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| The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport | 
 enlarge | Author: Carl Hiaasen
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $22.00
Buy Used: $8.42
You Save: $13.58 (62%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  47 reviews
Sales Rank: 1809
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 4.9 x 1
ISBN: 0307266532
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.352092
EAN: 9780307266538
ASIN: 0307266532
Publication Date: May 6, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Trials, tribulations, and the love of the game June 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It is delightful to encounter a book that, in addition to being an excellent read, strikes an especially responsive chord in the reader's mind. Such was the experience with Carl Hiaasen's THE DOWNHILL LIE, an entertaining and enjoyable saga about the midlife return to the frustrating and fascinating game of golf that many readers may have gone through in their lives. As one who gave up the sport in my late 20s, when spending hours on the golf course became difficult and I found time to return to the game in my mid-40s, the Hiaasen narrative brought back many memories and nods of recognition. Perhaps more important, it offers many laugh-out-loud observations that a wise and humorous writer shares with his audience.
Many will recognize the Hiaasen name as a newspaper columnist for the Miami Herald and the author of bawdy and entertaining novels set in the State of Florida that poke fun at contemporary issues of American life. A Hiaasen novel skewers politicians, businessmen, retirees, rednecks and countless other denizens of the "Sunshine State." He has applied this formula to more than a dozen bestselling fictional works.
Now the celebrated author has turned his wry humor inward. After a 32-year absence from the game that he first played with his father, Hiaasen, now a grandfather with bad hips and other equally bad appendages, decides it's time to return to the game he abandoned in his youth. Why? Because, as he ruefully acknowledges, "I am one sick bastard."
While he may be "sick," he is wonderfully funny. Any golfer will appreciate his observation about a fine-looking new set of irons, too beautiful to throw in anger after a bad shot. As he attempts to explain the golf handicap system, most golfers will nod in approval. But, just like Hiaasen, they really have no idea how that tell-tale number that appears after their name bears any relation to golfing reality. Reading THE DOWNHILL LIE is a reminder to every golfer of the various circles of the inferno that constitutes golf, from lessons to gadgets to ecstasy and occasional humiliation. He experiences it all and shares it with readers in a fashion that every golfer will understand.
Hiaasen, of course, is not just an average guy returning to the game of his youth. Indeed, his book allows him extravagances that the average golfer can only dream about. One day, in a moment of deep depression, he emails his friend, professional golfer and television commentator David Feherty. His tale of woe and torment results in Feherty sending him the latest model Cobra Driver and ultimately a second model after the first is not quite the correct club for Hiaasen's swing. For his effort, Feherty gets the back page of THE DOWNHILL LIE in the form of a complimentary blurb.
Every gadget purchased, every club and indeed some of the most expensive lessons in golf from the prestigious David Leadbetter Academy are chalked up to research for Hiaasen's book. I must admit to pangs of jealousy that he has really come up with the perfect scam to have someone else pay the price for satisfying his every golfing whim. That envy is assuaged by two facts: unlike Hiaasen I can't write, and nothing he does seems to help his golf game. Frustration fills the pages of THE DOWNHILL LIE, and because it is a golfer other than me suffering ignoble fate, I have to admit it is pretty funny.
I know Hiaasen will never read this review, but perhaps a friend will call it to his attention. Patience, Carl. Several years ago, just like you, I returned to the game I had abandoned. I struggled for a few years, but now at age 60 I am playing the best golf of my life. True, it is mostly attributable to equipment and the humility of moving up a set of tees, but it is improvement nonetheless and I am enjoying every minute of it!
THE DOWNHILL LIE is a perfect Father's Day gift for your golfing dad, or the book to take along on your next golfing trip. Those who have never suffered through golf hell will not understand Hiaasen's anguish, but the rest of us have a wonderful reminder that there are many out there equally frustrated and tortured by the game invented by drunken Scotsmen.
--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman
 The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport July 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a golfer, I could relate to the trials and tribulations of the writer as he suffered though his game but Hiassen's whining about his golf started to get boring and the book never really satisfied; it was like a sketch on Saturday Night Live that it went on too long.
 Goodbye Mr. Hiaasen July 13, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm going to be polite and just say I did not care for this book. To say that this is the only book I have ever read that made me want to personally return it to the author with an official letter of complaint would be counterproductive and no mention of it will be made. Up to this point, I have been a huge fan. This autobiographical golf tale exposes Mr. Hiassen for the spoiled, name dropping, extrememly uninteresting, self absorbed and whining baby boomer that he apparently is. Get a fork, Carl and stick it in. You are done around my place. How dare you waste my time and money. The one star rating is a technicality. No stars wouldn't go through.
Hysterical, whether or not you're a golfer... October 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you are looking for a great Christmas present for the golfers on your list, The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport by Carl Hiaasen is the perfect gift. Hiaasen takes the same skills he uses to write his zany mysteries to produce this hysterical look at his return to golfing after a 30-year hiatus.
Carl Hiaasen's dad was a fairly good golfer, and he taught the sport to his son. But unlike dad, Carl was pretty much a duffer. "At my best, I'd shown occasional flashes of competence. At my worst, I'd been a menace to all carbon-based life-forms on the golf course." As a young adult, he decided to stop torturing himself and gave up playing. But 32 years later, his friends convince him to pick up some clubs and start playing again. Hiaasen also has a secret desire to become a better golfer in his 50s than he was in his youth. He decides to keep a journal along the way. What results is a truly funny look at not just golf, but getting older and our physical shortcomings.
Hiaasen takes lessons and then takes more lessons. He starts with a used set of clubs, and then purchases new ones. He also keeps buying putters and drivers. When one starts failing him, he ditches the offender in his locker and gets something new. He has a Ping putter that "has so many peculiar curves and sharp angles that it's impossible to get it clean with a golf towel. I need to take the blasted thing to a car wash and have it detailed." The author also purchases almost every item offered to help golfers improve their game (none of them work) and reads dozens and dozens of golf magazines and books (they don't help much, either).
Hiaasen's golf swing is entertaining by itself. He calls himself "a male Sybil in spikes" and compares his swing to an "ax murderer." But there is so much more to laugh at. At one course, he manages to sink his golf cart (he claims the brakes were faulty). At home, he uses one of his clubs to kill rats. And when his wife decides to take lessons, she wants to wear flip-flips so that she doesn't get a tan line on her ankles. The Downhill Lie really had me chuckling. When he finds out that Donald Trump can drive a golf ball 310 yards, Hiaasen comforted himself "with a petty vision of the cocksure billionaire trying to tee off in 25-knot gusts, his famously surreal hair torqued into cotton candy."
There is also a little of the environmental activist that we see in his mysteries. "Golf was not meant to be played in the shadow of a high-rise; that high rises don't belong on the banks of an estuary; and that whoever is responsible for such abominations should be pounded to a permanently infertile condition with a 60-degree lob wedge."
Whether or not you play golf, The Downhill Lie is a fun read--especially if you are a Hiaasen fan.
Carl and golf: Priceless! June 5, 2008
I have to admit at the outset that I am a huge Hiassen fan. I await each new book anxiously, and am rarely disappointed.
As a golfer for over thirty years, I found Carl's new book to be a delightful read. I actually laughed out loud on several occasions, and certainly understood the struggles he had with the ancient game. I would recommend this book to all golfers, and all Carl fans. If one is neither, then it is less likely to produce laughter or sympathy.
I have returned to the game after two surgeries, and his struggles are my struggles. I was a strong 7 handicap at one time, but my game is now much like Carl's. The occasional glorious shot brings me back, even with the double bogies and struggles to break 90. Similarly, I can hardly wait for each new Hiassen book, only there are no double bogies: only enjoyable reading.
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