"I was familiar with Larry Lambrecht's photography, of course, but I didn't even know Tim Thompson until I began working with him," confessed Finegan. "The publisher made all those arrangements."

He relied on his tried-and-true formula in constructing the text: "Once again it was about 50-50. For about half of it I relied on my earlier books and articles, and roughly half of it ploughs new ground," said Finegan. "When I wrote my first book on Irish golf, for instance, Druids Glen had just come into being, but Druids Heath had not. I'd written about The K Club, but not about the Smurfit Course, which had been built since. I'd written rave reviews about Pat Ruddy's work at the European Club, but that was before Pat had done his work at Ballyliffin and Rosapenna. And of course, when Emerald Fairways was published, Doonbeg didn't exist at all."

Like me, Jim Finegan is a golfing traditionalist. For many years he and Harriett spent their summer vacations in a rented house off the 18th fairway at St Andrews, and he has played well over a hundred rounds on the Old Course. Give him the choice between playing it yet again or spending an afternoon at, say, Loch Lomond, he'd opt for the Old Course.

By the same token, when he's in Ireland you're more apt to find Finegan on the links at the European or Lahinch or Portmarnock than at, say, Mount Juliet. It isn't that he doesn't have time for the new, American-style courses - he does, and finds ways to praise them. It's just that Nicklaus and Palmer courses are not what we come to Ireland to play. Palmer, for instance, has done three courses in Ireland - two of them at The K Club - and for my money, Tralee is the best of the three. I suspect that Finegan wholeheartedly concurs with that assessment, but he was diplomatic enough not to say as much in a book published on the eve of the 2006 Ryder Cup.

(He did note that "most visitors find the course to be unmistakably American," but added that "it is full of terrific golf holes, including at least four that seem to me genuinely great"). Revisiting Ireland for Where Golf Is Great did bring some unexpected new pleasures.

"I'd played Royal County Down (which graces the cover of the book) many times, but this time I made the pleasant discovery of Ardglass, a wonderful course no more than half an hour away," said Finegan.

Now midway through his eighth decade on this earth, Finegan seems at once thrilled and bemused to see himself described as a "noted golf historian and travel writer". That his new book would come replete with blurbs from the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Greg Norman would have been unthinkable to him a decade ago.

Where Golf Is Great has in-depth looks (in both text and photos) at approximately 60 courses, while another 120 merit lesser mention, though Finegan insists that he was never reined in by his editors at Artisan.

"At no point, from the first discussion we had about the book until the day it went to the printer, did anyone ever raise the question of its length," said the grateful author.

The new-found celebrity attending the publication of his massive new book has brought about another unexpected ancillary development, one which appears to have given Finegan nearly as much pleasure as authoring the heaviest golf book ever written.

"Simon & Schuster had just decided to reissue Emerald Fairways And Foam-Flecked Seas, for the first time as a trade paperback, next year," Finegan excitedly revealed. "I'm doing a new updated chapter, which will include the new courses built in Ireland since the book was first published."

n Where Golf Is Great: The Finest Courses of Scotland and Ireland, By James W Finegan; Photographs by Laurence Lambrecht and Tim Thompson. Artisan Press, New York. 527 pp. €49.99.