GOLF BOOK CLUB: The Match,by Mark Frost: TIME HAS a way of romanticising an event that has happened in the past; and, it would seem, the idea for this book – which doesn't come anywhere near to meeting the standards of The Greatest Game Ever Playedby the same author – captured Mark Frost's intrigue as he heard stories of the match from many different sources, second and third-hand, and sought to bring all the different strands together.

Sure, much of the book works well and it is an interesting if not an absorbing read. The “match” in question was an impromptu best-ball fourball between two amateurs (Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi) and two professionals (Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson) which took place at Cypress Point in January of 1956, in the practice days running up to the Bing Crosby-promoted pro-am on the US Tour.

The match was proposed by Eddie Lowery, who had been a child caddie on the bag of Francis Ouimet in the US Open in 1913. Lowery's love of golf was absolute after that championship (which became the focal point for The Greatest Game Ever Played) but in The Match the child has grown into an immensely rich businessman who comes across as being overbearing and loud, if you are to believe the "dialogue" which is used throughout the book.

Lowery’s proposal is made at a dinner party where he claims that two of his car salesmen – Ward and Venturi – were unbeatable in best-ball, claiming that they could even take on and beat any two professionals. The wager is taken up by a business associate, George Coleman, who manages to persuade Nelson and Hogan, two of the game’s truly great players, to take his side in the challenge.

The proposal was made on a Monday night, the match played on a Tuesday. There were no television, newspaper, magazine or radio accounts of the match, which no doubt added to Frost’s intrigue but also gave him plenty of license in describing the actual events of a match that resulted in better ball scores of 57 to 58 and featured 27 birdies and one eagle. As word of the match got around the Monterey peninsula, the crowd grew from a handful to a reputed 5,000 by the end.

However, to claim, as Frost does, that this match constituted the defining line in effectively ending the era of the career amateur seems to me at any rate to be a big stretch. Many other circumstances came into play in that situation, most notably the arrival onto the professional scene in a time of increased television exposure of Arnold Palmer and later Jack Nicklaus.

Anyway, the book is mainly taken up with the circumstances surrounding the match and of the players involved. It seems at times that the match is almost incidental as Frost expands on the lives of the players. These almost snapshot biographies of the four protagonists are expertly handled and very insightful, although you are left a little confused about the exact relationship between Hogan and Nelson.

The two men from Forth Worth in Texas spent a great deal of their fledgling professional careers in each others company, but Frost refers to comments made by Hogan about Nelson in a joint radio interview in 1940 which the author claimed changed their relationship forever.

Hogan had made the remark, “Byron’s got a good game, but it’d be a lot better if he practiced. He’s too lazy to practice.” It was a slight on Nelson, and neither man apparently was ever as close thereafter.

Yet, if things were so bad between them, how come the dialogue – used for effect – in the actual match at Cypress Point doesn’t reflect in any way that the two were no longer bosom buddies?

All in all, the book has far more strengths than weaknesses . . . even if it would seem a bit grandiose to believe that the match, planned at such short notice and seen by so few, actually played so great a part in golfing history (in America) as the author would have you believe.

Questions for readers

Q1:Does Frost's use of dialogue throughout the match at Cypress Point succeed in making you a part of it?

Q2:Do you believe the relationship between Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson – team-mates in the match – is explored sufficiently?

Q3:How does the character of Eddie Lowery come across in the book? Is Frost too harsh on him?

Q4:Do you accept that this hastily-arranged match deserves a place in golf history as a defining moment?

Q5:How do you rate this book out of a possible top mark of 10?