You don’t need to be a golfer to enjoy this one

For ardent James Patterson fans this refreshing change of genre might come as something of a surprise.

But it shouldn’t, Patterson now tackles such variety in his stories that he has to farm out his outlines to a sort of writing sausage machine.

His frameworks are precise and his co-authors must stick closely to them without too much embellishment and follow a Patterson formula which takes out everything readers skip over anyway and keeps the language and story structure short and simple.

Miracle at Augusta is de Jonge’s fourth collusion with Patterson and revisits Travis McKinley, a jobless middle-aged man whose love of golf and embryonic mid-life crisis push him to join the Senior Tour and win the United States Open, as told in the first Patterson/De Jong venture, “Miracle on the 17th Green”.

In “Miracle at Augusta” McKinley, who is at a loose end after he has been suspended for six months from the Senior Tour for fisticuffs in a backstreet Honolulu bar, decides to teach the game of golf to a bullied, gangling Eastern European immigrant teenager.

The kid is a natural who can hit a ball further and putt far more accurately than McKinley can.

What he lacks in consistency and experience he makes up for in enthusiasm.

As McKinley tries to tame his demons and his protégé enjoys the time of his life, they set out to play 18 holes at Augusta National Golf Club, the Shangri-La of the US Masters.

This is a feel-good fairy story which even those who know nothing about the game will understand and enjoy.

Indeed, it might even engender an interest in taking up some sticks or watching others play golf on the box.

The story also humanizes the players and gives an insight into their otherwise mundane existences and the hours they put into practice.

It’s a hole-in-one without having to stand a round in the 19th hole.