Bobby Rusher On The Origins of How To Line Up Your Fourth Putt

Bobby Rusher is the author of couple of pretty funny satirical golf “instruction manuals”: How To Line Up Your Fourth Putt and When To Regrip Your Ball Retriever (You can read the reviews here). Below, he describes how the books came to be:

Hands down, my friend George wins the prize as the primary inspiration for the comic Training Manuals on the game of golf from Bobby Rusher.

We were playing yet another of our highly competitive matches at a low level of competence, having agreed at the outset that if one of us broke 100 and the other didn’t then that would be an automatic $5 win.  The use of constant banter during play was also approved in advance.  Of course, Mulligans and Shapiros were always included as two of the major tools of play.

Anyway, on the second hole, I shot a nine.  George then said, “Bobby, you’d better read my book.”  I said, “Oh yeah?  What book?”  And he said:  “How to line up your fourth putt.”  I quipped that he really was such a brilliant humorist.  And I called him a large bunker-butt.  He laughed and said that just looking at me made him shank, and he called me a shank-faced nitwit, further suggesting that I was light in the loafers.

On the next hole, I suggested to him that he should readmy book, and he enquired as to its title, to which I replied:  “How to duck hook from the bunker and still get home in 10.”  He smirked and took out a three-iron in order to flub a slightly uphill lie about five yards forward.  I said, “You’re still away, Georgie,” and he said, “I’m taking a mulligan.”  I said that was allowed only on the tee, but he replied that he was taking one of his two traveling Mulligans, “or,” he said, “Have you forgotten, my friend, about the travelers?”  I said ok, but added that he needed a lesson on how to get more distance off the shank.  He said that he considered me to be a bogey-brained chili-dipper.

This continued for the entire 7-hour round.  I forget who won.  But on the plane ride home I sat with a gin & tonic and wrote down as many “How To’s” as I could.  This list became the Table of Contents for the first book.  I eagerly showed the list to my wife when I got home, and told her I was going to write a book!  She said, “Great, honey.  Great.”

The rest is history.