Tales from Q School tells the story of the 2005 Q school tournament through the eyes of a handful of the 1000’s of PGA Tour hopefuls who competed that year – some famous, others less so. The book is packed full of interesting anecdotes about the qualifying school that lower-rung golfers had to go through to get to the PGA Tour.
At the time there were three stages at Q school – first stage, second stage, and finals. Players paid close to $5,000 for a chance to compete in the tournaments and potentially win a place on the PGA Tour – or at least get playing privileges on the secondary tour.
Since 2012, Q School has stopped offering a route directly to the PGA Tour – instead it is a qualifier for the secondary tour and a separate 4 event tournament offers a route to get to or remain on the big tour. So while Q school might be a different beast now, the vast majority of pro players operating today will have gone through Q school as it is chronicled by Feinstein.
John Feinstein is one of the most widely read authors of books on US sports with his back catalogue covering american football, basketball, baseball and golf. It is clear he enjoys telling the stories of the less well known professional sportsmen and women as much as he does the superstar.
Feinstein deals with the human element of the tournament – the solitary and gutwrenching journey that the players faced to try and earn a place at the top table. As he notes, only in golf can earning half a million dollars a year be considered a failure!
What emerges is a real sense of the importance of the mental element of the game, and indeed any top level professional sport. The margins are so fine between success and failure – one double bogey or one error off the tee can be the difference between life as a club pro or the opportunity for multiple million dollar riches.
It was a little confusing at times because the narrative jumps around. There is also repetition as players backgrounds are repeated as we encounter them again at a later stage. While this repetition is understandable given the vast number of characters, it gets annoying if you read the book over a very short period.
Notwithstanding these points, I found the book to incredibly interesting and utterly absorbing. The stories of players missing out by one shot or one hole were heartbreaking. Players who signed for the wrong score and missed their one big shot just like that. Players who collapsed on the final 9 holes after playing masterfully for 13 and half rounds before then.
Feinstein, as is obvious across all his work, is a master interviewer who gets great quotes and detail from all of the golfers he covers. Overall, a well-written, informative and enjoyable book.
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