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• by:
• Merullo, Roland

Roland Merullo, author of Golfing With God, shares the account of his summer golfing and eating and spending time with his wife and two young daughters in Italy. In the summer of 2007, feeling a little burned out from the frantic pace of life demanded by a Type-A personality and hoping the Mediterranean air would shift him down into a slower gear, Roland and his family decided to rent a house in Italy for the summer and take a page from the Italian book of life: relax and enjoy the food, the culture, and the company. Italians are famous for having a relaxed attitude toward life (except on the highways), and yet they seem to have as high a standard of living as Americans. Roland felt a summer in Italy with his family would be a great antidote to his fast-paced life.

After finding a house near the shore of Lake Como in a town called Mezzegra, Roland set out to enjoy one aspect of European culture in particular: golfing at some of the courses around the region. A golfer and a golf writer, he played with members, non-members, and tournament competitors at Italy's second-oldest golf club, the Menaggio and Cadenabbia, which was celebrating its centennial anniversary. He also played at several other courses in northwestern Italy and met a number of interesting--and sometimes eccentric--characters along the way. Roland and his family also made a point of sampling the cuisine at a wide variety of restaurants near Lake Como and as far away as Genoa and southeastern France. The region is known for its appreciation of fine food: growing it, preparing it, serving it, accompanying it with the proper wine, eating and digesting it, and talking about it.

Composed of tales from the golf course, descriptions of the meals, and portraits of the various people Roland and his family met along the lake, at the course, and in their trips around the region by car and boat and on foot, the book occasionally delves into the joys of Italian life. It is a book for vicarious travelers and armchair golfers, and a hymn to a slower, richer way of life, an appreciation for good food, for people and for beautiful surroundings.