My Greatest Shot: The Top Players Share Their Defining Golf Moments

In 1999, Cherney, a practicing dentist and golf enthusiast, began writing to professional golfers to ask them about the most memorable shots of their careers; a few years later a chance encounter with Arkush, an accomplished sports writer, turned his small cache of response letters into a marketable book proposal. The resulting collection is an enjoyable assortment of golf memorabilia that encompasses the last half-century of the game. The authors, wanting to""preserve the true spirit of the project,"" decided to reproduce the actual letters they received and supplement them with thumbnail biographies and tidbits of wisdom and experience from the golfers themselves. While most of the players embraced the opportunity to recount the circumstances and emotions surrounding their best shots, several letters were hastily scrawled and offer little in the way of engaging description. Of the 82 letters the authors received, at least half are from retired or lesser-known players, which makes for a colorful and egalitarian selection of participants representing different eras and levels of professional golf, including several legends of the game (e.g., Snead, Palmer, Nicklaus and Louise Suggs, one of the original founders of the LPGA), current stars of the PGA and LPGA tours, some unfamiliar yet distinctive players (such as Robert Landers, a Texas farmer who qualified for the Champions Tour at the age of 50) and a few notable personalities.