I’ve long been a big fan of Rick Reilly. When I used to get Sports Illustrated, the first thing that I would do would be rip open the back cover and read his humorous columns. Basically, he was the first “must read” sports columnist for me. In the past 10-15 years, only two sports columnists have been consistent must reads for me - Rick Reilly and the Sports Guy – Bill Simmons. When I was just out of college, I had no interest in golf, but picked up Who’s Your Caddy because it was on clearance for like $5. I was no longer a subscriber of SI, but remember how much I’d loved Rick Reilly’s book. In fact, if you see a review on my website in the next few months, don’t be surprised. It’s one of those books I’d really enjoy to revisit.

Anyway, Missing Links is a fictional story of “Ponky” – the worst municipal golf course in the world. It’s actually based on a real course - Ponkapoag in Massachusetts that Reilly covered for an article in 1988. As horrible as this golf course is, a group of (mostly) down-on-their luck friends have a love-hate relationship with the course. They know it’s a pile of dump, yet it’s cheap, it isn’t stuffy like private country club golf, they’ve got a great group that golfs together, and it’s the best place to get some gambling action.

The main character is Ray Hart (or “Stick” as he is known). Stick is the best golfer at Ponky who played a little mini-tour golf back in the day. Unfortunately, some family troubles took him away the game for a while. His dad pushed him really hard to succeed… too hard, in fact. Think Marv Marinovic (Todd’s dad) of the golf world.

Interesting tangent here… I was watching UFC about a month back and I saw BJ Penn preparing for one of his fights. For those of you who don’t follow UFC, BJ Penn is notorious for being extremely talented, but lazy when it comes to his preparation. He often comes into fights out of shape. Take a look at BJ Penn who fights at 155 pounds compared to guys like Gray Maynard, Roger Huerta, or his future opponent Diego Sanchez . Anyway, I’m watching this preview show and guess who’s training BJ Penn now… none other than Marv Marinovich. Crazy.

Back to the book… I won’t ruin the story for you by going to in depth, but one day, one of Stick’s buddies flips out because of a bad shot and puts a hole in a hedge. They group looks through and sees Mayflower – a golf club so exclusive that they won’t even allow the US Open to be held there. They’ve got 12 foot walls around all sides, so people can’t even look in on the course. They also don’t let anyone who’s not a member golf there. Stick’s buddy Two Down has the idea to place a bet. First person to play Mayflower (with two witnesses) wins $1,000 from everyone else.

I think I’ve mentioned in the past that I hardly read any fiction books. Honestly, I think the ratio is something like 1 fiction book to every 25 non-fiction books. If I could find more fictional books like this, though, I absolutely would read more. If you were a fan of the Matt Christopher books growing up, think of Rick Reilly as like the adult (and much funnier) version of Matt Christopher books. You don’t necessarily have to be a fan of golf to enjoy “Missing Link.” If you are a fan of good writing (and, of course, humor), there is no way you don’t enjoy this book. I’m looking forward to the sequel – “Shanks for Nothing” which I’m currently about 50 pages into. Look for a review for that one coming soon!