I love books about golfers and the history of Golf and I love reading how great players managed a particular round; I love romances and tragedies; and I love psycological storys. This novel has all three, and taken separately two of the three are all splendid reads, but mixed as they are in this book the result is initally somewhat confusing. I was reminded of when I first read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 'Love in the Time of Cholera' - it wasn't until about page 70 that I realized exactly what was going on, however from there forward the book was a page turner. The same could be said of The Caddy Who Knew Ben Hogan.
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No collection of golf books is complete without one work of fiction. I do not know if there is an afterlife, but if one exists, Ben Hogan and Bobby Jones are sitting in a grill somewhere in heaven comparing notes about the various fictional tomes that feature the two golfing greats as mythical characters.
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When John Coyne decided to write a novel set in the world of professional golf, he knew exactly which real-life character to include: the legendary Ben Hogan.

I wanted to write about the golfing generation of the late '30s, the '40s and early '50s," says Mr. Coyne . . .
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You do not have to be a golfer to enjoy John Coyne's “The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan.” Rarely have I approached a novel with such skepticism but found myself so convinced.
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Caddie tale proves an ace
by Tim Cronin
Staff writer

The difficult task of mixing fact and fiction in a novel often results in a contrived tale from start to finish. Author John Coyne’s effort in “The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan” comes off far better.
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When golf novelists reach for profundity, they invariably trot out either God or Ben Hogan. Often, there is little distinction between the two, with Hogan dispensing wisdom in godlike fashion.
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John Coyne was working on his master’s degree in English at Western Michigan University in 1962 when he saw a chance to go on the kind of adventure that might inspire the novels he hoped to write, or at least teach him lessons that Western couldn’t. He joined the Peace Corps, which had just been created the year before by President Kennedy.
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Writer John Coyne grew tired of the horror novels he had cranked out since the 1970s. So with “The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan” (2006, Thomas Dunne Books, $23.95), he turned to something that has long interested him — golf.
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In a civilized society, everybody should be allowed a perversion or two, and John Coyne’s is golf. Like others of his persuasion, Coyne’s soul is filled up by knocking a little white ball around a series of lawns with a stick. Coyne was in the same Ethiopia Peace Corps group I was part of back in the Jurassic age — JFK himself bade us farewell one golden summer afternoon on the White House lawn — but I never saw Coyne carrying golf clubs in Addis Ababa. It was heavily populated and hilly.

Now, however, these many years later, Coyne has chosen to flaunt his lifestyle with a vengeance — the man is in his sixties, but I guess it is never too late — and he has produced a novel with a golf-world setting that is suspenseful, rich in the lore of the sport, gracefully written and altogether charming.
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PELHAM MANOR — When John Coyne wrote his new novel, “The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan,” he did not return to the tales of horror that earned him a following in the 1980s. Instead, the 67-year-old author returned to a much earlier time, when he was a teenager toting golf bags for members of a country club south of Chicago.
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