The Pro

A comic novel about an aging golfer who gets a second chance to make a life-changing hole-in-one.

Del Bonnet, a teaching pro at an obscure Florida golf resort, needs a change and needs it badly. Having crossed an ominous threshold—his fiftieth birthday—Bonnet receives frequent communiques from the AARP people. He gazes into the future and sees the prospect of assisted living growing larger by the day.

Serendipity intervenes. A sales rep working out of his station wagon leaves a handmade driver in Bonnet's modest golf shop. The pro privately auditions the driver with astounding results. Bonnet—celebrated for thirty years as the only touring pro to be arrested on the course during a PGA event—is quickly convinced that he has secured possession of no mere golf club, but a sword of salvation. So armed, he decides to embark on the PGA Seniors Tour.

Thus the formation of a strange triumvirate known as Team Del, consisting of the pro, the golf club that soon becomes dubbed "Big Luther," and a caddie, Doublewide McBride. Bonnet soon learns that the caddie is long on off-the-wall intuitions, short on behavioral graces recommended by Emily Post.

While the misadventures of Team Del might not serve as a tribute to the memories Hagen and Hogan, the events detailed in Michael Shropshire's The Pro stand out as perhaps the most hilarious odyssey in the modern annals of sports fiction.