Sean Zak’s ‘Searching in St. Andrews’

If you’re going to search for the soul of the game, is there a better place to do so than St. Andrews, Scotland?

Sean Zak, who writes regularly at Golf.com, chose wisely during the Summer of 2022 and penned a book about his quest to redefine his relationship with the sport in “Searching in St. Andrews: Finding the Meaning of Golf During the Games Most Turbulent Summer.” (Triumph Books, $28)

Place this book under the category of I wish I thought of this and persuaded my editor to let me live abroad when I was single and turning 30 like Zak did. [Side note: we should all have an editor who signs off on such outlandish ideas. Here’s to you, Alan Bastable.] You may have taken a buddy trip to Scotland and played the Old Course and poured back a few pints of Tennent’s Lager; you may have attended a British Open there and raised some hell at the Dunvegan, but you haven’t immersed yourself in life in the Home of Golf the way Zak did. Ninety days of summer!

You haven’t had the experiences he’s going to share with readers. It’s not bragging if it’s true and he not only takes us on a tour of all the great nearby links courses – I related to his description of playing North Berwick as feeling as if playing a game of Ultimate Frisbee on the college quad, “not a care in the world” – but also takes us to where the locals go for the best fish and chips, shares that Jannettas Gelateria scoops the best ice cream and dishes that the steak and ale pie is the best meal the Dunvegan serves. You can trust him because he’s tried them all.

Zak was living his best life and then he wrote a book about it. In my book, he had the best summer since George Costanza got laid off by the New York Yankees in Seinfield. (You do remember the “Summer of George” episode, don’t you?) Zak’s esteemed colleague Michael Bamberger may have put it best in one of my all-time favorite jacket cover quotes: “Zak, you sneaky bastard masquerading as a Wisconsin frat boy. And here you are, in your first book, taking us deep into the Scottish golf experience…Well done, Sir, you’ve done it all.” I hope Zak keeps mining this genre the way Tom Coyne went from his native Ireland to Scotland and then America in his hit series of books.

When I got a copy of Zak’s adventures in March, it was the thick of what I call #GolfBookSzn and I had a stack of them already waiting for me to read. Trying not to play favorites, I told him my policy was simply to go in order…