Herbert Warren Wind has been the preeminent American golf writer since he published The Story of American Golf: Its Champions and Championships (1948). His golf pieces, along with Roger Angell's on baseball, for "The Sporting Scene" column in The New Yorker are significant not only for their merits but because The New Yorker chose to give them space commensurate with that allotted to its other articles. The best of Wind's work for The New Yorker takes the form of personal essays after the example of Bernard Darwin, the English golf writer who was Wind's acknowledged master. Like Darwin, Wind excels at re-creating the "feel" of a match, hole by hole and stroke by stroke, with history and tradition entering the account as naturally as the writer's meticulous notice of the terrain underfoot and the weather overhead. Wind has written with distinction about other sports, especially tennis, in "The Sporting...