Alan Shipnuck’s latest book, “LIV and Let Die,” which goes on sale on Oct. 17 (Simon & Schuster: $32.50), may be his best book yet – which is saying something.
Shipnuck, a longtime golf writer who now writes at the Fire Pit Collective, chronicles what he terms “the battle for the soul of the game” between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabia-funded LIV Golf League.
But this is a book – and a subject – that jumped off the sports page and onto the front page. It’s much bigger than just PGA Tour vs. LIV and he tackles it all.
Most impressively, Shipnuck succeeds in what I call “The Finding Nemo” test. Remember the Disney feel-good movie from 20 years ago? It was made for kids but there were so many one-liners and scenes that made the parents who had to sit through it cackle out loud. This book, which provides a history lesson on the last 50-plus years of the professional game, will be enjoyed by casual and non-golf fans alike but there’s so much new reporting and colorful, fresh anecdotes for even the most ardent golf fan and industry lifers.
With lawsuits flying and government interest of concern to his sources, Shipnuck has to rely on more off-the-record material and quotes than you’d typically like to see but in this case the trade-off seems worth it for the minutiae he digs up that confirm our suspicions to the various behind-the-scenes dealings by Saudi leadership and those in the Tour offices. And his trademark glib style means it can read a bit like the Page Six gossip column at times, but Alan’s gonna Alan!
He’s turned sections that could be drier than toast into a page-turner and every time I finished a chapter and thought, ‘OK, I need to do this chore or get some sleep’, it pained me to put it down, and usually I just powered on. That’s what a good book does, #amirite?
In this Q&A, Shipnuck shares a lot on how the sausage was made and sprinkles in some spicy takes along the way.