Guest post written by The Turn author Christopher Ransom
Christopher Ransom is a novelist and copywriter who works in big tech. He is the internationally bestselling author of seen novels, including The Birthing House, The People Next Door, and The Fading. During the four years he spent working on The Turn, he played more than four hundred rounds of golf, lowered his handicap by fifteen strokes, made two aces in the span of thirty-three days, lost twenty pounds, and ended his thirty-year run with alcohol. He lives in Longmont, Colorado. His home course is Twin Peaks.
About The Turn (out May 27th 2025): From internationally bestselling author Christopher Ransom, The Turn is one man’s hilarious and heartwarming odyssey through loss and addiction as he desperately fights to shoot par on the back nine of his life. In the tradition of golf-comedy classics like Caddyshack and literary midlife misadventures like Sideways, The Turn is at once a story of personal redemption, a blistering romance, and a testament to the healing powers of the most obsessive game ever invented. PLUS you can read an excerpt at the end of the guest post!
Since my new novel is a comedy set in the world of amateur golf, and writing and golf are my two great passions, I thought it would be fun to note some of the more disturbing aspects of each.
10 things golf and writing have in common
- Both are primarily individual pursuits. You may have a team backing you, but when you are staring down 400 yards of dead-straight fairway or the blank white page, you are on your own, amigo.
- Both are endless, bottomless, and cannot ever be truly mastered. You can have all the talent in the world and spend your whole life striving to get better, but you will always see your own flaws and fall short of immortality in several ways.
- Per the above, any serious pursuit of golf or writing is obviously undertaken only by masochists, deluded dreamers, and folks who enjoy wild swings in mood, income, relationships, and self-esteem.
- On a more positive note, when the golfer or writer brings real respect, humility, dedication, and a “play loose” mindset to the task, both can be incredibly fulfilling, therapeutic, highly addictive, and sometimes fun.
- One swing at a time is all you have. Once you have published it, it’s out in the world, no looking back, to hell with the critics. Shanked your ball into the water? Focus on the next swing. Your ability to mentally recover will be indicative of your final score.
- If you hope to improve at either, practice, practice, practice…for 100s of hours, for years and years. Love the grind or find something else to do with your time.
- And just when you think you have arrived, it’s time to humble yourself. Next time you notch a bestseller or shoot below 80, be grateful and get back to your beginner’s mind.
- You can lie about your score, but you’re only fooling yourself. Be honest with yourself about where you are and what needs work, and the Gods of golf and writing alike will smile upon you.
- Drugs and alcohol might be fun and keep you loose for a while, but they WILL NOT HELP YOUR GAME.
- It’s those rare moments of glory that keep us coming back. A recreational golfer occasionally sticks a green from 190 yards out, leaving a two-foot putt for birdie. This is a PGA level shot. Similarly, even a mediocre writer can conjure an original, gorgeous, or otherwise perfect sentence once in a while. Savor these moments. They are why we play the game, and they are worth everything.
EXCERPT FROM THE TURN
Player handicap -36
I check in, eyes barely open, hands a little shaky. I’m overweight and out of shape, on two different blood pressure meds. I drink too much. I always rent a cart. I don’t take work or women or my finances or anything else seriously, except the chance to break ninety today.
I set up on the first tee in a pair of beater running shoes because I can’t commit to real golf shoes yet, haven’t earned them. Temperature is forty-one degrees, might reach sixty-five. The frosty fairway crackles under my steps. I force the tee into near-frozen ground. Place the white ball atop. Set my feet. Empty thy mind. Clean white sphere: All I have to do is sweep through it, open my chest to the target. I hover, waiting for the confidence to manifest, and Jim Nantz narrates in his soothing bedtime voice:
The newcomer Sweet likes driver here, and why wouldn’t he? It’s only the straightest, flattest, widest par four within fifty miles. He’s got nothing to fear but his own inner demons, the noble fight all golfers must join. Tiger, Phil, Koepka, Rory, even the singular Bobby Jones—all the great ones had their dark days on and off the course. What he wants here is a nice easy swing, nothing too cute, just harnessing all two hundred and thirty pounds of his battered, beaten, and self-abused form to strike one clean. The entire golf world knows just how hard it’s been, shanking his career, multiple girlfriends, and that one hopeful marriage into the algae-covered pond that has become his sad-ass, self-defeating, shit-for-nothing, fucked-up life. It all comes down to this, friends. Will today be the beginning of a new era?
I bring the big dog barking—whuping! Center face flex, arms finishing high. The ball soars, holding a nice cut. Maybe 250 in the fairway, just past the white stick. Mmm, baby.
Don’t get too excited. One shot at a time. Let’s try the eight here—always liked the eight. Nice mix of loft, control, distance. The ball takes off high, drifting left, missing the green, but manages to catch the shoulder, and I get the member’s bounce as it kicks back across the dance floor until it rests maybe fifteen feet below right of the cup. Lucky, but we’ll take luck. There’s enough bad luck out here—gotta take the good when it comes.
So we’re on in two. It’s a par four. We have a real shot at birdie. Could start the day one under par. Skin prickling at the possibility. A gulp of that grapefruit White Claw as I unsheathe the flatstick and circle the glittering green, noting the slope from all sides. I probably won’t make it because the first two swings were a fluke. I trace a line from the cup back to my ball and don’t look up again, like Grandpa taught me thirty years ago.
Sweep. Listen for it, the sound like no other sound, that sweet plottle.
But no. It rolls over the left edge and keeps going; it won’t stop. Jesus! Fuck! The comeback is six goddamn feet. Un-fucking-believable.
Okay, we can still make par here. Par is nice. Par is great. Stay above the hole. Let it crest and topple over. Read it. Settle. Go.
Maybe . . . !
Not even close. Short-sided it by three feet. Nerves. What the fuck is wrong with me?
No one is watching. I could cheat. Call that last one a gimme on the warm-up hole. People do it all the time. But who am I really doing this for? What is the point? No one will know, but I will know. And if we’re not keeping the real score, why keep score at all?
Stop overthinking everything. Just putt the ball. Three feet straight uphill. A blind man could make this. Whatever. Tap.
It slides by the cup.
Tap in for a six.
I’m considering slitting my wrists as I press the plus sign on my watch twice. I am now plus two through one hole. Probably finish forty over. Sloppy mind, sloppy game, sloppy-ass life. I want to cry. Scream. Smash my putter into the cart and wreck everything. I should go home and go back to bed. I should sell my house and move to Guam.
I press on.
Over the next twelve holes, my life becomes a horror show. I can’t hit anything anywhere I intend to. I lose balls, duff drives, chunk approaches, and continue to putt like Mr. Magoo. By the time I reach number fifteen, all seven of my White Claws are gone. I haven’t eaten a thing. The morning is still cold, the frost giving way to wet muck. My lower back feels like a shattered beer bottle. The world has taken on a blurry sheen of simmering rage. I feel sick, cursed. The end is nigh. I don’t know what this is, but it isn’t fun.
Number fifteen is a short par four, 340 yards. Pretty little hole. A westward wind pushes at my back, makes my nose run. I decide to give this one hell, nothing left to lose. Everything drains out of me, including the ability to care what happens next.
I unleash and, beyond all reason, catch the sweet spot. The ball goes like a cruise missile, not moving an inch left or right, and the wind carries it way, way down there. I drive up and park beside the ball and look at my yardage watch.
Three hundred seven.
My laughter erupts. My dick gets an inch longer. A half-swing gap wedge lands me on the green, seven feet right of the cup. I read the bend and don’t hesitate on the birdie putt. Smooth tap. Ball goes over the top, and gravity sucks it back down.
Plottle.
Inside me, something brighter than a rainbow shines. Something more mysterious than a woman lowers her hood to let me see her face. Something more than grace enters my blood.
For a moment I am immortal, and a fleeting thought stirs:
The rest no longer matters.
Work and women and illness and terrorism and mass shootings and viruses and greed and sadness and addiction and confusion and every other tragedy perpetuating itself across this absurd and fragile world—they can take the day off. I don’t care about any of that. I only care about making this little white ball do more good things.
At last, I am home.
