Shanks for Nothing

By: Rick Reilly

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

The hilarious sequel to Rick Reilly’s beloved bestselling golf novel Missing Links

Life is going pretty well for Raymond “Stick” Hart. He’s happily married to the former Ponkaquogue Municipal Golf Club assistant pro, the beauteous Cajun firecracker Dannie, raising his rambunctious son, Charlie, and getting by writing smart-mouthed greeting cards for fifty bucks a pop. Best of all, nothing has changed at Ponky, the worst golf course in America. You still have to hook it past the toxic waste dump on No. 1 and under the billboard on No. 8, the fried-egg sandwiches are terrible but cheap, and his pal Two Down is always up for a sucker bet.
Then, one disaster of a day, Stick’s world does a ten-car pile-up. The cheapskate bastard owner of Ponky announces he’s retiring to a nudist camp in Florida and selling the club to the Mayflower Club next door, a bastion of blue-blood snobbery that plans to pave Ponky over. Worse, its membership includes Stick’s hated father.
Who promptly drops dead.
Just before Stick’s pal Two Down loses $12,000 to a golf hustler who turns out to be funded by the Russian mob.
Which is about the same time that Hoover, Ponky’s worst golfer and the owner of an impressive array of useless golf gadgets purchased with his wife’s money, learns she’ll cut him off if he doesn’t break a hundred in one month.
Then a practical joke makes Dannie believe that Stick’s been stepping out with the gorgeous new clubhouse girl, the eye-popping Kelly, and he’s soon living on the forty-year-old couch in the Ponky clubhouse.
Luckily, Stick has a solution to all his problems.
He’ll qualify for the British Open.©2006 Rick Reilly; (P)2006 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

Praise for Missing Links


“The best golf novel in decades.”
—Boston Herald


“Part Damon Runyon, part Raymond Chandler, and part Caddyshack . . . I was hooked for the full 18.”
—Entertainment Weekly


“You don’t need to know your bogeys from your birdies to find at least three laughs per page in this novel.”
—New York Times Book Review


“Snappy prose, believable characters, and the funniest take on blue-collar hacking and gambling since Dan Jenkins’s The Glory Game at Boat Hill . . . it’s social satire and pure irreverence that keep this story in the grove.”
—Los Angeles Times

“A great piece of fiction.”
—Denver Post


“Easily the wittiest golf novel yet, the Bull Durham of the genre, and the closest thing to Caddyshack on paper we’re likely to get.”

—Kirkus Reviews


“Somebody forgot to tell Rick Reilly that you can’t put sex, laughs, tragedy, suspense, and real relationships into a golf novel. Golf novels are supposed to be about somebody in Scotland discovering the Vardon grip.”

—Dan Patrick, ESPN commentator

“This is golf as I know it, lewd, rude, and very shrewd . . . Rick Reilly has captured golf on its primal table. Full of characters from the other end of the food chain.”

—Gary McCord, CBS commentator

Not bad

Not as good as first book. The narration is good but again the first book was just better. He could capture that Boston voice. All and all a good follow up to one of the greatest books ever.

Loved every minute of it

This is my third book by Rick Reilly, I’m hoping for many more to follow

just a really funny book about the game of golf

great characters were all know them all.
can see myself in all of the situations
shows how a golfers mind works, a strange place at the best of times

I wish I could join Ponky.

IF you are an obsessive golfer this book is right up your fairway. The characters in Ponky are just what you would want in your local club. If you have a sense of humor you cannot but enjoy this book.

Great story

Wonderfully written, well read. Thoroughly enjoyable. Why do I have to say more than that?