“Around the World in 80 Rounds“ by David Wood • St. Martin’s Press, $24.95, 284 pages • ISBN 13: 978-0-312-37577-5.

“What if some idiot was to travel from the world’s southernmost country to the northernmost?…What if that same idiot decided to play in as many obscure countries and courses en route as he could? And what if that person was a 47-year-old bachelor with no real commitments or anything else to hold him back?“ So asked Seattle golf and travel writer David Wood before embarking on one of the most humorous and fascinating travelogues ever put to parchment, “Around The World In 80 Rounds: Chasing A Golf Ball from Tierra del Fuego to the Land of the Midnight Sun.“ The noted comedian, who has appeared on “Late Night With David Letterman,“ traveled 60,000 miles over 11 months, dodging civil wars and food poisoning in search of nothing less than the world’s most unique golf experiences. The characters, communities and yes, wildlife, that Wood encounters on his journey are as much a part of the book as the golf that binds it together. His trademark humor and incisive wit drive the book forward through kangaroo encounters in Australia to chance meetings with exiled world leaders, painting a waggish portrait of our world’s most out-of-the-way places and off-the-wall people, against a backdrop of birdies, bogeys and bad lies. “I got caught in the middle of a civil war in Nepal, trapped in violent uprisings by the peasants of Bolivia … My life was even threatened while traveling in southern China. It wasn’t exactly a golf weekend at Myrtle Beach!“ Certainly it wasn’t, and perhaps most notably, what Wood has managed to accomplish is to illustrate that no matter our cultural or geographical differences, whether we are Nepalese sherpa guides, South American revolutionaries or Seattle golf writers, we as humans are all connected by one idea — it is really dang hard to put that ball in the hole.