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 [Read More...]
Buy Tales from Q School: Inside Golf’s Fifth Major at Amazon
Today on the Internet: Press here to learn about unique women’s gifts.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
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.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:30 pm
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.