David Mortimer Bücher

For every victory carved from adversity by a professional golfer, there is a moment when a player’s over-confidence or self-doubt leaves spectators gawking in disbelief. Players in the great panoply of golfing “clangers” include the feisty Babe Zaharias, who was damned if she was giving second best to a (male) amateur champion, and Nigel Denham, who, in the 1974 English Amateur Championship, insisted on playing his approach shot to the 18th from the member’s bar. There was Scotland’s Bobby Cruickshank knocking himself out just in sight of victory at the 1934 US Open, and Thomas Bjorn refusing to leave the sand at Royal St. George’s in 2003. Henry Cotton, Tom Weiskopf, Nick Faldo, the Great White Shark, and Phil Mickelson are just some of the many favorites who contributed to at least one of these toe-curling moments.

This hilarious collection of stories taken from over 130 years of rugby history recounts some of the moments their perpetrators would rather forget. A relentlessly high-speed game, Rugby is particularly prone to crucial split-second tests of human fallibility and eccentricity, and for every player snatching victory at the last gasp there is somebody whose overconfidence or moment of self-doubt leaves the spectator clutching his head in disbelief. About the author David Mortimer s failure to master any position on the Rugby field, despite trying most of them, has enabled him to recognize a hundred and one ways of throwing a match away, and from this position of authority he has since dispensed lungfuls of good advice from the safety of the touchline.