ON THE RANGE
by Hank Gola
If things were ever meant to be, it is Rich Poggi’s new golf novel, Fairways and Greens. Poggi, 59, has spent his entire career in tech sales with occasional dabbles into freelance writing, including The NFL Today on CBS. Coast to coast business flights were spent working on screenplays. One came close. None hit.
Then, around 2010, Poggi learned from a friend connected to Michael Douglas that he was looking for a project for him and dad Kirk.
“I came up with this treatment for a screenplay about father and son golf pros,” says Poggi, who lives in Westwood, N.J. “I needed something different. I didn’t want to have that magical 3-wood shot, or some sort of a mystical kid who comes out of the weeds and wins the U.S. Open. I wanted to keep it more real people, real golf because I’m an avid golfer. I’m very close to the game, and that was it.”
Unfortunately, the project fell through and Poggi put the script aside. Life went on when, in 2022, Poggi was standing on the third green at River Vale Country Club in northern New Jersey, where he played most of his golf. He was stunned by the news that his 21-year-old godson, William Magee Borgersen, a U.S. Army Ranger and special forces member, had died.
The old screenplay would become a book as Borgersen’s spirit carried him through, “fully, fiercely, and without excuses,” as he wrote in his dedication. “Will didn’t write this book but he made sure I did.”
Still working a fulltime job, Poggi researched whenever he could, being careful to be as accurate as possible when it came to golf. Once he started writing, he’d spend two or three hours a day at it.
Poggi finished the book in a year’s time, found an editor, and self-published. He describes it as a “redemption or rediscovery story,” whose main character’s PGA Tour career is cut short by injury and “his own self-destruction.” The pro retreats to the New Jersey club where his father is the head pro and where he happily rebuilds his life teaching the game until a call rearranges his journey and forces him to confront his past once more.
The story, notes Poggi, is a lot like golf, about second chances, recoveries, and the discipline to take the next shot.
The book is available on Amazon and through his web site, richpoggi.com.