The story of one manâs quest to become the first person to play each of Americaâs 100 greatest golf courses in a single year, an odyssey that brings him face to face with the gulf between his impoverished childhood in the Jim Crow South and the successful executive he became.
When he set out to play each of Golf Digestâs Americaâs 100 greatest golf courses in one year, Jimmie James knew he was attempting the impossible. But then again, heâd spent his entire life defying the odds.
James was born invisible. His birth certificate, long since filed away in some clerkâs office in East Texas, recorded facts about him that were deemed most relevant in the late 1950s: âcoloredâ and âillegitimate.â His great-great-grandmother was enslaved, and his early life was confined by the privation and segregation of the late Jim Crow-era South.
Four decades laterâhaving put himself through an HBCU and determinedly risen through the executive ranks at ExxonMobilâhe embarked on his journey to play the 100 greatest golf courses in the United States. In a single year. From the first tee at Augusta National, the distance between the world he grew up in and the world of extreme privilege to which heâd now managed to gain access was impossible to ignore.
Playing from the Rough is a remarkable memoir of race, class, family, and the power of perseverance, as James braids his love of golf with reflections on the path that took him from childhood poverty to the most exclusive and opulent golf courses in America.