As I was typing the first version of this column, a pixellated black curtain came down across my laptop screen. “Please restart your computer,” the prompt stated. I did. Two minutes later, down came the curtain again, as if I was watching an abbreviated puppet show at the local library. You can guess where this is going. My laptop was officially fried. So off it went for repair, leaving me with a cold void. A writer with no laptop. Michelangelo with no marble. Emeril with no sizzling saucepan.

Day One without my computer. I wander into my local bookstore: a digital man returns to his analog roots. I peruse the golf shelf in the Sports section to see what new stuff is out there. Instead of browsing, I find myself studying the books, their titles, authors and subject matter. You can learn a lot about the perception of the average golfer by looking at the books publishers feed us. The question is: who are we?

It’s important to understand just how different golf books are from other sports books. Visit the football, baseball or NASCAR sections, and the offerings largely fall into three categories: biographies, autobiographies and coffee table books. The Football Book. Tiki. The Bus: My Life In and Out of the Helmet. Then Junior Said to Jeff: The Greatest NASCAR Stories Ever Told. The only guidebook here is Coaching an Aggressive Eight-Man Front Defense, which I believe is about polygamy. The golf books are completely different. Their subject matter is all over the map, and as a result, expose who the typical golfer really is.

There are books for before you play, while you play and after you play. This particular shelf had The Game Before the Game, about useful pre-round practice routines, The Long Drive Bible, The Art of the Short Game, and Zen Putting. That’s 832 pages for 18 holes. The good news is if you restrict your play to par-3 courses, you only have to read 640 pages.

Contrary to the above-stated titles, all written by esteemed golf coaches and instructors, some of the books infer that golfers don’t care who writes about golf. Well, swipe my Visa: is that Condoleezza Rice’s new book on bunker play? This bookstore has Jeff Foxworthy’s How To Stink At Golf, which actually shares some true and funny tidbits. “Avoid fun,” the comedian writes. “Fun=relaxed=low scores. . . and that’s something we want to avoid at all cost. If you have a good hole, shake it off.” Next to Foxworthy’s opus is Alice Cooper’s Golf Monster: A Rock N’ Roller’s 12 Steps to Becoming a Golf Addict. By comparison, you would never find celebrity authors blathering on about hockey or football. Although in full disclosure, I should mention that Coaching an Aggressive Eight-Man Front Defense is written by Donny Osmond.

But golfers don’t seem to like books written by famous golfers. I guess Fuzzy Zoeller’s Favorite Recipes from The Masters was a huge flop. Unless of course the famous golfer is offering playing tips and instruction. You’d think Jack Nicklaus or Ben Hogan would have written definitive autobiographies by now. Nope. But Nicklaus did write Golf My Way, and Hogan did author Five Lessons: Modern Fundamentals of Golf. The one exception here is John Daly’s My Life In and Out of the Rough. But when you’ve been married four times and battle addictions to alcohol, gambling, sex and chocolate, chances are you’ll make for a fascinating read.

So here’s my hypothesis: golfers need help and humor. Help to make the good shots, and humor to forget the bad ones. Interestingly, the most honest take I found came from Golf For Dummies, written by Gary McCord. “Golf is a simple game,” he writes. “You have to hit the ball into a series of holes laid out in the middle of a large grassy field. After you reach the 18th hole, you may want to go to a bar and tell lies about your on-course feats to anyone you didn’t play with that day.” Turns out McCord knew who we were all along.