I Golfed Across Mongolia

Hacking away at a golf ball over the course of about 1,200 miles, not a single one of which included a fairway, let alone a green, was not much fun.

In order to play golf across Mongolia, Andre Tolme endured blisters, soreness, thirst, and loneliness. He lost what for many golfers would constitute a lifetime's worth of golf balls. He baffled some number of Mongolians who happened to see him out there in the prairie, banging away with his three iron on his way to the horizon.

And though the subtitle of Tolme's account of his adventure suggests that he rediscovered "the spirit of golf and life," he doesn't really appear to have discovered anything more than that he likes inventing unlikely adventures for himself more than he'd like a day job.

Toward the end of the book, Tolme says that he "didn't need a cause or a reason to embark on this journey," and certainly he's right. He's free to do what he wants to do. But he expresses surprise that the media doesn't pay more attention to his golfing trek, upon which he purports to be promoting "awareness in general." He wants to "run through the streets screaming 'I did it! I did it!' and receive applause and accolades..."

The problem is that, finally, 1,200 miles after Tolme began his journey with a shanked three iron, we have only his word that he has "become more aware," and are therefore less inclined to proffer "applause and accolades" than we are to shake our heads at the entire weird enterprise.