A Quick Nine Before Dark - by Bill Fields (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Distinct among golf writers for having been born in Pinehurst, arguably America's golf capital, Bill Fields brings to life growing up during the 1960s and '70s in the Sandhills of North Carolina, where his early ties to the game were a springboard for a long, award-winning career chronicling it. A Quick Nine Before Dark is a richly detailed memoir: poignant sketches of a lost small-town world, introducing his blue-collar dad to golf; the culture shock and awe of a new arrival in 1980s New York City; an insider's vantage of an evolving golf media world. Fields interviewed a 15-year-old Tiger Woods and played 18 holes with Sam Snead when he was 84. Having walked Pinehurst's fairways as a tour-event standard bearer when he was a teen, Fields went on to photograph 40 major championships and has reported from twice that many as a fixture on the golf scene for four decades. A Quick Nine Before Dark is a vivid account of that journey and the charms and challenges along the way.

Review Quotes

"The roots run deep for Bill Fields in his moving memoir A Quick Nine Before Dark. Home is love's first universe, and Bill shares his with us, from his father's mysterious birth to the bond he forged with golf--the game he spent his life traveling the world to chronicle. He writes with wit and soul of the place that gave him not only roots but wings." --Jim Moriarty, PineStraw Magazine

"Bill Fields has built an exceptional career telling golf stories, bringing to life the game and the people who play it. In A Quick Nine Before Dark, Fields shares his story, a wonderful and enlightening reminiscence of his North Carolina childhood and how golf has shaped his life." --Ron Green Jr., Global Golf Post

"Bill Fields fell for golf early, and the Fields-Golf marriage has been a long and beautiful one. Bill's book is a celebration of it. His writing here is out of a dream state. Like a ball on a fairway waiting to be struck, it starts on the ground--and then soars." --Michael Bamberger, Golf.com writer and author of The Playing Lesson

"In his wonderfully engaging A Quick Nine Before Dark, widely admired golf journalist Bill Fields traces his passion for the game from early childhood to the present. He has a memory for detail as astounding as Tom Watson's short game, and he showcases his profound golf knowledge on every page. There are personal stories, too, from family scenes to love affairs, a broken marriage, and, most moving, the death of his father. I enjoyed every word." --Roland Merullo, author of Golfing with God and twenty other novels

"Bill Fields was born in a place near and dear to me--Pinehurst--and discovered golf early before becoming one of the game's top storytellers. A Quick Nine Before Dark is an engaging memoir of a golf lifer. He takes the reader from the charms of small-town childhood to the twists and turns of a career in a fast-changing media world." --Curtis Strange, Two-time U.S. Open champion

"In addition to his vast golf-writing career, Bill has been in our NBC booth for years helping us frame the stories of the game's biggest championships and the people who chase them. In A Quick Nine Before Dark, you'll read why he does that so well. His long connection to golf began in Pinehurst, a place where you can't help but get caught up in the spirit and magic of the game." --Dan Hicks, NBC Sports

"A Quick Nine Before Dark begins as a memoir but grows into an accidental and thoroughly charming love letter to the game. Bill Fields deftly illustrates why, for many of us, life without golf is unimaginable." --Eamon Lynch, Golfweek

"A Quick Nine Before Dark serves as a beautiful reminder of why we fell in love with this game: the pursuit of unachievable perfection, resilience, redemption, and knowing so many others share the passion to leave golf on every level better than they found it." --Dottie Pepper, CBS Sports announcer and 17-time LPGA Tour winner

"Bill Fields has written a beautiful and entertaining memoir about golf, sports, writing and childhood dreams coming true. Bill is one of the nation's great experts on golf, so it's no surprise that he paints a rich portrait of the game and some of its biggest stars. A Quick Nine Before Dark takes us to another place and time in sports, and in our culture. It's a delightful journey." --Christine Brennan, USA Today national sports columnist and author of the New York Times bestseller On Her Game

"Librarians and readers seeking golfing accounts that go beyond strategy to probe all angles of the sport's attractions will welcome how A Quick Nine Before Dark delivers its insights with authority, warmth, and evocative description.... readers will be pleasantly surprised to find much more is involved than play-by-play memories." --Midwest Book Review

"Born in Pinehurst, arguably the golf capital of the country, Fields shows what it was like growing up in the Sandhills of North Carolina, which served him well while building an award-winning 40-year career chronicling the game. The memoir is full of poignant sketches of a lost small-town world as well as an insider's view of golf media's changing landscape." -- Carolina Alumni Review Magazine

"A standout writer and photographer who produced award-winning work for years at Golf Digest and Golf World, Fields tells the story of his life and distinguished journalism career dating back to his childhood growing up in the golf mecca of Pinehurst, N.C., and how it shaped a passion for the game that became a career. With Fields' usual knack for insightful, descriptive storytelling, this memoir offers an intriguing account of the changing landscape of the golf media during Fields' four decades in the business and how the sport always held a place in his heart." --Golf Digest

"The best writers, those gifted beyond the ordinary, harbor obsessions, and when producing their finest work, they transform those obsessions into prose that they share communally with readers. That's the case with Bill Fields' A Quick Nine Before Dark. His obsession is golf -- and anyone who's been caught up in the intricacies of the game will want to read Fields' memoir, front to back.... Fields' writing is unfailingly lucid, exact, and engaging. What's not obvious is that he's worked over his prose until that "worked on" feeling is gone. His many readers will be the beneficiaries of that labor." --Stephen E. Smith, O. Henry Magazines

"Fields' writing is unfailingly lucid, exact and engaging. . . .storytelling at its best. A Quick Nine Before Dark is more than another golf book -- it's also about becoming a writer and what it takes to remain ascendant in a field where technology advances at breakneck speed. . . . Even if you've never whacked a golf ball, it's easy to be swept up by Fields' beautifully crafted prose." --Stepen Smith, Walter Magazine

"A standout writer and photographer who produced award-winning work for years at Golf Digest and Golf World, Fields tells the story of his life and distinguished journalism career dating back to his childhood growing up in the golf mecca of Pinehurst, N.C., and how it shaped a passion for the game that became a career. With Fields' usual knack for insightful, descriptive storytelling, this memoir offers an intriguing account of the changing landscape of the golf media during Fields' four decades in the business and how the sport always held a place in his heart." --Ryan Herrington, Golf Digest

"Born in Pinehurst, arguably the golf capital of the country, Fields shows what it was like growing up in the Sandhills of North Carolina, which served him well while building an award-winning 40-year career chronicling the game. The memoir is full of poignant sketches of a lost small-town world as well as an insider's view of golf media's changing landscape." --Carolina Alumni Review Magazine

"How many times have you, a golfer obsessed with the game as much as the book's author, read something by Bill Fields and just sat back and let the words educate, inform, and entertain you? From his early years in Pinehurst to a four-decades-long career that took him to New York and around the world writing golf stories, Fields's insight and prose have drawn in readers like bees to honey. And his memoir will satisfy anyone who has long been a fan. Likewise mentioned at Christmas, and likewise another book that belongs on your bookshelf." --Tony Dear, Links Magazine

About the Author

Born in Pinehurst, North Carolina in 1959, Bill Fields received the 2020 PGA Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism from the PGA of America for contributions to golf, joining previous honorees including Herbert Warren Wind, Dan Jenkins, Jack Whitaker, Dave Kindred, and Dave Anderson. A graduate of the University of North Carolina, Fields was a longtime senior editor at Golf World magazine and a senior editor at Golf Illustrated after stints as a newspaper sportswriter. He currently writes The Albatross, a golf newsletter, and has contributed articles to the New York Times, the Met Golfer, and ESPNW.com.