From award-winning sports writer Kevin Robbins, discover the story of legendary golfer Payne Stewart, focusing on his last year in the PGA Tour in 1999, which tragically culminated in a fatal air disaster that transpired publicly on televisions across the country.
Forever remembered as one of the most dramatic storylines in the history of golf, Payne Stewart's legendary career was bookended by a dramatic comeback and a shocking, tragic end. Here, Robbins brings Stewart's story vividly to life.
Written off as a pompous showman past the prime of his career, Stewart emerged from a long slump in the unforgettable season of 1999 to capture the U.S. Open and play on the victorious U.S. Ryder Cup team. He appeared to be a new man that summer: wiser, deeper, and on the verge of a new level of greatness. Then his journey to redemption ended in October, when his chartered Learjet flew aimlessly for more than a thousand miles, ran out of fuel, and fell to earth in a prairie in South Dakota.
His death marked the end of an era, one made up of "shotmakers" who played the game with artistry, guile, finesse, and heart. Behind them were Tiger Woods, David Duval, Phil Mickelson, and other young players whose power and strength changed the PGA Tour forever. With exclusive access to Stewart's friends, family, and onetime colleagues, Kevin Robbins provides a long-overdue portrait of one of golf's greats in one of golf's greatest seasons.
Winner of the USGA Herbert Warren Wind Book Award
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Few public men have been more obviously flawed than brash, big-mouthed, attention-seeking Payne Stewart, and a slew of his contemporaries might seem better qualified to embody that era. Yet Kevin Robbins has pulled off the impossible: By charting Stewart's herky-jerk walk from brattishness to humility, while illuminating his play as the last-gasp of a golf now gone forever, he has revealed in his subject a largeness, a grace, that even Stewart never dreamed he had. So buy in -- and buckle up. Robbins' meticulously-reported work on Stewart's last hours stands as some of the finest writing on flight -- both its beauty and horrors -- published in years.
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S.L. Price, Sports Illustrated senior writer and author of Playing Through the Whistle: Steel, Football, and An American Town