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Those who buy this book thinking they are going to get the inside story of the US Open golf tournament held at Bethpage Black in 2002 are going to be disappointed. The tournament doesn't even start until page 262.

What this book is about is how the United States Golf Association decided to bring it's prestigious Open Championship to a municipal golf course on Long Island, rather than the famed country clubs which have hosted this event since it's inception and what goes in to putting on such an event. The title says" Inside the Ropes at Bethpage Black." What you really get is inside the workings of the USGA, what goes on behind the scenes, how decisions are made (or not),how catastrophes were avoided (or not)and in the end you may have learned more about what was involved in bringing this tournament to this course than you really wanted to know.

To those of us who follow golf closely and have attended a US Open, this is a very interesting read. Feinstein researches his subject exhastively and tells the story in an interesting manner, but at the end of the book I don't believe the reader has gotten a full measure of what has been promised. So, be aware of what the book is about and what it is not about, and if it is your cup of tea, read on.

Probably my favorite sports writer, Feinstein takes a different tack in The Open versus his previous golf books, A Good Walk Spoiled and The Majors. Instead of stories about the players on the tour, this story focuses on the people behind the transformation of the worn-out municipal golf course Bethpage Black into the great course that hosted the 2002 U.S. Open championship. I found I couldn't stop reading, as Feinstein's prose is once again funny, heartwarming, and flowing. My only critique is that I wished for more detail on Rees Jones' changes to A.G. Tillinghast's design, with illustrations. For a book about the transformation of the golf course, there isn't enough about the physical changes that were done. The book does a great job portraying the enormity of the project that was undertaken, so the satisfaction that is felt with the success of the championship seems to be well deserved.

He writes with a lot of descriptive detail, to a fualt. Every person he mentions gets their biography put in. Way too much extra junk about people no one would ever here of. Chapters start out with the continuing story and quickly break down into the life story of some high ranking account for the PGA, and so on. Read only if you need to get some sleep.