HOT CORNER

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, heard, observed, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here. One exception: No products will be endorsed.

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What: “Chicken Soup for the Golfer’s Soul, The 2nd Round”

Authors: Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Jeff Aubery, Mark and Chrissy Donnelly

Publisher: Health Communications

Price: $12.95

The best-selling “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series consists of about 50 books that are collections of feel-good stories. This is the fourth with a sports theme. There is one for the sports fan’s soul, one for the baseball fan’s soul and this is the second for the golfer’s soul.

There’s a reason two books have been devoted to golf stories: there are a lot of good golf stories. But maybe not enough to fill two volumes.

Although this book contains many fascinating stories, readers of “Chicken Soup for the Sports Fan’s Soul” and/or Volume I of “Chicken Soup for the Golfer’s Soul” may be disappointed. This book doesn’t quite match up.

The authors/editors selected short stories from reputable writers and professional golfers, and also from weekend hackers and ordinary people.

There are four columns from Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly, which is a bit of overkill.

However, one of the columns is vintage Reilly. It’s about Tiger Woods keeping a promise to a childhood friend and letting him caddie for him, enabling the friend to make about $25,000 to help pay for medical school.

There are two pieces from Miami Herald humorist Dave Barry, who admittedly is not a golfer. Barry usually is very funny, but not when he’s writing about golf. There is a poignant column from Dan Jenkins, formerly of Sports Illustrated, who is now a writer-at-large for Golf Digest, which was involved in publishing this book.

Jenkins has two pieces in the book, and the one that stands out is titled “Thursday Is Men’s Day.”

He writes a fictional piece about his country club being taken over by women, and this results in male members being treated as second-class citizens.