Kirjahaku

In 1935, just five years after the great Bob Jones won his Grand Slam and retired from competition, a 20-year-old amateur golfer in a struggling family left Racine, Wisconsin for a $17-a-week shipping clerk job in Poughkeepsie, New York. Ray Billows brought with him a self-taught golf game from the caddie ranks, a gritty determination, and wondrous dreams of competing and succeeding at the highest level of American amateur golf. He brought little else. He arrived at the prestigious Winged Foot Golf Club for the 1935 New York State Amateur Championship in a dilapidated $7 Model T Ford convertible that he intended to sleep in, and without enough money for a caddie. He left with his first significant title and a nickname - The Cinderella Kid - which captured what he was and what he had accomplished. All of Ray Billows' dreams came true, except for one that would haunt him throughout his life.This book tells his story, a story that is sprinkled with thrilling golf, wonderful success, cruel disappointment, personal highlights, humorous anecdotes with Bob Jones, the Duke of Windsor and Babe Ruth, and a reputation as one of the finest gentlemen in the game. The book also provides a glimpse into American amateur golf during the period from 1930 to 1950. It contains 40 photographs.

New York's Dutchess County has been blessed with an abundance of golf courses, private and public, from the time golf was introduced in the United States to the present day. From John Dutcher's 3-hole course in Pawling in 1885 to the Silo Ridge Field Club's course in Amenia which opened in 2016, there have been 34 golf courses in the county. 20 of them remain in existence today. The existing courses span from Tivoli in the north to Beacon and Fishkill in the south. Six of them are Private, four are Semi-Private, seven are Public and three are Municipal. There are nine each of 9-hole and 18-hole courses, and two others at 27 holes and 12 holes, respectively. Three of the lost courses were on private estates; two others were on the property of what are now abandoned psychiatric hospitals; another was part of a full-scale resort.This book focuses on the origin and development of the courses and, for the lost courses, the reasons for their demise. The book is liberally illustrated with early and current photographs.