Tony Lema, February 25, 1934 – July 24, 1966, was one of the great personalities of the game in an era when there seemed to be far more characters striding down the fairways. Compare and contrast the modern tour professional who may have to face a playoff, “Well, I hit it pretty solid all week but I’m going to the practice ground to hit some more shots” with Lema’s, <i>

‘I returned to my favourite place, the bar, and drank down three Scotch and waters. I was just reaching for the fourth drink when someone came running in and said that Harney would have to get into the hole in two …. just to tie me.</i>. And yes, he won the playoff at the second extra hole.

Remembered always as “Champagne Tony” after promising the press he would buy them champagne on the eve of his win at the Orange County Invitational in 1962 should he prevail. he won the 1964 Open Championship at St Andrews and seemed ready to conquer the world. Two years later he and his wife were killed in a plane crash in Lansing, MI.

This book, a first edition from 1964, published by W Foulsham in England, is in fairly tatty condition but it’s not here as a collectors’ item but rather as a fascinating and frank story from a lowly club professional bursting on the scene in his rookie year going on to have two years <i>’when my game, and my usually happy frame of mind, …. collapsed …. and there was not enough booze or enough women in the whole United States to cheer me up, though I certainly tried to exhaust the supply’, then rising to the heights of the game during the period when professional golf began to build towards the multi-billion dollar industry it is today.

191pp 8 photographs

Price $45.00 Reference: MEM347