Tales from Q School

Author: John Feinstein
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316005584
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
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.

Tales from Q School

Author: John Feinstein
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0316005584
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Book Description
From the author of Raise a Fist, Take a Knee and A Good Walk Spoiled, this "must-read" national bestseller takes you inside the dramatic world of the highest-pressure golf tournament in the world (Tampa Tribune). 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 six-day 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-or-nothing competition.

Q School Confidential

Author: David Gould
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429974427
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Book Description
In 1999, the PGA TOUR Qualifying Tournament--known to many as Q School--found itself sitting on 35 years of unique history. Q School Confidential chronicles this tournament's deep, dense story of heartbreak, black humor, back-room politics and magnificent golf under dire circumstances. Using the 1998 PGA TOUR Qualifying School finals as his backdrop, golf writer David Gould recounts for the first time ever the history of the pro tour's annual qualifier, with revealing anecdotes about raw rookies, aging veterans and every dreamer in between. The vintage stories in the Q School's near and distant past tell of emotional and physical breakdown---and courage, as well---under pressure: Jim Carter's self-confessed "choke stories" of 1990 and 1992; Mark McCumber's recurring lost-scorecard nightmare; Peter Jacobsen's ordeal with a cheater on the Mexican border; Jim McLean's bizarre arrest on the qualifier's eve; and Mac O'Grady's violent celebration of his long-awaited Q School success. The players captured in these pages turn white with panic, vomit their breakfast, sleep in their cars, practice on interstate ranges, lose golf shoes, forget contact lenses and make fateful decisions based on faulty information. Sifting back through several eras, Gould explains the innocent aims of the first Q Schools and uncovers the tournament's pivotal role in the momentous split-up of the PGA and the PGA TOUR. He examines the difficult question of how professional golf should go about bringing in new players and letting former players regain their privileges. In the voices of forgotten or never-known tour pros from the 1970s, he narrates the frustrating "rabbit era" that Q School helped create, and revisits the infamous "breakaway Q School" of 1968. In notes that accompany this book's exclusive year-by-year scoring records, the author picks out hidden turning points, bits of trivia and strange coincidences in the lives of tour players past and present. These profiles and snapshots of the earliest Q School survivors and the most recent graduates, as well, are woven together in a warm, engaging and insightful narrative. Q School Confidential, sometimes bleak, sometimes triumphant, provides the first and only inside look at a cruel and unusual tournament that many consider golf's toughest test of all.

Open

Author: John Feinstein
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0759527954
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
Tiger Woods has called the U.S. Open "the most difficult national championship." With Open, John Feinstein goes behind the scenes to tell for the first time the full story of how the 2002 U.S. Open Championship came into being-how a public course was transformed into one of the most difficult and surprising in the tournament's history, and how the greatest golfers in the world rose to its almost insurmountable challenges. The Black course at the public golf club in Bethpage, New York, has long had a mythic status among golfers. Designed by legendary course architect A. W. Tillinghast in 1936, it is known as a work of genius-with long fairways, gorgeous vistas, and roughs and bunkers that stymie all but the very best golfers. It is a course where any player can compete, but its cult reputation means that golfers often have to camp overnight in the parking lot to get a tee time the next day. The 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black was the first time in history that golf's greatest championship had been held at a true public course. Open is the full drama of that championship, from the moment that officials first considered holding it there until the last putt rolled in at dusk on Sunday. Along the way, John Feinstein reveals the full glory of golf as it's never been explored before. He digs deep to find out what it really takes to make golf's most famous event worthy of the champions who compete in it. He tells the remarkable story of the artisans who transformed the Black from a downtrodden and rough-around-the-edges public course to one that top pros hailed as "unbelievable" and "the toughest par-70 I've ever played in my life." He also tracks the drama of the masters who battled for supremacy at the Black-Tiger Woods, Sergio Garcia, Nick Faldo, Phil Mickelson, Jeff Maggert-to show how true champions respond to the toughest conditions. Open is the story of people who devote their entire lives to golf, both behind the scenes and inside the ropes. Their struggles and exhilarations as they master the monster known as Bethpage Black make for a story every golf lover will want to read again and again.

A March to Madness

Author: John Feinstein
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316378089
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 537

Book Description
It's the book in which America's favorite sportswriter returns to the arena of his most successful bestseller, A Season on the Brink. It's the book that takes us inside the intensely competitive Atlantic Coast Conference & paints a portrait of how college baskettball is coached & played at the highest level. It's the book that takes us onto the courts, into the locker rooms, & inside the high-pressure world of the talented coaches who have helped make the ACC's nine colleges - Duke, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Virginia, Maryland, Wake Forest, & Florida State - world-renowned for their championship basketball teams. The author's afterword to this edition will recap the ACC's current season & preview the 1998-99 rivalries.

Are You Kidding Me?

Author: John Feinstein
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316073741
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 203

Book Description
June 2008's US Open produced one of the most unexpected and dramatic showdowns in golf history. Day after day the invincible Tiger Woods was challenged by Rocco Mediate, a respected journeyman. On Sunday, both ended play tied at par, forcing a playoff. Defying expectations, Mediate played Woods to yet another tie, losing only after forcing a sudden-death showdown. Through it all, Rocco Mediate emerged as one of the most likable, open, and fascinating golfers. In Are You Kidding Me?, he tells the full story of these five life-changing days. With John Feinstein, whose insider knowledge of the golf world is unparalleled, Mediate relives one of sport's greatest feats, how one man overcame every obstacle to challenge the game's finest.

Paper Tiger

Author: Tom Coyne
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781592402090
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
Traces the author's year-long attempt to earn a competitor's spot at the PGA Tour Qualifying School, an endeavor marked by such challenges as crash diets, sports psychiatrists, and obscure tournaments.

My First Golf Book

Author: James D. Smith
Publisher: CTL Publishing
ISBN: 9780966911602
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 44

Book Description
Four little golfers spend a busy day on the course.

Where Nobody Knows Your Name

Author: John Feinstein
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307949583
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
Minor league baseball is quintessentially American: small towns, small stadiums, $5 tickets, $2 hot dogs, the never-ending possibility of making it big. But looming above it all is always the real deal: Major League Baseball. John Feinstein takes the reader behind the curtain into the guarded world of the minor leagues, like no other writer can. Where Nobody Knows Your Name explores the trials and travails of the inhabitants of Triple-A, focusing on nine men, including players, managers and umpires, among many colorful characters, living on the cusp of the dream. The book tells the stories of former World Series hero Scott Podsednik, giving it one more shot; Durham Bulls manager Charlie Montoya, shepherding generations across the line; and designated hitter Jon Lindsey, a lifelong minor leaguer, waiting for his day to come. From Raleigh to Pawtucket, from Lehigh Valley to Indianapolis and beyond, this is an intimate and exciting look at life in the minor leagues, where you’re either waiting for the call or just passing through.

The Downhill Lie

Author: Carl Hiaasen
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307269434
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
Originally drawn to the game by his father, Carl Hiaasen wisely quit golfing in 1973. But some ambitions refuse to die, and as the years–and memories of shanked 7-irons faded, it dawned on Carl that there might be one thing in life he could do better in middle age than he could as a youth. So gradually he ventured back to the dreaded driving range, this time as the father of a five-year-old son–and also as a grandfather. “What possesses a man to return in midlife to a game at which he’d never excelled in his prime, and which in fact had dealt him mostly failure, angst and exasperation? Here’s why I did it: I’m one sick bastard.” And thus we have Carl’s foray into a world of baffling titanium technology, high-priced golf gurus, bizarre infomercial gimmicks and the mind-bending phenomenon of Tiger Woods; a maddening universe of hooks and slices where Carl ultimately–and foolishly–agrees to compete in a country-club tournament against players who can actually hit the ball. “That’s the secret of the sport’s infernal seduction,” he writes. “It surrenders just enough good shots to let you talk yourself out of quitting.” Hiaasen’s chronicle of his shaky return to this bedeviling pastime and the ensuing demolition of his self-esteem–culminating with the savage 45-hole tournament–will have you rolling with laughter. Yet the bittersweet memories of playing with his own father and the glow he feels when watching his own young son belt the ball down the fairway will also touch your heart. Forget Tiger, Phil and Ernie. If you want to understand the true lure of golf, turn to Carl Hiaasen, who offers an extraordinary audiobook for the ordinary hacker. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Carl Hiaasen's Bad Monkey.