Customer Reviews

Q School Confidential: Inside Golf's Cruelest Tournament

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you've ever watched golf on television and thought "Yeah, I can do that," it's time to read Dave Gould's excellent, insightful, and entertaining account of how guys like you would really go about trying to qualify for the PGA Tour. Gould's stories and observations are funny and poignant, and his book captures all the drama and comedy of the people crazy and dedicated enough to try to earn a living playing professional golf. A must read for anyone who's ever thought that maybe, with a little more practice . . .

While there are interesting facts to be gleaned from this book, it is way too disjointed to read comfortably. I literally got lost as I was reading more than a few times in the first couple of chapters alone, as the author jumps around without properly tying the disparate parts of a story into a cohesive narrative. I gave up trying to read the book in its natural order, and jumped around in search of points of interest.

I get the sense that the author went back and forth while editing the book, and somehow got lost himself when he tried to add more sub-stories within each chapter. If there was no professional editor for this book, then that explains the quality of the final product.

Final Analysis: It is very difficult to read, but some of the stories and facts are worth the price of the book. It's just too bad that the reader has to work so hard to find them.

Gould is an excellent writer and researcher and this book shows it. The book definitely gives a satisfactory overview of Q School, whether you are just curious about it or a potential qualifier. The problem is that the book goes into far greater depth than the typical reader will care about and I found myself skimming large portions of it. I think most readers expected a book that dealt with today's Q School, how it works, and colorful anecdotes from the past years.

However, the book is bloated with the school's history which I was not particularly interested in. In fact, the greater part of the book focused on the history, rather than the contemporary structure, which is what most of us are curious about.

There isn't anything else like this out there to my knowledge, so if you are really curious about Q School then by all means buy it. But be prepared for less info about contemporary players you know and love, and more about the obscure and confusing history of Q School.

I picked this book up for some light, entertaining reading but the overall structure is so garbled that I gave up in the final chapter when I realized it had run out of time to improve.

The beginning of this book tried to outline the history of the Q School, but jumped around in time so much that it was very difficult to get a good grasp on the chronology of events.

There are lots of anecdotes as promised in the promo literature, but for the most part they each about 2-4 paragraphs long and not nearly in depth enough to get a sense of the characters involved. Some of them don't have a real point (Golfer A has 5 good rounds, he needs just one more to get his card and is very upset, he has a good round and the story becomes a non-story). They are strung together often in an unrelated way.

Finally, the last third of the book is appendices showing results from all the Q-Schools in history - nice for historians, but extra weight to carry around for the casual reader. I guess it gives the book more heft when you're looking at it in the store.

Some anecdotes are entertaining and I did learn a little about Q-School, so I did give up a couple stars.