Golf has been considered a strange pastime, by players and non-players alike, since its inception in Scotland half a millennium ago. In Curiosities of Golf, Jonathan Rice has turned up the truly unusual in the course of the game's history-- Chico the dog, who was made a member of the Waihi Golf Club in New Zealand because of his "infallible gift for finding balls;" Bob Hope, who shot a hole-in-one at the age of 90; King Hassan of Morocco, whose personal golf course was turned into a prison camp during a coup attempt; or the course in Uganda where balls may be placed no nearer the hole without penalty if they land in a hippo's footprint measuring more than 18 inches in diameter and two inches deep.