This Game Of Golf

This Game of Golf (1949) – Henry Cotton
Country Life Limited • ISBN: charmingly non-existent
Condition: Good
Straight down the fairway from: Crappy Old Books

Welcome to This Game of Golf, the moment in your reading life where legendary pro Henry Cotton leans over your shoulder, adjusts your grip, and quietly suggests that almost everything you’re currently doing with a golf club is wrong. It’s 1949, the fairways are firm, the trousers are pleated, and the advice is given with the calm authority of a man who has actually won things, rather than watched tutorials on YouTube.

This is golf instruction from a Britain still dusting itself off after the war, when “leisure” involved walking five miles in the rain to hit a small ball into a smaller hole and then apologising for your language. Cotton’s world is one of proper clubs, proper posture, and proper etiquette—where the only thing more unforgivable than a sliced drive is playing in the wrong sort of jumper.

Inside this volume you can expect:

• Beautifully earnest swing diagrams that suggest, optimistically, that if you simply follow the arrows, your slice will disappear.

• Long, detailed explanations of stance, grip, balance, rhythm, and what your right elbow is doing when it really shouldn’t.

• The kind of instruction that assumes you are willing to spend an afternoon analysing your follow-through rather than blaming your clubs and going straight to the bar.

• Occasional lines of pure, old-school wisdom that sound like they should be embroidered on a clubhouse wall.

This is not a “quick tips” golf book. This is the sort of instructional classic that quietly implies: if you are not prepared to think deeply about weight transfer, perhaps you should take up draughts. It’s both charming and intimidating—like being coached by your strict but secretly kind grandfather, who believes golf is a moral as well as a physical discipline.

Now, as for this particular copy, graded as Good by the hard-nosed traditionalists at Crappy Old Books:

• Condition: Good means the book is entirely intact, ready to be read, leafed through, and consulted between rounds as you attempt to understand where it all went wrong.

• The covers show honest wear: a little edge rubbing, maybe a soft corner or two, as though it has spent time in golf club lounges, on side tables, and in the back of cars next to battered bags and damp towels.

• The pages are likely a pleasant, aged cream—no longer fresh white, but comfortably seasoned, like a well-used putter. All the text is clearly legible, even if your scorecards are not.

• You may find:

  • A previous owner’s name, possibly with “Handicap 12” proudly inked in somewhere.

  • A pencil tick next to a passage on bunker play, suggesting someone was once very determined to stop leaving the ball in the sand.

  • A faint aroma of “old paper and clubhouse carpets,” which is, frankly, the perfect scent pairing.

What you will not find:

• An ISBN. That brave modern nonsense lay in the future; in 1949, books simply existed and librarians coped.

• Glossy, full-bleed action photos of golfers frozen mid-swing with suspiciously bright teeth. Expect line drawings, diagrams, and maybe the odd black-and-white plate of Cotton demonstrating how it’s really done.

• Any mention of titanium drivers, launch monitors, “forgiveness,” or “game-improvement irons.” If your shot goes wrong here, the primary cause is you.

Reading This Game of Golf in the 21st century is a deliciously mixed experience:

• Part time capsule – the language, tone, and assumptions all come from an era when jacket-and-tie in the clubhouse was non-negotiable.

• Part serious instruction – Cotton is not messing around. He really wants you to understand the golf swing, not just hit it harder and hope.

• Part gentle comedy – not because the author is trying to be funny, but because our modern habits and excuses look faintly ridiculous in the light of such tidy, old-fashioned seriousness.

This book is ideal if:

• You’re a golfer who suspects that the answer isn’t a new driver but, annoyingly, better fundamentals.

• You love mid-century sporting books where the prose is crisp, the advice is precise, and nobody talks about “optimising your performance journey.”

• You’re a collector of classic golf titles and believe that any proper shelf should have at least one Henry Cotton giving you the side-eye.

• You simply enjoy the aesthetic of a slightly worn, well-bred sporting manual from the days when golf gloves were leather and golf excuses were inventive.

Yes, the game has changed. The equipment is different. The courses are manicured, the technology is wild, and somewhere out there, someone is analysing their swing in slow motion on a phone. But Cotton’s underlying message—control, rhythm, discipline, and not behaving like a maniac with a 3-wood—remains suspiciously relevant.

So here it is: This Game of Golf (1949), in Good condition, weathered just enough to prove it’s lived, not just loitered on a shelf. A classic voice from a vanished golfing world—still ready to argue, politely but firmly, that your grip is wrong and your feet are in the wrong place.

A quietly authoritative, slightly scuffed slice of post-war golfing wisdom, brought to you with due irony and affection by Crappy Old Books.

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