|
|
|||||||
|
|
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.
|
Q Schooling
John Feinstein's latest, Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major, finds the noted sportswriter in characteristic investigative mode. The PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament ("Q School") is a grueling annual event in which both aspiring and erstwhile pro golfers compete for precious few available slots on the PGA Tour. Feinstein covers the 2005 Q School in a narrative rich with round-by-round reportage and engaging stories about the participants—from fresh-faced guys right out of college to former champs like Larry Mize, who won the 1987 Masters but, now in his late 40s, willingly suffers the somewhat ignominious Q School regimen in order to return to the greens of his past glory. Feinstein's general theme is that, in its own way, Q School is more inherently dramatic than any major tournament, mainly because, for these players, there is no tomorrow. Serious fans of the pro game will find this an engrossing read.
DISCUSSION
