Golf Clap

In a recent interview on CBC Radio’s Q, Terry Fallis, twice a winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, claimed that “regardless of our physical makeup, there’s probably one sport out there at which we could excel, maybe even be really good at it.” For his part, Fallis has spent a lifetime trying numerous sports to see if he “might be a world champion.” This curiosity led him to the boys’ golf team in grade 8 and ultimately inspired his latest protagonist.

In Albatross, Fallis’s seventh novel, Adam Coryell has only a passing familiarity with golf — at least until he meets his grade 12 PE teacher, the oddly endearing Bobbie Davenport. Despite having never held a club, Adam finds himself whisked into the world of fairways and country clubs because of the counterintuitive theory of a quirky Swedish professor, Ingemar Gunnarsson. As the professor would have it, Adam has the ideal arm-to-leg-length ratio, the right torso and overall height, and all...