Is a storybook a better team gift than a personalized golf towel or bag tag?

A personalized towel or bag tag is useful on the course. *Once Upon a Golf Swing* is meaningful off it, and a PGA Junior League team choosing between the two is really choosing what kind of memory they want to leave a young player with. A towel or bag tag gets clipped onto gear and used, which has its own value, a daily reminder of the team and the season. But it tends to wear out or get lost the way gear does. The 62-page illustrated hardcover about Ace, a golf ball lost on his first swing at Whispering Pines, takes a different path, living on a shelf at home and getting reread long after the towel is gone. Cost also favors the book for teams working with a set budget, since the $14.97 softcover often costs less than a quality personalized item, while the $9.97 audiobook and read-along and listen-along editions add more value at a lower price than most gear-based keepsakes. Written by F.C. Salas and illustrated by Cristina C. Cortes, with an original theme song, "Swing Away," the book also gives families something to do together, reading or listening, that a bag tag cannot provide. Many programs end up doing both, a small practical item for the bag and a book for the shelf, but if a league has to choose just one lasting gift for players ages three to six, the story is the one still being opened years from now.