'Tis the season to think about the literary sports fans on your shopping list. And this year's batch of gift books has something for sports fans of every stripe.

The links enthusiast will appreciate The 500 World's Greatest Golf Holes by George Peper and the editors of Golf magazine. Not courses, mind you, but individual holes. How do you go about choosing such an elite group out of an estimated half-million? What defines greatness in this case? There are no blueprints, the author states in the introduction. They are inevitably a blend of art and science, nature and man, tradition and heterodoxy, stubbornness and compromise, dedicated genius and dumb luck. Each selection includes the course, the hole number, the location, the architects, the length and par. For example, the par three, 139-yard, 15th hole at the Cypress Point Club at California's Pebble Beach designed by Alister MacKenzie is listed as the second greatest. (What, you thought I was going to reveal the greatest? And ruin the suspense?) The gorgeous photography and lyrical narrative make this a heavyweight, figuratively as well as literally (Golf Holes weighs in at a hefty five pounds).

Whether or not you consider it athletics, NASCAR has quickly become one of the most popular spectator sports in the country. Drivers adorn cereal boxes and reap their share of endorsements. Nine photographers contributed to Speedweeks: 10 Days at Daytona, which covers the crown jewel of auto racing, the Daytona 500. The high-speed camera work captures the color and drama of every aspect of the event. From the fans to the pit crews to the cars and the men who drive them, Speedweeks represents the finest in mechanized sports.

Baseball's Best Shots: The Greatest Baseball Photography of All Time contains some of the most famous snapshots in the rich history of the national pastime: the fierce Ty Cobb sliding into third, his spikes flashing mayhem; an extreme close-up of Babe Ruth. In another shot, Ruth is seen hugging Lou Gehrig as the Iron Horse made his poignant farewell at Yankee Stadium. Then there's the Pulitzer Prize-winning shot by Nat Fein of Ruth's own goodbye to the game nearly a decade later. There are also plenty of shots aimed at today's fans, featuring the likes of Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter and Ken Griffey, Jr. While some readers might question the selection of some of the more recent photos as the best of all time, they are definitely artistic and entertaining.

Football is also represented in the gift book category with NFL's Greatest: Pro Football's Best Players, Teams, and Games. Again we have the issue of subjectivity when it comes to deciding the best in any area. NFL's Greatest features the 100 premier players in gridiron history, including the likes of Gayle Sayers, Walter Peyton, Dan Marino, Broadway Joe Namath, Joe Montana, Dick Butkis and other household names. The most exalted teams are also profiled, as well as individual games and the watershed events that helped shape the sport into a challenger for the hearts of America's fans.

Some wiseacre was once asked what one book he'd want if stranded on a desert island. The dictionary, he replied, because it has all the other books in it. This is an apt description of Sports: The Complete Visual Reference, by Francois Fortin, a combination of abridged rule book and instruction manual. If you've ever flipped through the sports channel at 3 a.m. and wondered just what Australian Rules Football was all about, here's where to find the answer. Terminology, equipment and playing conditions are included along with thousands of illustrations of the various recreations, which are broken down into categories such as team, precision (e.g., archery and billiards), mechanized (auto racing) and combat sports, among others. A major reference source, this one is definitely a keeper, so by the time the next Olympics rolls around, you'll know the difference between hurling and curling.

Ron Kaplan writes from Montclair, New Jersey.

John Feinstein takes the unusual technique of starting The Last Amateurs with a description of the last game played in a year in the life of college basketball's Patriot League. Don't worry knowing the outcome doesn't spoil a thing. Lafayette may have lost in the first round of the 2000 NCAA playoffs, but Feinstein has written another winner.

The author of several excellent sports books, Feinstein focuses here on what may well be the least-known conference in college basketball. For the record, the Patriot League is composed of Bucknell, Colgate, Holy Cross, Lafayette, Lehigh, Army and Navy.

The conference is stuck in a peculiar, almost no-win situation. The best players in the country, particularly the top student-athletes, wind up at places like Duke or Stanford. Good players who don't have great grades and/or financial resources head for less academically demanding schools in the top conferences.

That leaves the Patriot League in a squeeze. Its high academic standards eliminate a good percentage of potential recruits, and the lack of full athletic scholarships wipes out another part of the pool of applicants.

The underlying drama of the book surrounds the teams' attempt to be as competitive as possible in spite of the handicaps involved.

Don't feel sorry for anyone here. The basketball games feature reasonably well-matched teams, and the players and coaches are just as intense as anywhere else. But the players also are receiving a top-notch education and a sense of perspective. Feinstein spends 15 minutes after a game in Lafayette talking with the players about the results of the New Hampshire presidential primary, a conversation that would be held in few other college basketball locker rooms.

There are plenty of good kids and good anecdotes, and Feinstein's typical thoroughness uncovers them. The reader gets the sense that Feinstein truly enjoys his encounters with everyone in the league. Throughout this book, you'll get a glimpse of an often neglected side of college basketball . . . and you'll enjoy the view.

Budd Bailey is a sportswriter in Buffalo, New York.

George Will, the political pundit, freely admits that he was the kid who played right field on his team. And indeed he looks the part a slight, bespectacled bookworm, too much an egghead for the rest of the gang. Instead of building up his athletic prowess, he developed a knowledge and love for the game which he displays in Bunts, a collection of his writings on the national pastime. This is Will's second foray into baseball. His Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball, was a bestseller.

Most of the pieces in Bunts, which span some 25 years, are gleaned from his Newsweek and Washington Post columns, with a few other musings tossed in for good measure. In his earlier writings he strives to prove that rooting for his childhood idols, the Chicago Cubs (the poster team for baseball mediocrity), and being a baseball fan were not mutually exclusive. Indeed, of the book's 80 pieces, 15 refer to the this team which had not won a pennant since 1945 and whose overall record is well below the break-even point. On the flip side, a few of the stories deal with the Baltimore Orioles, one of the more successful franchises. Will is a Member of the Board for the O's, which is the closest thing Washington, D.C., has to a team since the Senators left town in 1972.

Bunts is about more than the strain of being a Cubs fan, however. Will reports on such luminaries as Pete Rose, whose passion for gambling ultimately conflicted with his passion for baseball; Curt Flood, whose sacrifice made today's free agency possible; Cal Ripken, Jr., the new "Iron Man" of baseball; Steve Palermo, an umpire who was shot and paralyzed while trying to prevent an armed robbery; perennial batting champion Tony Gwynn; and Jon Miller, the stylish broadcaster for ESPN and the San Francisco Giants. But Will also writes about lesser lights in the horsehide firmament, including Andy Van Slyke, a colorful and outspoken outfielder; Jamie Quirk, a journeyman catcher; and Brett Butler, "The Human Bunt." Will addresses issues as well, offering his insights on the designated hitter, voting for players for the annual all-star game, and even tackling the questionable origins of baseball. He writes with great nostalgia as he contrasts the sport between his favorite era, the 1950s, and the neon nineties. His columns on baseball's various labor unrests show little patience for either side, blaming both players and owners for imperiling the great game that has bridged generations and seen America through good times and bad.

It might be hard to conceive that Will, an icon of the conservative movement, can wax so poetically about something as "trivial" as baseball. But Bunts proves his ardor for the game, with all its triumphs, heartbreaks, and shortcomings.

Frank Chirkinian, the longtime director of golf telecasts for CBS, once said of the Masters, "There is nothing humorous at the Masters. Here small dogs do not bark and babies do not cry." And, he could have added, black golfers are not welcome. Curt Sampson, author of the Eternal Summer and Hogan, recounts the tradition and history of the most distinguished event in golf in The Masters: Golf, Money, and Power in Augusta, Georgia.

Sampson also offers absorbing profiles of the event's co-founders, the legendary Bobby Jones and Cliff Roberts, Jr. Jones, born Robert Tyre Jones in Atlanta, Georgia, was educated at the Georgia Institute of Technology and at Harvard University, where he majored in law. Winner of the United States Open golf championship in 1923, 1926, 1929, and 1930, he was U.S. national amateur champion in 1924, 1925, 1927, 1928, and 1930 and won the British Open championship in 1926, 1927, and 1930. He was the first player to win both the U.S. and British Open championships in the same year (1926), and the only player ever to win both national amateur and open contests in both countries in the same year (1930). Jones's reputation was impeccable. He firmly believed that a Southern gentleman "should be a crack shot, a good drinker, and courteous, especially with the ladies. He should also cultivate his mind, and should not appear too obviously concerned with the matters of commerce." Roberts, on the contrary, was a man very concerned with commerce, having made a fortune for himself and others (including Dwight D. Eisenhower) in real estate and the stock market. And it was Roberts who dominated the way the tournament was run and how its sponsor, the Augusta National Golf Club, dealt with golfers and the media for much of the tournament's history, wielding "power like the Old Testament God, with lots of rules and no mercy." The author also devotes a considerable amount of space to depicting the politics, finances, and racism of Augusta, the Georgia town that has been the site for the Master's since its inception, known for its beautiful gardens and mild winters, the boyhood home of President Woodrow Wilson and the hometown of gospel-soul singer James Brown. Sampson lays open the inside stories behind many of the dramatic finishes, beginning with the first tournament, won by Horton Smith in 1934, to Tiger Woods's record-breaking victory in 1997.

One thing is certain, humorist Henry Beard's The Official Exceptions to the Rules of Golf: Special Titanium Edition has never been or ever will be the official rulebook at the Masters, or any other tournament for that matter. Author of O.J.'s Legal Pad, Beard makes cheating chic with this updated version of the original. In addition to the exceptions found in the original version, 16 new exceptions have been added to assist the most inept duffer and the most hopeless hacker salvage some measure of self-respect. A few of the added exceptions include Temporary Insanity, Junk Ball, Agreement to Re-tee, Ball Renounced in Flight, Paranoid Shot, and Stolen Ball. Beard has given those of us who usually wind up searching for that dimpled, white sphere in the rough or buried in a sand trap the perfect tool for breaking 100 the easy way.

For those of us who prefer a more upright approach to improving one's game, renowned golf instructor David Leadbetter provides an alternative with Positive Practice: Improve Your All-around Golf Game. Leadbetter, who includes among his disciples professionals Greg Norman, Tom Watson, and Nick Price, provides an age-old means for the average club player as well as the Tour professional: practice. But as Leadbetter observes, although practice is undoubtedly the key to better golf, for most golfers practice has usually been ill-disciplined and as a result terribly unproductive. According to the author, the three vital elements of practice are a pre-match warm-up session, a focused technical workout, and mental preparation. The fundamentals of grip and set-up along with the basics of the golf swing are also covered. Over 250 full-color photographs and illustrations compliment the text. Whether your game finds you on the local public course or at Augusta National, Positive Practice offers valuable lessons.