GOLF LINKS OF SCOTLAND is advertised as the most expensive golf book ever published. Only 150 copies will be printed; 145 of this limited edition will be sold for $4,600 apiece (the price increases to $5,000 after January 1, 2011, so you better hurry).What on God’s green fairways could make a golf book more expensive than a luxury trip to the home of golf?
I came up with a short list.
The book permanently cures a slice for every golfer who suffers with the affliction. It teaches how to make every three-footer for the rest of your life. It guarantees that you’ll break your next scoring barrier (and the next and next and next). It instructs how to build superhuman confidence on the golf course that carries over to every other part of your life.
No, no, no and no. This is not that kind of book. Not at all. What was I thinking?
Instead, this collector’s book (click image to enlarge), a collaboration of golf photographer Iain Macfarlane Lowe and golf writer George Peper, is an ultra-deluxe, hand-tooled, leather-bound tome that’s billed as “the ultimate hole-by-hole tour of the venerable Old Course at St. Andrews, as well as a tribute to 18 other top Scottish seaside links.” (Think Royal Troon, Royal Dornoch, Carnoustie, Turnberry, Prestwick, Muirfield, Royal Aberdeen, North Berwick and Kingsbarns.)
It’s real fancy. Exquisite photography, the press release said. One hundred seventy pages of text and images and transparent overlays. Did I mention it’s oversized? Golf Links of Scotland is also graced with 23-carat gold leaf inlay on the binding that includes four thistles on the cover corners. And ... and ... ready? ... it comes in a handmade clamshell case.
The book publishes on September 14. Lowe has signed and numbered an exclusive, unpublished photograph that is bound into each book.
By the way, that $4,600 price includes shipping.
−The Armchair Golfer
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