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Printing Date: March 25, 2008
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Fore! -- The Clicking of Cuthbert -- A Woman is Only a Woman -- A Mixed Threesome -- Sundered Hearts -- The Salvation of George Mackintosh -- Ordeal by Golf -- The Long Hole -- The Heel of Achilles -- The Rough Stuff -- The Coming of Gowf.
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Rated by buyers 
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I am not a golfer. The appeal of hitting a little white ball with a bent stick and then chasing after it eludes me. So why would I read a collection of golfing tales? The answer can be summed up in one word: Wodehouse. P.G. Wodehouse is, hands down, the funniest author I have ever read.
"The Clicking of Cuthbert" consists of ten short stories, featuring a typical assortment of Wodehouse-style characters: likable, good-hearted, but often clueless and bumbling. As usual, love (or the hope of love) is the impetus of the plots and many misunderstnadings and hilarious highjinks quickly ensue. Oh, if only real-life romance were this much fun!
If you are a fan of screwball comedy or classic Brit-coms, you'll probably enjoy this book--even if you don't enjoy golf.
Rated by buyers 
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"The Clicking of Cuthbert" by P. G. Wodehouse was very first published in the U.K. by Herbert Jenkins on February 3rd, 1922. It was published in the U.S. by George H. Doran under the title "Golf without Tears" on May 28, 1924. This is a collection of ten short stories, all of which deal with men and the battle between their two loves, women and golf.
The very first nine stories all have a common narrator and premise, which is the Oldest Member of the golf club relating tales of golf and love. The last story has the same themes, but it is given as an historical story about golf that the authors are trying to sell to a publisher.
The stories are as follows:
"The Clicking of Cuthbert", the title story, is the story of Cuthbert Banks who has had some sucess at golf, but who can't seem to grab the attention of Adeline, the woman he loves.
"A Woman is only a Woman" is the story of Peter Willard and James Todd who have been lifelong golfing buddies; that is until they both fall for Grace Forrester.
"A Mixed Threesome" is the story of Mortimer Sturgis, a man who takes up golf late in life for his fiancée (Betty Weston) only to then pay more attention to his game than he does to her.
"Sundered Hearts" continues the story of Mortimer Sturgis where his new love of golf has come to dominate his life, and then he meets the woman of his dreams, a professional golf player. However, things are not what they seem, and Mortimer has to decide if love will conquer all, and is it the love of golf or of women?
"The Salvation of George Mackintosh" is the story of George Mackintosh who after falling in love has learned to become a great conversationalist to win the heart of Celia Tennant. Unfortunately, that process has also turned him into the bane of golfers everywhere, including Celia.
"Ordeal by Golf" is a story in which the Oldest Member plays a significant role, in that he tells his friend Alex Paterson, the president of Paterson Dying and Refining Company, that the best way to find his new treasurer is to play a round of golf with each of the candidates and judge them on their temper. When he discovers who the two candidates are though, he realizes he has made a mistake and attempts to set things right.
"The Long Hole" is the story of two competitors for the attentions of Amanda Trivett, Ralph Bingham and Arthur Jukes, who have decided to play one long hole of golf to determine which one gets to marry her.
"The Heel of Achilles" is the story of Vincent Jopp, an American multi-millionaire who seems to be able to do anything he sets his mind to do. When Amelia Merridew agrees to marry him if he wins the Amateur title he sets his mind to do just that. When he appears to have conquered golf just as easily as anything else, she grows desperate as she really wants to marry someone else.
"The Rough Stuff" is the story of Ramsden Waters who has fallen for Eunice Bray. The problem is that every other single male has fallen for her as well, and Ramsden seems unable to form a complete sentence in the presence of women. When a stroke of luck pairs them together for a golf tournament, Ramsden finds the words to propose which Eunice refuses. However, their round of golf together changes many things.
"The Coming of Gowf" is the story of how golf was spread from Scotland to Oom, where golf (or Gowf) becomes a new religion.
One thing that is clear from these stories, especially the last one, is that to P. G. Wodehouse there are two types of people in the world, those who love golf, and those who don't know what it is yet. These stories are fun, but they do lack the many twists and turns that are in the best Wodehouse stories. Thus, I decided to go with a high 3-star rating instead of a low 4-star one.
Rated by buyers 
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Can anyone find new sources of humour in golf? Certainly, it takes a great humorist to do so. P.G. Wodehouse pulled off this feat by combining an obvious love for the game with sense of irony about the humiliations that golfers experience for their sport, a subtle mix of love and how golf can complicate that emotion, and a hilariously overbearing narrator who is obviously the biggest windbag in the golf club.
Be sure to read the book's foreword in which P.G. Wodehouse describes how he was taken by golf.
As the Clicking of Cuthbert opens, a young man is about to give away his clubs and quit golf. The Oldest Member relates to the young man The Clicking of Cuthbert in which an earnest young golfer in love finds the way to his beloved's heart through a most circuitous detour through the drawing room to discuss literature.
A Woman Is Only a Woman explores how falling for the wrong woman (one who doesn't care for golf) can blight life and friendship.
A Mixed Threesome shows how the judicious man is careful to whom he introduces his fiancée . . . while looking at the pleasures of golf compared to the pleasures of marriage. It's very funny.
In Sundered Hearts, a misunderstanding about golf leads to a marriage and a marital mishap.
In The Salvation of George Mackintosh, Wodehouse looks at the awful pest . . . the non-stop-talking golfer.
In Ordeal by Golf, that old tradition of doing business on the course takes a predictable turn as two men fight it out for advancement by playing with the boss.
The Long Hole looks at both the potential for cross-country golf to be an adventure and the trickiness of the rules.
The Heel of Achilles looks at the role of confidence in building up the golfer.
The Rough Stuff returns to an old theme of Wodehouse's, the need to let your emotions go to make contact with the heart of the one you love.
The Coming of Gowf is a writer's fantasy about creating a fanciful golf story. Anyone who has ever struggled with an editor will be laughing for days.
Fore!!
Rated by buyers -
Many of these golf stories are not above average Wodehouse humor--but that's funny enough! The title story alone is worth the price; it's very clever, very funny, and one of his best little gems. Cuthbert is having trouble competing with a local literary light for the attention of a fair maid, until a bigger foreign literary light comes to put the local novelist in the shade. Vladimir Brusiloff's character is a marvelous caricature of the deep, dark, dismal Russian novelist; his systematic self-promotion by tearing down the reputations of other literary lights with lightning-bolt rapier thrusts (which at the same time humiliate Cuthbert's local rival) is ingeniously funny. In the end, an unexpected enthusiam proclaimed pontifically by the visiting literary lion enables Cuthbert's prowess in the great game of golf to trump the literary pretensions of his local rival in the great game of love.
The elegant, inexpensive Overlook Press hardback edition is a "best buy."
Rated by buyers -
Probably most famous for his Jeeves and Wooster books, P.G. Wodehouse was an avid golfer. 'The Clicking of Cuthbert' was the very first of two books Wodehouse wrote about golf (the other being 'The Heart of a Goof'). It was originally published in the US as "Golf Without Tears" in 1924 - 2 years after the very first UK publishing. It's also one of the very first books by Wodehouse that I read, back in the days when I did play the game myself. However while I have, just like the Oldest Member, long since retired it's still a book I can pick up and enjoy.
Rather than a straightforward novel, the book is a collection of ten short stories. With the exception of the tenth, each story is 'told' by the club's Oldest Member. There is a common theme throughout the stories the Oldest Member tells - how golf is vital to sucess in every aspect of life. The last story, however, is my favourite one in the book. It's a historical tale, telling of the coming of a strange new religion called Gowf to the country of Oom.
I think that this book would appeal more to the golfing community than to the uninitiated. There are certain terms and phrases specific to the game, which mightn't make much sense to a non-golfer and could possibly break the flow of the story a little. Furthermore, some of the terminology associated with the game has changed since the book was written. Clubs are referred to in the book as baffies, niblicks and mashies while, at the time Wodehouse wrote the book, the word bogey meant par. On the other hand, it's still a book written by P.G. Wodehouse - he does have a very distinctive style of writing and certainly appears to have a hugely loyal fanbase. If you've read other books by him and enjoyed them, odds are you'll enjoy this - regardless of your expertise on the golf course. If you haven't read any Wodehouse before, I'd probably suggest starting with a Blandings or a Jeeves novel.
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