Payne Stewart: The Authorized Biography
The problem with most authorized biographies is just that--they're  authorized. They praise, adore, defend, excuse, inspire, whitewash, and love  their subjects, which, in the end, conspires to keep the reader at a distance.  Tracey Stewart's homage to her late husband Payne Stewart does all of that. It  rarely allows a closer view than that available from where she witnessed most of  his stirring final round victory in the 1999 U.S. Open: on TV.Which is too bad, because the sartorially splendid golfer was more interesting  and complex than that. Despite his deep family and religious convictions--when  he played, he wore a bracelet with initials that stood for "What Would Jesus  Do?"--he was certainly no saint; his early reputation as a hell-raiser was  matched by a palpable whiff of arrogance later on. His accomplishments--three  majors among them--were great, but his flaws were at least as fascinating as his  successes. So, of course, was his tragic end, in an almost unimaginably bizarre  plane crash not long after his great comeback triumphs in the Open and as a  member of the victorious Ryder Cup team.All the necessary facts are here. So are the various scriptures and devotionals  Stewart relied on, the joys he felt in coaching his son's soccer team, his  wrenching loss at the '98 Open, and the tears of relief he shed when he won at  Pebble Beach--and, of course, Pinehurst--a year later. And so, too, is the  occasional startling detail that defines a life--such as his son's request to  bury his father in Payne's favorite Jimmy Buffett T-shirt, and Tracey's having  to explain that no body was recovered from the plane crash. But too few other  moments bring anything approaching that candid closeness. The rest comes off  like a life passed through a protective filter, leaving the reader where golfers  would rather not be--on the fringe.--Tally Swinfen