Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major [Hardcover]

John Feinstein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2007

It is the tournament that separates champions from mortals. It is the starting point for the careers of future legends and can be the final stop on the down escalator for fading stars. The annual PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament is one of the most grueling competitions in any sport. Every fall, veterans and talented hopefuls sweat through six rounds of hell at Q school, as the tournament is universally known, to get a shot at the PGA Tour, vying for the 30 slots available. The grim reality: If you don't make it through Q school, you're not on the PGA tour. You're out. And those who make it to the sixday finals are the lucky ones: hundreds more players fail to get through the equally grueling first two stages of the event. John Feinstein tells the story of the players who compete for these coveted positions in the 2005 Q school as only he can. With arresting accounts from the players, established winners, rising stars, the defeated, and the endlessly hopeful, America's favorite sportswriter unearths the inside story behind the PGA Tour's brutal all-ornothing competition.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Q School (or, more formally, the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament) is golf's Long March, the winding road that aspiring professionals must negotiate if they are to qualify to play on the PGA Tour. Even though the players in the annual event are mainly unknowns, golf fans are fascinated by the grueling, heartbreaking nature of the competition--three separate tournaments during which more than 1,000 aspirants are winnowed down to 30 qualifiers, the survivors of the 108-hole, six-day Final Stage. It's surprising, really, that it's taken the best-selling Feinstein, master of the year-in-the-life sports chronicle, this long to write about Q School. The subject is made to order for his slices-of-life approach. There's plenty of dramatic shot-by-shot reporting here, as Feinstein follows the action at the 2005 Q School, but the core of the book is taken up with getting inside the heads of the competitors, whether it's overmatched also-rans who don't know when to quit, talented rookies seemingly on the verge of great careers, or former champions struggling to hang on one more year. (Masters winner Larry Mize says it all for the last group: "It's been a long time since I had to put my golf shoes on in the parking lot.") What makes this account so compelling is the way Feinstein drives home the point recreational golfers know all too well: golf is, above all, a humbling, even humiliating, game. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

It's clearly a book for golf junkies, maybe een golf wonks. Feinstein introduces such minute details about tournaments that at times it's hard to follow his reading. And this is the abridged version! The stories themselves soemtimes lack the kind of dramatic structure that lets the listener know when one ends and another starts. The author is accepted as narrator, but his volume seldom varies, so it's sometimes difficult to perceive when he's stressing a point. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1ST edition (May 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316014303
• ISBN-13: 978-0316014304
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #193,376 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Feinstein spent years on the staff at the Washington Post, as well as writing for Sports Illustrated and the National Sports Daily. He is a commentator on NPRs "Morning Edition," a regular on ESPNs "The Sports Reporters" and a visiting professor of journalism at Duke University.His first book, A Season on the Brink, is the bestselling sports book of all time. His first book for younger readers, Last Shot, was a bestseller.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Mighty Feinstein has fallen, May 8, 2007

By 

S. Bostic "SAB" (Atlanta) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major (Hardcover)

John Feinstein is one of the great sportswriters of this generation...or, at least he was. I love golf and considered his 1995 "A Good Walk Spoiled" to be a classic golf and sports book. He also scored big with "A Season on the Brink" in 1988 and "A Civil War", the great read about the Army/Navy football game. These books are all classics and I thought of Feinstein as one of the true greats in the business. And then came Tales from Q School. This book is about as light as any book I have ever read on content. The type is big and there are few words on each page. You can read a page in about 20 seconds because a page in this book is really not a page at all. It's more like a paragraph or two. The stories aren't that interesting and the book just has the feel of a commercial rush job. I will think twice before investing in a Feinstein book from now on. There isn't anything that interesting in the book and one man's story has the same feeling as the next guys. Frankly, some of these stories are old and have been part of Q-school lore for years. The book just had the feeling of a rushed term paper...his heart just wasn't into this book like some of his others.
This would have been a good Golf Digest article...just cut out a few stories and you have a good article. I read the book in about 5 hours and I read pretty slow...I would not buy this book again. This is a piece of work that Feinstein should be ashamed because we know how capable he is...save your money and time. Feinstein better do better next time or his credibility will be tarnished and that would be a shame.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Can You Play Without Thinking About the Number? -- A Confused Concept for This Book Destroys Most of Its Potential Value, June 11, 2007

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major (Hardcover)

Tales from Q School has a fundamental flaw that steals most of its potential charm: Mr. Feinstein thinks he is writing Open all over again. That book was horribly flawed by lots of names and mini-biographies about people that few other than their relatives would want to read about. Tales from Q School has the same flaw . . . along with a new one: Mr. Feinstein decides to teach you everything you never wanted to know about how the format and rules have changed over the years (and repeats the key points ad nauseam throughout the text). Argh!

Q School isn't really Q School any more. It's just a series of annual golf tournaments with qualifying rounds. Depending on where you finish in the field in each round, you may or not be able to advance to the next round or to various professional tours (including the PGA tour).

Mr. Feinstein is fond of proclaiming that almost everyone had to go through Q School to make it to the PGA Tour and that everyone has a great Q School story. So why didn't he just interview 300 players from the past and present and share with us the best 100 or so stories? That would have been a great book.

Instead, he decided to write a history of the 2005 Q School. In the book, he includes a few of the older classic stories. There were also a few compelling stories that occurred during the 2005 Q School. But in between the good stories, Tales from Q School is a yawn.

So why write about Q School? First, few people other than professional golfers know much about it. Second, it's a horrible experience that causes a lot of happy and sad moments. Third, there's a lot of drama involving those who come close to qualifying as they near the end of their rounds.

Basically, Q School tests pros for their ability to play well consistently while under pressure. Most good golfers can score when there's no pressure and no gallery. But the PGA Tour has lots of pressure and enormous galleries. So it's not a bad test in that sense. Those who can stay relaxed and just play golf seem to do fine in Q School . . . but that's hardly anyone.

I would have rated the book lower if it weren't about golf. Even enjoying a few new golf stories is worth trudging through an unfortunately conceived and executed book.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars golf heaven or hell, May 7, 2007

By 

M. Brodlieb "exercise reader" (new york,new york) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major (Hardcover)

if you are one of those golf fans who goes to (...) to study the money list or just loves the drama of individual athletic striving,you will find this book enjoyable. as with his other books on golf feinstein definitely does not bring "it" to the next level as his writing sometimes leaves as many questions as answers,but no one else is telling this story and it is a compelling story or should i say stories. easy to read and the cast of golfers from yale graduates to past major champions are all here struggling with that four letter word....golf.