You are cordially invited to join Michael Bamberger on a year-long golfing adventureplaying alongside the pros of the PGA Tour, the LPGA Tour, LIV Golf, and moreas he seeks to unlock golfs most stubborn secrets in various and surprising ways, all in the name ofimprovement!

Nearly fifty years after taking up the game, Michael Bamberger made a pair of startling discoveries: golf had never meant more to him, and he knew almost nothing about it. He decided to cover himself in green in a whole new way. He spent a year inside the ropes of professional golfplaying, caddying, competing, volunteering, and interviewinglooking for a door into the sports sanctum sanctorum.

In The Playing Lesson: A Duffers Year Among the Pros, Bamberger goes on the ultimate golfing bender. Youve read about St. Andrews before, but here you will experience the home of golf in a whole new way. Youll join the author as he volunteers in one tournament, caddies in others, plays in mens and womens pro-ams, and conducts intimate interviews with elite figures in the game. Youll mooch off the lessons Bamberger takes from instructors, famous and obscure, who teach golf in novel ways. Youll learn how to buy a better golf game.

Maybe youve had club fittings, but not like the one Bamberger experiences in various tour trailers. In a pro-am, Bamberger gets driving tips from one of the tours longest hitters, Jake Knapp. He receives a putting lesson from Brad Faxon. He learns how to hit hook wedges from Gary Player. He lives through the intense pain of Rory McIlroys misses and rejoices at Lydia Kos triumphs. He plays Pebble Beach and Royal Oak, a down-home nine-hole public course in Detroit with perfect greens. He receives an unexpected hug from Greg Norman at a LIV Golf event in Miami, along with the words, Come on in here, you asshole. He spends a lot of time at driving ranges, some of it productive.

What Bamberger has done here, when you get right down to it, is create his own tour. The Playing Lesson is a report on a real-life golfing safari, with stops inside the heads of the games high priests, his ownand yours.