I’m pretty new to golf literature but recently it hit me and I got myself 8 books from a local book store that looked pretty interesting at a first glance. Excluding two German books on golf, the first one I read that’s called “Breaking 80” and some golf photography books, this is one of the first books I read in printed format – except of loads of golf magazines for sure. But let me just jump right into it. The book that I finished two days ago was one of the books I bought in a stack. It’s called “Dream on” written by John Richardson and is an autobiography. John explains his challenge to get from hardly playing at all and shooting around 100 to a par round; from scratch to scratch. And the time frame he has set himself – believe it or not – is 365 days only!

One could argue that could be enough for a person who is able to practise couple of hours a day but John is married, has kids and a full-day job as a director of a couple of garden centres. For most people a setting that would make it impossible to shoot 80 without screwing up job and family life. But his target is a 71 at his home course…

John seems to be quite a reflective person and is not only only focussing on the techniques of golf but as well on the mental part and tricks that helped him to cope with problems around the course or difficult holes and lies. Normally I’m not interested in this mental role of golf but in this context it was very interesting and not too much for my liking.

The book is well written and I really enjoyed reading it. Once again I used time in the tube and on the plane and it created a pleasant time to read about that kind of tough target a private person set himself.

I have targets as well but none of these are that 100 per cent important to me that I would risk job and family life. John tried to practise in the lunch breaks and during the night after he put his kids to bed…. what a commitment!

Interesting to read, recommend it.