Too Much Loft Review

A Review by Arthur Utley,
Golf Writer, The Richmond Times-Dispatch

Arlo Litton, aka, “Looper” is a soon-to-be freshman in college. He is bright, engaging, intelligent, an astute observer and a good golfer. He tells the reader in the first sentence of author Michael J. Stott’s golf novel Too Much Loft he will never forget the best summer job he ever had.
Looper’s best summer job begins in 1960 when he is hired as a caddie at Spring Willows Country Club located outside of Chicago. Nicknames are a fact of life for caddies, thus Litton becomes Looper.
Too Much Loft follows Looper’s life-learning experiences through the summer of 1962 in the form of three novellas. The first and shortest of the three tells the story of Looper’s partnership with Mrs. Peck, a 67-year-old former club champion who is chasing the D Flight title 44 years later. Part Two is about Looper’s summer working for cantankerous greens superintendent Mr. O. Looper is still caddying and is in the middle of all the action as the club prepares for an international exhibition between women’s teams from Sweden and the U.S.
In the third part, “The Pro Shop,” Looper uses his people-person skills and popularity with the membership to deal with country club politics. And a romance blossoms on the lesson tee.
Each of the novellas features Looper’s breezy, quick-witted narrative filled with thoughts and opinions about matters large and small and, of course, people.
When Looper isn’t narrating, clever, snappy dialogue drives each story.
The colorful characters who populate Spring Willows are easily recognizable to country clubbers. Looper’s observations flesh out the backstories of the club leaders, club females including the cart girl (an experiment in those days) and the pro shop staff.
Readers will have to think some before picking a favorite character. Parts of the book reflect experiences Stott had in his younger days. Some characters represent people he knew or knew of. He caddied once for a Mrs. Peck at her club in suburban Chicago. Her set of clubs, comprised of numbered woods 1 through 11, was a one-of-a kind set.

Mrs. Peck’s quest to win the D Flight and the Sweden-U.S. exhibition match in Part Two spotlight how competitive women’s golf can be, even in the high-handicapper flights. Looper’s play-by-play of Mrs. Peck’s matches calls out the boorish behavior of her opponents. Older readers are likely to chuckle at some of the references to life in the early 1960s. Looper’s experience with a tractor led a co-worker to refer to him as Fireball Roberts, a NASCAR Hall of Fame driver.
Cassie, the cart girl, drives a Studebaker. Wide World of Sports covers the women’s exhibition match, and Looper’s mentor and Green Committee chief Billy Sauers says he likes to hear the sound of persimmon in the evening. Those were the days when the drivers and the other woods were made from real wood such as persimmon.
The real Mrs. Peck served as the hook for Stott to write the book, and Stott’s son, David, urged him year after year to finish the trilogy. Started in 1990, Stott finished the first two parts in short order then set the project aside for 24 years.
Too Much Loft is an entertaining read. It is one of those novels that can be read quickly or put down and then picked up without missing a beat.
Looper is a memorable character worthy of the happy ending. As he said after his first summer at Spring Willows:
“In retrospect, I did learn a lot that summer, especially about relationships and big business. I got to see human beings in various stages of adversity and learned how they responded under pressure. You can learn a lot from duck hooks and buried lies. And I definitely learned about how the world goes around – quid pro quo.”