Meet the Maximum Golf reader.
    He loves playing golf but chafes at the stuffy, centuries-old customs attendant upon the game.
    He’s into beer, partying, bikini babes, cigars, clothes, pop music, gadgets and sports cars. He’s a hedonist, or imagines himself to be.
    At 33 years old, he’s also far younger than the readers of Golf Magazine and Golf Digest. When he stops by a newsstand, it’s to pick up Maxim or FHM, or maybe ESPN The Magazine--not Sports Illustrated.
    Maximum Golf, which launches this week with a rate base of 300,000, sets out to speak to this reader in his own language and accomplishes its mission with bravura.
    It’ s a great idea, but it comes with a considerable "if."
    The trouble is, this reader is, in a sense, like dark matter or the giant squid: His existence is largely theoretical.
     Do these guys really exist in great enough numbers to merit their own magazine? And even if they do, might not they prefer to live the Maxim lifestyle while continuing to read Golf Digest?
     News Corp. thinks they do, and they won’t, respectively. The company has already announced plans to increase Maximum Golf’s rate base to 450,000 next January.
    One thing’s for sure: If these mythological creatures do exist, than editor Michael Caruso has created just the right magazine for them. He adeptly translates the game of golf into the idiom of Maxim and "The Man Show" with such features as "Flog!"-- a forum for readers to submit their most outrageous golf stories--and the bikini-clad "Cart Girl of the Month."
    Another feature, "The Hustler," instructs readers how to cheat at golf with non-regulation equipment in true Maxim style.
     An excerpt: "Sometimes, golf is about respect for rules and traditions, about challenging yourself, and about getting a little exercise outdoors on a warm summer day. Usually, though, it’s about lighting up the scoreboard against your closest friends and relatives and living to tell them about it, complete with offensive hand gestures. Repeatedly." Not the sort of etiquette that will get you invited back to St. Andrew’s.
    And speaking of Comedy Central’s "The Man Show," the inaugural installment of the feature "18 with…" is a round of golf with "Man Show" co-hosts Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel, in which the author concludes, "The perfect 18 holes of golf is actually eight holes of golf followed by finger foods and televised sports." Not to mention beer.
    Maximum Golf is very much in favor of beer and other alcoholic beverages. The front of the book section "The Range" advises players to "stay hydrated by draining a beer or 10," while "Wild America" author Joe Bob Briggs details the beer-fueled excesses and strip-club carousings of four pro-circuit Putt-Putt players.
    Like Maxim and FHM, Maximum Golf makes liberal use of humorous (or not so humorous) blurbs, vignettes, side bars and charts. The graphic-heavy design also takes cues from ESPN The Magazine.
    Maximum Golf considers itself not an enthusiast title but a lifestyle magazine. In addition to the various instructional features and equipment spreads, there are stories on vacationing, dining out and other lifestyle concerns, and it is in these sections that the magazine occasionally seems out of touch with its readers and with its own mission.
   "Are You a Player?" is a return to a format that Caruso worked with when he was editor of Details. Five celebrity panelists crack wise about the outfits of six models—unfortunately without provoking so much as a chuckle.
   "Golf Fever" has the distinction of being perhaps the ugliest fashion spread ever, and if it’s supposed to function as a parody of other fashion layouts, it’s not clear.
    The back of the book section "The Perfect Drive" focuses on affordable sports cars, making only the most desultory mention of golf. In "Maximum Music," the link is even more tenuous, and besides, what 33-year-old male is interested in the new Hanson record?

-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.

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