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lorne rubenstein

It's a shame that 2009 will be remembered more for the revelations about Tiger Woods' tawdry off-course escapades than other notable happenings in the game. Here, then, are a few events that made news, and, for readers looking for a last-minute Christmas gift, a couple of books worth considering.

The high moment of the tournament season was in many ways a low moment. That was when 59-year-old Tom Watson bogied the last hole of the Open Championship when a par would have made him the oldest golfer to win the oldest major, or any major. Stewart Cink beat Watson in their scheduled four-hole playoff, and good for him.

But most everybody wanted Watson to win, because who doesn't like a good, old sentimental story? Watson took his loss gracefully, as he's done with his losses throughout his career. He won hearts and minds, even if he didn't win the Open.

Then there was another golfer whose last name begins with "W," and no, it's not Woods. The golfer is Michelle Wie. She's been through plenty of rough times, some self-inflicted and some the product of poor guidance from her parents and handlers. But Wie, then 19, led the U.S.

team to its Solheim Cup win in August. It was her coming of age, even though she had yet to win a professional tournament.

Wie took care of that in mid-November when she won the Lorena Ochoa Invitational in Guadalajara, Mexico. Now that she led her side to the Solheim win, and now that she won an individual tournament for the first time on the LPGA Tour, what might she further accomplish? She's really only at the beginning of her career, crazy as that might sound for somebody who has been playing professional tournaments since she was 13 years old.

If Wie finally did what many observers felt she should have done long ago-win, that is-Y.E. Yang in taking the PGA Championship in August did something very few people thought he could do. He beat Woods head to head down the stretch, and the 3-hybrid he cut up over a tree from 210 yards out on the 72nd hole to within eight feet of the hole was a championship-winning shot if ever there were one. Yang was strong that afternoon. Woods was not. Still, he did win six times on the PGA Tour and he did deserve being named PGA Tour Player of the Year.

Now to the side of the game that involves reading about it rather than watching it. Two books in particular stand out: Sports Illustrated's The Golf Book, and George B. Kirsch's Golf in America.

The SI book is hefty in all ways. The writing, the photography: It's all championship stuff. Check out Steve Wulf's April 16, 1984 essay Searching for a Sea of Tranquillity, about Mac O'Grady, one of the game's fascinating, quirky figures. There's also The Chosen One, Gary Smith's examination of Woods, from Dec. 13, 1996. It was a page-turner than and now it's a head-turner and a head-scratcher, given what we know about the golfer whose father called him The Chosen one, with the power, he said, "to impact nations."

Kirsch's book is the ideal complement to the splashy SI volume. It's a scholarly work, which makes sense because Kirsch is a professor of history at Manhattan College who has written on baseball and cricket.

His clear analysis reminds us that golf is not only a game for the privileged. It's not only a game for professional golfers. It's for all, as it was in Scotland and as it is in America.

Kirsch's point is an important one when so many pundits are asking what will happen to golf now that the world knows that Woods is not who we thought he was, off the course, anyway. But the fact is that golf was a popular game before Woods and it will be popular no matter what happens with him.

If you're looking for sensation, you can continue to feast on Woods.

If you're looking for context, read Kirsch. As 2009 ends, context seems important.

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