The Story of American Golf, written by Herbert Warren Wind, was first published in 1948. This American classic has been revised twice, in 1956 to include Hogan's career and in 1975 to include Palmer and Nicklaus. We have duplicated the cover from the original 1948 edition and the text from the 1975 edition. The Foreword is by Herbert Warren Wind and the Afterword is by Robert Macdonald.

Wind returned to the United States in 1946 after serving in China and Japan during the Second World War. He had heard how difficult it was to get work back home, and he had decided to gamble and write a book in the hope that this would open the doors to a good job. He wanted to write a book on sports - his main area of interest - and, while he knew baseball, basketball and a few other sports, he knew golf by far the best. How did one go about getting a book on golf published? Herb went to Amy Loveman, the Editor of The Saturday Review. She told him to spend the weekend at home working on a four-page outline of his proposed book, and then submit it to publishers. She wondered if he needed to make a few dollars while he was working on the book and offered him the chance to review books on sports for The Saturday Review. Wind sent his outline to Simon & Schuster. He heard nothing from them. He tried elsewhere. He had met John Farrar before the war, and John and Roger Strauss were just starting a new publishing house, Farrar, Strauss. They agreed to do The Story of American Golf and paid Wind $250 advance. Once he had a publisher, Wind went to an old friend, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and asked him how one wrote a book. Arthur told him it was easy. He should get some index cards and a file box. When he does his research, he should write everything down on the index cards and file them alphabetically. He should write as well as he can on the cards. It worked well and the system was key to the book. The research was difficult and time-consuming, but Wind felt strongly that it was necessary to have all the details and to have them exactly right: this became one of the hallmarks of his golf writing. For example, he could find out very little about the details of the famous 1913 U.S. Open championship playoff among Ouimet, Vardon, and Ray, which did so much to popularize American golf. (Harry Vardon's three visits to the United States were instrumental in the development of golf in our country.) Wind wrote letter after letter to a former USGA President who was connected with the Country Club where the famous playoff had taken place. "I really pestered him," Wind said. Finally, he was told: "Let's stop fooling around, Mr. Wind. I'm going to call Francis and set up a meeting, and you can ask him all these questions directly." On a beautiful morning Wind and Francis Ouimet walked the Country Club course for two and a half hours. Francis remembered every shot he had hit and where each ball landed. "Who drove first?" Herb asked. "I can remember if I think for a second," replied Francis. When they came to the fifth hole, Francis showed Herb exactly where his second shot had struck the branches of a tree and careened out of bounds. When he ended up tying Ray and Vardon on this hole despite going out of bounds, he said: "That's when I knew I could stay with those guys."

A week after finishing work on The Story of American Golf, Wind received a call from William Shawn of the New Yorker magazine. Oddly enough, during the war, Wind had sent Shawn a piece on India. Shawn had declined the piece and Town and Country had picked it up. After the war, Shawn told Wind he had liked the piece on India in Town and Country: "Why didn't you let us have a look at it? We would have published it." Shawn offered Wind a job as an 'idea' man and Wind's long association with the New Yorker began. Interrupted from 1954 to 1959 when he was the golf editor forSports Illustrated, Wind helped launch Shell's Wonderful World of Golf in 1960, the international series of televised golf matches hosted by Gene Sarazen. In 1962 he rejoined the New Yorker and inaugurated a new section for sports writing called The Sporting Scene. The New Yorker was the perfect fit. It gave Wind the chance to write regularly and in depth about golf and tennis (and occasionally football, basketball, squash, court tennis, and hockey) in a way that had not been done before. For over 25-years, golf had a voice commensurate with its greatness as a sport, and those of us who were fortunate enough to read Wind on golf, found that our relationship to the game was profoundly deepened.

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