The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses Volume 2: The Americas, Winter
Reference Leisure & Hobbies Sports Golf Travel Guide Modern Non-Fiction
The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses Volume 2: The Americas, Winter is the book serious golfers tuck into their carry-on before flying south for the season. Published in 2015 and already out of print, this hardcover first edition (ISBN 9780990708612) is the only course-ranking reference written specifically for winter play in North, Central and South America. Darius Oliver, the former Golf Digest panelist who quietly built a cult following, personally roamed every region during peak off-season months, logging turf quality, routing strategy, conditioning budgets and even which holes play directly into prevailing trade winds. The result is 400+ pages of unfiltered intelligence you will not find in glossy tourist brochures or resort web sites.
Collectors value the book’s “confidential” ratings—each course is scored on a 100-point scale for architecture, presentation and overall experience, with Oliver’s trademark one-sentence zingers that can vault a hidden municipal layout into must-play status or drop a big-name resort a full ten points for sloppy greenkeeping. Winter-specific data (Bermuda-grass transition dates, overseed windows, hurricane recovery timelines) is paired against color maps and fly-over diagrams, so golfers can decide whether to book a February tee-time in Scottsdale or save the airfare for a lesser-known venue in Costa Rica that is in prime condition. Every listing includes direct contact emails for superintendents and local member-host programs—information that is still current because Oliver updates it through a private subscriber network.
This copy arrives clean and tightly bound in its original dust jacket, with only minor cosmetic touches on the inside cover edge—no inscriptions, ex-library stamps or dog-eared pages. For the traveling golfer, it doubles as both a planning bible and a conversation piece on the first tee; for the book collector, it is a scarce modern first that has already appreciated in value because only a single small press run was ever printed. Secure it now before the next frost sends everyone chasing winter tee-times again.
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