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What: “Fore! The Best of Wodehouse on Golf”

Author: P.G. Wodehouse

Publisher: Mariner Press ($13)

No one--not Jim Murray, not Dan Jenkins, not Herbert Warren Wind--wrote about golf with the reverence and irreverence of P.G. Wodehouse.

The British writer, who died in 1975 at the age of 94, was best known for his stories about Jeeves, the perfect gentleman’s gentleman, but golf was his passion.

Wodehouse was so prolific a writer as to make Stephen King look like a slacker, and many of his stories were about golf. There have been larger anthologies than this one, but “Fore!” is a good sampler for the uninitiated.

Some examples of the Wodehouse style:

In “The Coming of Gowf,” on religion: “The Vizier had thrown himself into the new worship with such vigour and earnestness that it was not long before he won from the King the title of Supreme Splendiferous Maintainer of the Twenty-Four Handicap Except on Windy Days When It Goes Up to a Thirty--a title which in ordinary conversation was usually abbreviated to The Dub.”

In “High Stakes,” on the swing: “That sort of stuff might suit some people, but not him. He was a biffer, a swatter and a slosher; and it flashed upon him now that only by biffing, swatting and sloshing as he had never biffed, swatted and sloshed before could he hope to recover the ground he had lost.”

In “The Heart of a Goof,” on love: “He folded her in his arms, using the interlocking grip.”

Usually told from the perspective of the Oldest Member, Wodehouse’s stories are timeless gems. Read one and you will be as hooked as a bad two-iron.