Chris Lewis, Inside Golf, www.sportsillustrated.com, 12/17/04
"...an unexpected surprise...Chiarella is the best golf writer you've never heard of..."

Esquire magazine, December 2004
"...golfers everywhere need to read Thursday's Game, a collection of 32 impassioned pieces by...Tom Chiarella."

Book Description
Golf can be magical and horrible. The greens, the gear and the game work their way into the heart while getting uncomfortably under the skin. Golf can turn mature adults into petulant children who always want more--one more drive. Another chip. One last putt. But the beauty of a graceful thirty-footer for birdie or the joy of hacking out of a seemingly impossible situation and getting within inches of the cup can’t be matched. Tom Chiarella, a writer for Esquire magazine, knows the game all too well. He gets to see a side of golf the average player dreams of, while still maintaining his status as a serious amateur. THURSDAY’S GAME is his take on the sport, the passion/pull-your-hair-out yin-yang, and the inevitable return to the course again and again. He also weaves in tales of friendship, family and personal insights. In THURSDAY’S GAME, golfers, armchair or otherwise, learn what it’s like to: • spend a few days with roguish pro John Daly • play a round with actor Billy Crudup or Vegas singer Don Cherry • swing the sticks at dream courses like Pebble Beach • return to the game’s origins on courses in Scotland and Ireland • go to Morocco to play for the prestigious Hassan II Golf Trophy Chiarella’s tales are filled with wry observations about a game he obviously loves.

From the Publisher
Whether you’re a scratch golfer, a novice, or just know someone who follows golf on television, THURSDAY’S GAME is a look at the game from all angles, some of them candid, some of them downright funny, and others that are surprisingly touching.

From the Author
"Thursday is when it all begins. It is the Alpha and Omega of the golf week. It is as much a beginning as it is an end. You start planning the golf ahead. You puzzle a means of slipping out, of setting things straight, of teeing up. On this day more than any other, the weekend beckons."

About the Author
Tom Chiarella writes for Esquire magazine. His work has appeared in Links, Washington Golf Monthly, The London Observer and The New Yorker. He has won awards from the Golf Writer’s Association of America and the National Endowment of the Arts and was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. He lives with his two sons in Greencastle, Indiana, where he teaches creative writing at DePauw University. He is an eleven handicap. Barely.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Tom Chiarella is the serious amateur, the humbled hacker, and the appreciative fan all rolled into one. Golfers everywhere will identify with his tales of low-grade frustration centered on a dimpled ball and a fairway filled with traps. But these affectionate, tee-in-cheek reminiscences and respectful rantings are balanced by memories of those sublime -- and all too seldom -- moments when the shot rises like a rocket, straight and true, carrying over a long stretch of treacherous real estate to settle at last onto the cool comfort of the green.

From "In Defense of Thursdays" I name Thursday the last day of the golf week because on that day, you can finally forget the weekend past: the distant Friday where you strung together three birdies for the first time in four years. The rainy Saturday when you sank a sixty-foot snake for bogey on the eighteenth with no one watching. The Sunday scramble where no one could make a six-foot putt for the money. On Thursday, you are done with this. History. Thursday is where the golf week ends.