“It's nice to have a reason to get dressed up and raise a hand or a glass or a trophy and hear well done instead of try again.” - Tom Coyne
Tom Coyne
When Tom Coyne was 23 years old, he received a phone call that altered the trajectory of his professional and creative life. At the time he was in a graduate fiction writing program, struggling to complete his thesis and writing stories that the magazines and literary reviews could hardly take the time to reject. He nearly forgot that he'd entered one of his short stories into a competition for previously unpublished writers, so when he got a phone call form an editor at William Morrow telling him that he'd won and was about to be published, Tom was sure that one of his graduate school friends had hatched a new prank. But that wasn't the case, and that prize led to Tom signing with a literary agent who soon sold his first book. So when Stifel approached Tom about finding a way to celebrate excellence in golf storytelling, it was an opportunity with a deeply personal appeal.
According to Tom, "Whether you write or paint or film your stories, it's well understood that the creative life is stuffed with rejection and self-doubt. And that's okay, because the doubts keep us grinding. The no's make us better. But once in a while, it's nice to get a W. It's nice to have a reason to get dressed up and raise a hand or a glass or a trophy and hear well done instead of try again. I hope we have the chance to do that together soon."
Tom Coyne
Tom Coyne is an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author who has been publishing golf stories since 2001. His first book was the novel A Gentleman’s Game, which was named one of the best 25 sports books of all time by The Philadelphia Daily News. He wrote the film adaptation of the novel, which starred Gary Sinise, Philip Baker Hall, Dylan Baker, and Mason Gamble. His second book, Paper Tiger: An Obsessed Golfer’s Quest to Play with the Pros was released June 2006, and was an editor’s pick in Esquire Magazine and USA Today, and a summer reading selection in The New York Times. His third book, A Course Called Ireland: A Long Walk in Search of a Country, a Pint, and the Next Tee, was published by Gotham Books in February, 2009, and it chronicles his quest to walk and golf the whole of Ireland. The book was a New York Times, American Booksellers Association, and Barnes & Noble bestseller, and won a silver medal from the Society of American Travel Writers in the category of Best Travel Book of the Year.
His anticipated follow-up to A Course Called Ireland was released by Simon & Schuster in 2018: A Course Called Scotland was an instant New York Times bestseller, and chronicles Tom’s quest to play every links course in Scotland, searching the highlands for the secret to golf and a tee time in the oldest championship in sports. Tom’s travel trilogy reaches its conclusion with the release of A Course Called America from Avid Reader/Simon & Schuster in May of 2021. The story follows Tom as he plays his way across all 50 states, searching for the great American golf course, and it landed on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists in its first week.
