Feherty, David 1958-

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FEHERTY, David 1958-

PERSONAL: Born August 13, 1958, in Bangor, Northern Ireland; married; wife's name, Anita; children: Erin, Rory, Shey, Karl, Fred.

ADDRESSES: Home—Dallas, TX. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Rugged Land Press, 276 Canal St., Fifth Floor, New York, NY 10013. E-mail—David_feherty@ tourtalent.com.

CAREER: Professional golfer, until 1997; CBS Sports, commentator, 1997—.

WRITINGS:

A Nasty Bit of Rough: A Novel, Rugged Land (New York, NY), 2002.

Somewhere in Ireland, a Village Is Missing an Idiot, Rugged Land (New York, NY), 2003.

Columnist for Golf and Golfonline.com.

SIDELIGHTS: David Feherty's childhood dreams of becoming an opera singer ended when he found himself with a golf club in his hands and discovered his true calling. In 1976 he turn pro, winning ten tournaments and more than $3 million worldwide. Among other triumphs, he captained the winning Irish team in the 1990 Alfred Dunhill Cup. In 1997 he retired from playing to become a commentator for CBS Sports, write Golf magazine's most popular column, "Sidespin," and pen a column for Golfonline. com.

In 2002 Feherty published the comic novel A Nasty Bit of Rough, on the travails of a golf club competing for one of the golfing world's most revered treasures, the petrified middle finger of Scotland's patron saint, St. Andrew. Led by Sir Richard Gusset—a regular in Feherty's "Sidespin" column—the members of the Scought's Wood Golf Course defeat the "Scottish hillbillies" of the MacGregor clan to win the prize, only to see it stolen. Much of the novel's humor is scatological and "one is often reminded of a smirking teenage boy talking about sex," wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer. "But there is a cheerfulness and a spit-in-the-face of-authority aura about it that makes it the Naked Gun of golf literature." Lamenting the overabundance of books on the "Zen of golf," Sports Illustrated contributor Gary Van Sickly concluded, "The overly serious world of golf writing needed a good gut-buster, and Feherty has supplied it."