Q School Confidential: Inside Golf's Cruelest Tournament (Paperback)

by David Gould (Author) "I could not have known it at the time, but the dramatic heart of this book began beating on the first tee of the Woodland..." (more)
Key Phrases: annual qualifier, tour eligibility, tour exemption, Nike Tour, New York, Palm Springs (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
There is no event in golf quite like Q School. It's the grueling, six-round, end-of-the-year tournament for golf's dreamers, the mostly up-and-coming wannabes eager for a place on the tour, and the recent washouts anxious to reclaim what they see as their rightful positions. "This is one tournament," writes David Gould, an experienced golf writer, "that Samuel Beckett might have competed in.... The tournament is a specter of failure on which all the success of the pro-golf tour is built." The top few handful of finishers qualify for promotion to the PGA tour's roster of players who get to beat each other up every week for the big money and the prestige titles. Everyone else gets to go home and try again. The stakes are high, and the pressure is enormous. Given that every swing of the club has potential for disaster, the Q School story is one of some triumph, lots of despair, and bucketfuls of dark comedy.

Gould actually caddied at Q School back in the '70s, and he's been fascinated by the process ever since. Focusing on the 1998 event, he moves back and forth in time to produce an account of golf's annual torture chamber--complete with yearly results back to its 1965 inception--that is a' brim with anecdote and filled with detail. The harrowing account of the eccentric and peripatetic Mac O'Grady's 17 trips through Q School hell is worth the greens fees alone. "Golf tested my faith from the beginning," he concedes. "Q School was just a test I had to go through...." Kind of like walking on coals, only walking on coals, from Gould's richly absorbing viewpoint, looks somewhat easier. --Jeff Silverman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
What was once a little-known and rarely covered golf tournament has become, as a result of the sport's growing popularity, a widely attended media event. Q School is the PGA's qualifying tournament, a grueling six-day, 108-hole competition in which golfers play for the chance to earn one of the 35 PGA Tour eligibility cards and the opportunity to win lucrative purses. Competitors include not only rookies and in-between journeymen, but also struggling veterans who have failed to remain in the top 125 ranking at the end of the PGA season. According to Gould, a former executive editor for Golf Illustrated, "the 108 holes of grim combat take on a morbid repetitiveness," especially for those who try, and fail, to qualify year after year; the end of the ordeal is filled with heartbreak. Anecdotes from former players about famous last-hole losses and long, slow collapses give credence to a tour rules official's description of Q School: "Hours of boredom, moments of terror." With a reporter's eye, Gould describes dramatic moments from the tour, as well as the Q School's history (it originated in 1965), including stories of many non-famous players. The weekend golfer will appreciate and identify with these players' stories of dogged perseverance, dramatically related in Gould's able account. 16 pages b&w photos not seen by PW. (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (January 16, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312289170
• ISBN-13: 978-0312289171
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #766,151 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Q Review, January 18, 2000

By	[e-mail] (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Q School Confidential: Inside Golf's Cruelest Tournament (Hardcover)

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 . . .

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good facts, poorly edited..., February 4, 2007

By	Happy to be Here (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars If you ever wondered what it is all about, October 12, 2004

By	T. Enst - See all my reviews

Most golf writing is non-fiction, often because to write a novel centered on golf would probably be one of the least interesting reads around. Much of the non-fiction writing that tells a story, though, just like a novel, has its harrowing moments where our heros battle the odds to somehow come out on top (or as close as they can get to it, which is still better than most of us).

Q School Confidential makes us wish we were reading fiction. The stories about the few greats that went through and kept fighting are few and far between. Most of the focus is on those people whose name remains only as a record held by the PGA. Gould hunted as many of them down as he could, it seems, to get as full a picture of what is termed the cruelest tournament in golf as possible.

For someone who plays to a single-digit handicap and thinks, just maybe, they have what it takes, this is good medicine. Many of the names we see on the leaderboards at tournaments never had to run this gauntlet. For those that did, and survived, their future is far from assured.

Well researched and easily read, the only weakness is that it can become monotonous to read. A chapter every few days should help to keep one's attention, but this is not something to flip through before bedtime.