Toonamint of Champions by Todd Sentell (2007, Hardcover)

FOUR STARS FROM FOREWARD MAGAZINE

Reviewed by M. Wayne Cunningham of ForeWard

If it’s wacky you want, it’s wacky you’ll get with Toonamint of Champions, Georgia humorist Todd Sentell’s spoof about a golf nut’s lifelong dream to putt around the Augusta National Golf Course, and, as a bonus, have his non-golfing hairdresser girlfriend, LaJuanita Mumps, pinned as “the first ever” female member of the club.

Where else but in Sentell’s bubbly imagination could a kooky hero like Waymon Poodle from Mullet Luv, Georgia rise to the top? A constant daydreamer with one blue eye and one green, his office is located “right by the condom and genital lubricant counter” of a busy supermarket. He’s so addicted to golf he rents only apartments numbered 1931 to commemorate the year Bobby Jones debuted at the Augusta Masters. His bedroom replicates the course, and, believe it or not, he prefers golfing to giving up his virginity to LaJuanita despite her come-ons. To complicate the comedy, Waymon’s duffer of a supervisor is also named Waymon, which leads to several convoluted conversations reminiscent of Abbott and Costello routines. Toss in Poodle’s paranoia about Giant Cicada Killer Wasps and their impending take over of Augusta’s famous twelfth hole—despite the attempts of entomology professor, Jeevpil Biswapati, and his flamethrower—and you end up with a “toonamint” even the Marx brothers would roll their eyes at.

Sentell’s nine years as “the director of sales and marketing for an ootsie-tootsie private golf club” gives him the background material for carving up golf’s sacred rituals and icons of the greens. His expertise as an established humorist has him operating with wit and polish. The problem with humor, though, is that what tickles one man’s funny bone may aggravate another’s. Some readers may find the raunchy fondling between Augusta’s 79-year-old receptionist, Betty Simpson, and 42-year-old head accountant, Frank Johnson (a.k.a.: Emiglio Rafsooliwicki) not as hilarious as the author had hoped. Others may shy away from our hero’s abortive attempts to cover up Betty’s Bermuda grass when she hikes her skirt to give Chi Chi Rodriguez a peek at her private turf. On the other hand, Waymon’s volunteer position—position number 1931, by the way—as “Manager of the Rope at the Practice Facility Invitee Entrance and Exit,” and his round of golf with The Golden Bear lead to moments of universal fun. His initial telephone conversation with Rafsooliwicki is true classic comedy, while the episode of his orange jacket among all the green jackets in the Augusta club’s dining room is Mastersful satire.

Regardless of which way your funny bone swings, Sentell’s Toonamint of Champions will give a brand new meaning to “par for the course.”


FILMS AND BOOKS MAGAZINE

Hilarity for adults . . . perhaps the funniest novel of the year.


THUMBS UP FROM BOOKLIST

Reviewed by Bill Ott, Senior Editor

Golf inspires its share of mystical celebration, but it also provides fertile ground for low comedy—take Caddyshack, or the novels of Dan Jenkins and Rick Reilly. When it comes to over-the-top slapstick, though, golf journalist Sentell makes Jenkins and Reilly look like somber social realists out of the Emile Zola school.