Tales from Q-School - Inside Golf’s Fifth Major

John Feinstein
(Hardcover) Little, Brown and Company
ISBN 978-0-316-01430-4
$26.99

The best-selling author of “A Good Walk Spoiled,” is back with another look at the triumph and tragedy of this most personal game, this time from the perspective of golf’s most nerve-wracking weeks, Q-School. “Tales” chronicles the survivors and victims of golf’s most cruel rite of passage through the eyes, some laughing, some fi lled with tears, of the men who wanted to play golf with the big boys on the PGA TOUR in 2006.

Besides some wonderful individual stories (and every player has a unique one), Feinstein captures some wonderful play-by-play. Steve Wheatcroft, pulling his own cart through second stage, felt he needed par on the fi nal hole to advance to the finals, and therefore assure himself of status on one of the Tours. From 30-feet, he putted to within 3-feet and told his veteran playing partners, “I hope you don’t mind if I fi nish right now because if I have to wait a couple minutes, I don’t know if I’ll be able to grip the club, much less draw it back.” They let him play on, make the putt and survive.

Kevin Sutherland’s brother David, who’s lost more cards than he’s made, understands the magic of Q-School, and of Tour golf. “What’s neat about Q-School is, it is completely up to me at this point in my life if I want to enter. No one calls me in and says I’m being cut or I’m being put on waivers. If I want to try, I can try. I’m the one who decides when it’s time to quit, not anyone else.”

In the end, 32 players of the over a thousand who began the odyssey of Q-School 2005 got their cards, including J.B. Holmes and Brett Wetterich, who went right out and won in ’06, Wetterich even making the Ryder Cup team. But how close was Wetterich to still being nobody? He made his card “on the number” at Q-School. That’s why the guys keep coming back, and why you’ll enjoy Feinstein’s tale that would make a great novel except that it’s all true.