Alan Shipnuck, Michael Bamberger to Host Book Signing at World Am

Alan Shipnuck and Michael Bamberger, two of golf’s most popular and accomplished writers, will be holding a book signing at the Golf.com World Amateur Handicap Championship. Shipnuck and Bamberger will be signing “The Swinger,” a novel they co-authored about a golf star that loses his way, on Tuesday, August 31.

“The Swinger” chronicles the rise and fall and rise again of the world’s greatest golfer, a multi-racial icon whose spectacular career is compromised by sexual appetites as prodigious as his tee shots,” according to Shipnuck. “Obviously there are parallels to Tiger Woods’s life, but Michael and I used that scandal merely as a jumping-off point.

“Thanks to the magic of fiction we could go behind closed doors and truly get to know and understand our protagonist Tree Tremont in ways that are impossible with a remote figure like Tiger. For hard-core golf fans there is a lot of insight into the Tour and the rarified worlds of the top golfers; Michael and I have covered pro golf for a combined four decades and many of the great stories and whispers we’ve heard (but could never fact-check!) inform this book.”

The book signing will be held at the World’s Largest 19th Hole inside the Myrtle Beach Convention Center following an on-stage discussion of the book between Shipnuck and Bamberger.

“The Swinger” has received raved reviews. The New York Times calls it an “…an entertaining, revealing, thought-provoking and cautionary tale” while the influential golf website geoffshackelford.com said, “The Swinger is a raucous, lively and at times laugh-out-loud funny look inside the world of professional golf and modern celebrity.”

Shipnuck wrote his first cover story for Sports Illustrated in 1994 as a 21-year-old intern. Now a senior writer at the magazine, he regularly covers golf.

His first book, Bud, Sweat & Tees: A Walk on the Wild Side of the PGA Tour was published by Simon & Schuster in January 2001, chronicling the misadventures of unknown Tour rookie Rich Beem and his hard-living caddie Steve Duplantis. It became a national best-seller following Beem's stunning victory at the 2002 PGA Championship.

Bamberger joined Sports Illustrated as a senior writer in 1995 after 13 years as a newspaper reporter. Bamberger's versatility as a writer and his lucid, open style are hallmarks of his work. He has written a play (“Bart & Fay”) and five books, among them This Golfing Life. He is also the inventor of The E-Club (eclubgolf.com), a utility golf club. His work has appeared in three editions of the annual anthology The Best American Sports Writing.