Bud, Sweat, and Tees is a great book, entertaining, endearing, and full of the humorous turns we've come to expect from Alan Shipnuck. More that just the Inside Scoop on the PGA Tour--though it certainly is that, and revealingly so--the book exposes a pair of leading men straight out of central casting. There is the Salty Caddie, young but wise from experience, equipped with just enough game to know how golf works between the ropes, and plagued by personal struggles off the course. And there is the Young Gun, loaded with potential, shining in the bright light of a breakthrough moment, scratching to turn that flash of brilliance into the sustained glow of a Tour career. The obvious affection and inevitable tension between Beem and Dupantis anchors Shipnuck's book in the human dimensions of a compelling storyline. In the end, you should know that any book capable of invoking the epochal figure Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High on the first page will deliver in a big way. Oh by the way, contrary to certain claims, Shipnuck uses the word "comprise" in exactly the right way. "Beginning" writers may think that the parts comprise the whole, but careful scribes know that the whole comprises--or includes--the parts. The Point: This book comprises a number of compelling tales. Try it; you'll like it.

There is an ancient story of a man and his journey, this is the modern equivalent. In this book you get the story of Rich Beem [before he won a major] and his caddy Steve Duplantis. This has to be the most entertaining story I've seen in a long time, and it's all true. We see the Rich Beem, former cell phone salesman and well-traveled golfer, shoot for his dream. In his quest he finds a companion in the form of Steve Duplantis, a love torn caddy that has problems in his personal life.

This is a great book first and foremost because it is superbly written. Alan Shipnuck has a relaxed and well-organized structure to his writing. Shipnuck, who writes for Sports Illustrated, took a gamble on writing this book, at the time Rich Beem hadn't won a major, and stories of colorful, yet still second rate professional golfers don't float amongst the bestseller lists all that often.

At a PG-13 level we see Rich and Steve live their lives in tour, under the microscope, and learn about events that neither would be proud of. There's an intimacy here you don't normally get in biographies. Rich wins a PGA tour event in his rookie year on the tour, Steve Duplantis has a good job with Rich, but do they hold it together for an entire season? The book will leave you interested in finding out more about Beem and Co. Maybe a sequel Mr. Shipnuck?

It's a need to read for those interested in golf, and it's an quick and entertaining story for those who really don't care about golf.

I read Alan Shipnuck's columns religiously on cnnsi.com. If you're a golfer and you don't know this guy's stuff, you're missing out on what is week-in, week-out THE most irreverant and clued-in set of insights into golf. So based on the strength of his weekly work, I bought "Bud, Sweat, and Tees."

Besides the odd title (which I'll bet was foisted upon an unwilling author), this is really a great book. It's about one bi-coastal plane trip in length, and it's a perfect way to pass the time. Shipnuck really struck gold with Beem and Duplantis. I imagined him trying to write a book like this about some of your run-of-the-mill, blow-dried tour pro. It just wouldn't work. You'd get 15 - 20 pages of material at best. Yes, both of these guys are squandering what looked to be pretty bright futures, but as Mark O'Meara tells a despondent Breem late in the book (paraphrased) "Rich, you've already done something that most golfers only dream about."

As for Steve Duplantis, you've got to read the book to even begin to believe this guy's life. I won't attempt to do it justice here. Man, talk about red meat to an author.

Two odd editing mistakes in the book were unsettling to me, though. First, on page 100 there is talk about Beem's spin around the course of Waialea for the Hawaiian Open. In all other places in the book, it's (correctly) Waialae. The Hawaiian alphabet being what it is, this is more than a letter transposition: these are two actual places (and courses).

The second error is more egregious. On page 217-218, in the middle of a gripping, shot-by-shot recounting of Breem's charge at the 1999 Texas Open, Shipnuck describes a "momentum-halting bogey" and notes that "Breem was now -16, in fourteenth place..." I must have read that line ten times, trying to figure out what I had missed, given that Breem was in 2nd before dropping the shot. Of course, it's a misprint and it should say Breem had dropped to *fourth* place. I'll call that a momentum-halting editing mistake.

One inside joke that Shipnuck drops on his regular readers really had me chuckling: while covering the Pebble Beach Pro Am, he mentions the nearby town of Salinas, CA " the dusty farming town that birthed John Steinbeck, among other writers." Yeah, like Alan Shipnuck.