Saturday, Feb. 4, 2006

What is Chrissy Donnelly drinking anyway? We're in an uptown Toronto café to talk about Chicken Soup for The Golfer's Soul, the latest book in the popular series and the second in which she's involved. I didn't expect her to bring her own chicken soup, but the tall concoction in her hands is like nothing I've ever seen. Moccacchino for the Golfer's Soul? Frappuccino for the Golfer's Soul? Caffe latte? Who knows?

Whatever the liquid, Donnelly is drinking in the good times these days. She was a chartered public accountant with Price Waterhouse and her husband Mark was the vice-president of a family lumber business in Portland, Ore., when they decided to make changes. That decision led to an adventure that continues.

"We were on our honeymoon in Hawaii," Donnelly is saying, "and we had an easel board in our suite. We wanted to work together, to do something every day where we loved what we did. So we came up with a joint mission statement that our purpose was to inspire, entertain, lead and educate ourselves and others around the world."

Donnelly said she wanted to write a book about relationships that included a variety of true-life short stories and that would make the No. 1 spot on the New York Times best-seller list. That decision led eventually to a meeting in Los Angeles with Mark Victor Hansen, one of the co-founders of the outrageously successful Chicken Soup series of feel-good, feel-better, feel-great books.

Hansen told the Donnellys that he loved the idea and advised them to come back to him with the guts of the book. The Donnellys collected 200 stories and turned them in 18 months later. Chicken Soup books always include 101 stories, and their book Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul was published with that number. The book has sold more than one million copies; it hit No. 1 on the New York Times list.

Meanwhile, Jeff Aubery, a manufacturer of golf bags, was working on a Chicken Soup for the Golfer's Soul book. He asked the Donnellys to assist him. They had met Liz Comte Reisman, an associate editor at Golf Digest magazine, during a golf holiday. She introduced them to another editor, Bob Carney, and now the magazine was putting some of its considerable resources behind the new book.

Golf Digest solicited stories from its writers and the Donnellys also put out a call for submissions. They accepted a story that I had written for The Globe and Mail about the late Jack Grout, who taught Jack Nicklaus.

Judging by the huge advance orders for the book, golfers have a lot of chicken soup in their souls, or they need some. The book is in the tradition of the "Golf is a metaphor for life" idea. It's an old idea and a sentimental one, but, apparently, golfers around the world go along with it.

The book is full of touching stories. One woman, Christine Clifford, wraps a golf tale around the unnerving experience of losing her hair as a result of chemotherapy. Clifford and her husband had attended 23 consecutive U.S. Opens, and, as she writes, "At one point during my cancer treatments, my husband John and I decided to get away from the cold Minnesota winter and took a trip to Scottsdale, Ariz."

There they attended the Tradition, a Senior PGA Tour event. Clifford was near the third tee watching Nicklaus, Ray Floyd and Tom Weiskopf when the hat with attached hair that she was wearing blew away in a gust of wind. The hat landed near the golfers. What to do?

The lady had presence of mind. She walked in front of the famous golfers to retrieve her hat and hair, put them back on her head, and turned to Nicklaus et al.

"Gentlemen," she proclaimed, "the wind is blowing from left to right." And, she writes, "They say the laughter could be heard all the way to the 19th hole."

"Golf is a sport rich with stories," Chrissy Donnelly says, still working on her fancy coffee. She's been playing a year and a half and has plenty of her own stories. Her husband Mark, an avid golfer and the co-compiler of the Golfer's Soul book, is in Los Angeles on business as I meet with his wife. Their story, Fifty Ways to Enjoy Golf More, is in the book.

"Play an entire round as if you were an eight-year-old again," they advise, and, "Read a great golf book."

Golf has many great golf books, and readers can determine for themselves whether this falls into that category. At the same time, I would like to point the avid golf reader to two other deserving books that won't get anything like the attention of the Chicken Soup book.

The first is The Skeptical Golfer, by James. S. Rothenberg, 60, a pro at the Winding Brook Country Club in Valatie, N.Y. It's an important, thought-provoking book.

"What impelled me to write was the anger I felt toward the repetitious [instructional] dogma in my field," Rothenberg notes. Pebble Lane Publishers, P.O. Box 231, N. Chatham, N.Y 12132, put this book out in late 1997.

I'd also like to draw your attention to Jonathan Fine's What's This Got to Do with Golf? The Golf Techniques of the Late Senor Francisco Lopez, published by Hushion House in Toronto. Fine, who lives in Toronto, worked with Lopez on his game until the golf teacher died in April, 1992. This is Fine's second book about Lopez's ideas, and it, like Rothenberg's observations, will make you think.

"I'm deeply affected by the wisdom in the thought that if you knew everything about a blade of grass, you would understand the entire universe," Rothenberg, the skeptical golfer, writes.

These books won't help you understand the entire universe. But they'll help you pass some pleasant time off the course. Read them and nourish your golfing soul. And a little chicken soup or cappuccino wouldn't hurt.
Lorne Rubenstein can be reached
via E-mail:
lhruben@ibm.net.