Michael Bamberger’s ‘The Ball in the Air’ reviewed

It’s a joy to read Michael Bamberger’s latest book, maybe because it was such an obvious joy for Bamberger to write it.

“The Ball in the Air,” which was released March 28 by Avid Reader Press, is the famed golf writer’s love letter to the game he adores. He uses the stories of three real-life characters to reveal just how much the game has enriched each of them. He even throws in some first-person examples.

And the secondary characters are just as fascinating, including, of all people, Dave Guard of the Kingston Trio, the folk group that started in the late 1950s. Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus make cameos.

This might be Bamberger’s most accessible book. Even if you don’t like golf, you’re drawn to the characters’ stories.

Bamberger, a former newspaper reporter and award-winning magazine writer who now writes for the Fire Pit Collective website, jumps back and forth between the characters. It takes a minute to see what he’s doing. When you catch on, you can’t wait to get back to a previous character’s chronological story and see what happens next.

There is a young female golfer, a 40-ish former community college golfer and an 88-year-old who played in the 1972 U.S. Amateur. They are introduced in the book from youngest to oldest.

An astute golf fan might know two of the characters. The young female is Pratima Sherpa, who grew up poor in Nepal. Through a 2016 article in Golf Digest by Oliver Horovitz and some amazing people that helped her along the way, she earned a golf scholarship at Cal State Los Angeles, where she will graduate in May.

The middle character is Ryan French, whose life spiraled out of control soon after his college career. It was through golf writing (first with his Monday Q Info Twitter stories of pro golf dreamers that even drew the attention of quarterback Aaron Rodgers) and the love of his parents, second wife and others that he made it back to the other side. He eventually worked for the Fire Pit Collective, alongside Bamberger.

Very little, in terms of his golf, though, has ever been written about the third character, Sam Reeves, a deep thinker and self-made man who made millions in the cotton business and has touched so many people.

He ends up stealing the show with his humility and the connections he makes in golf, which include famed golf instructor Butch Harmon and former Cypress Point head pro Jim Langley. Reeves, from the small rural Georgia town of Thomaston, “has a lot of moves,” Bamberger…