Synopses & Reviews
"An unusual and ultimately captivating story. Hallberg's debut is auspicious...exhilarating". -- Chicago Tribune
"Poignant, beautifully written". -- The New York Times Book Review
"A green shade protecting me from the gathering white heat of my mother's death" is how narrator Ted Kendall describes the game of golf. "A brilliant and highly original first novel" is how bestselling author Walker Percy describes William Hallberg's wonderfully moving and manic novel of a dedicated duffer trying to perfect his swing and stay out of the rough -- both on the fairway and in life.
The son of a devoutly golf-hating dad, Ted Kendall comes to embrace the sport as a way to soothe his grief after his mother's death. Then his knack with a club lands him a scholarship to Ohio State -- and before you can say "Fore!" he's driving and putting his way through the electrifying and glamorous world of the PGA Tour. The grass is greener and life is good until a love triangle on the links goes bad, and Ted trades his bag of irons for the iron bars of a deeply weird jail in the Deep South. With two years to kill and a morley crew of fellow misfit inmates to do it with, Ted turns once more to the gospel of golf...and finds his own odd brand of salvation.
Calling to mind the mordant imagination of fellow literary linksman John Updike, "The Rub Of The Green", says Walker Percy, "serves as a metaphor for living, loving, losing, and winning. It works".