The Sports Bookshelf

Did you love the Ryder Cup? Are you already a committed golf fan, or did the great comeback in Medinah open up a new dimension to your sporting fascinations? Golf has traditionally been a source of good reading for sports fans, and no sport offers a greater proliferation of instructional guides for the enthusiastic amateur. Here is The Sports Bookshelf's potted guide to 10 of today's most popular golf books . Click on the picture or text links for more information and to buy. Out of Bounds: Legendary Tales From the 19th Hole , by Sam Torrance (Simon & Schuster) Sam Torrance, Scottish golfing legend, veteran of eight Ryder Cups, sank the winning put as Europe ended 28 years of US dominance at The Belfry in 1985 and returned to the Midlands course as winning captain in 2002. A natural raconteur, Sam has a fund of insights and anecdotes, some hilarious, some eyebrow-raising. In this new book, he divulges tall tales from the great, the good and the not-so-g

Even in this year, dominated as it has been by the most memorable of Olympics, made even more special, on the UK side of the Atlantic at least, by the sight of a British male tennis player winning a major, the Ryder Cup still manages to capture the attention of sports fans. Even if somehow you've had the time for no more than a cursory glance at a newspaper these last few days,  or caught only a few minutes of a television sports bulletin, you will be aware of the intensifying anticipation of this week's 39th edition of golf's unique team event, peppered by some notable tub-thumping on the part of the players, not all of it polite. It has become, in the eyes of those taking part, golf's fifth major, a tournament as meaningful as any that they play, filling a need perhaps they did not even realise they had as they were devoting their formative years to honing their swings and perfecting their putts in solitary hours of blinkered practice.  While so many of th