Alun Evans

Alun Evans' Golf Majors Book, 2014

Publisher Marketing: THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE SOURCE OF INFORMATION IN PRINT ON THE MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIPS OF GOLF This is the ninth book by Alun Evans on Golf's four biggest events - the Masters, The US Open, The Open Championship and the PGA of America Championship since the original, now comparatively scratchy, survey saw the light of day in 1998. In order to make the review as close to an annual update as possible, much material form older editions has been omitted to save space and to keep costs down. For those readers who want to know about the first 150 years of Majors in detail, ie from 1860 to 2010, you are pointed to the jam-packed 750 pages of the author's From Old Tom to the Tiger, which was nominated in 2012 for the British Sports Book of the Year. The years 2011 and 2012 are covered in depth in the author's year books of 2012 and 2013, now suitably discounted, of course. Alun Evans' Golf Majors Book, 2014 does exactly as it says on the tin. It covers in detail the Majors of 2013, when Adam Scott deservedly won his first Major at the Masters; Justin Rose became the first Englishman to win the US Open since Tony Jacklin in 1970; Phil Mickelson at last added the Old Claret Jug to his portfolio; and super-cool Jason Dufner mugged everyone at Oak Hill to collect the PGA Championship - and, like Scott and Rose, became a Major Champion for the first time. Details can be found in this edition of the golf courses to be used in the 2014 round of Majors, based on first-hand information gleaned from the host sites and/or the organizing committees of each. Particularly of interest in 2014 will be the back-to-basic topography of Donald Ross' Pinehurst No2 in the US Open after the Coore and Crenshaw overhaul. And of course, there are the Records. Fully updated stats and full players' records are to be found for those appearing in the 21st Century; plus the expected CVs of those greats of golf who became Major Champions before the change in millennium and the Hall of Fame compiles for comparison the records of the top 100 performers in Majors. Contributor Bio:  Evans, Alun Alun Evans was born on the last day of 1949 in the historic Welsh coal-mining valley of the Rhondda. He attended the Rhondda (Porth) County Grammar School, and represented it in rugby, cricket, athletics and diving, before going on to Bedford College, University of London in 1968, to gain colours in football (he captained the college team for two years), cricket and rugby. Three years later, armed with a BA honours degree in Geography, Alun married long-time girlfriend Caryl, and they would go on to have two great daughters, Joanne and Katy. He only began writing when his 20-year career in financial services ended abruptly after two ankle operations went wrong. His Golf Majors odyssey began in the early 90s when his recuperation coincided with a Welshman, Ian Woosnam, winning the Masters in 1991. Alun had rarely played golf he was just getting into it when the ankle problems started; and although pretty mad about most sports, golf and its history were of no particular interest to him at the time. But that would change in the aftermath of that Masters Tournament. Alun felt he needed to know more about the significance of Woosnam's achievement. But the more he tried to put it into perspective, the more frustrated he became. The Masters, of course, is one of golf's four 'Majors', a term kindled around 1960 by Arnold Palmer; but nowhere could he find anything which conceptualized the Majors as a collective. All he found were writings concentrating on the individual events. So, eventually, in this absence any published documentation of note, he decided to put all four Majors together through his own research hopefully one day in a book, but initially for his own satisfaction. His voyage of discovery had begun. Nearly 20 years on, this is his eighth book on golf, and the Majors are either the subject of these, or feature very strongly in them. Alun is also a crossword setter and his puzzles have appeared in the Financial Times, Guardian, Independent and Observer, among many others, often under his pen-name, Axe. Today Alun and Caryl still live happily together in Milton Keynes. Both daughters are now married: Joanne after spells at the LSE and Sorbonne, is a successful political lobbyist, whilst still bringing up our first two grandchildren, Eva and Tom; Katy graduated at Sheffield, and not to be outdone by her sister, she doubled the grandchildren count in one day...and what a day. Jackson and Billy Friday were born on a Friday 11/11/11!