Hearing from my father what was surely a generous assessment of my talents, my Uncle Leonard, who valued family first and golf a close second, made me a gift of an old set of his clubs. Far more importantly, he invited me to play with him on the first day of the golf season on Cape Cod.
The public course on the Cape opened—on a first-come, first-swing basis—several weeks ahead of those in the Boston area. Though we left home at 5 a.m. to line up for a tee time, we still wound up waiting several hours—long enough for me to notice that nobody but my uncle seemed to regard this a suitable place for a child (or a woman for that matter). By the time I stepped to the first tee, I had a gallery of several hundred men—about the same number that will be on hand to watch some of the lesser lights tee off in the Masters today.
Though I don’t think these men wished me anything but a speedy trip off the tee and around the course, I was acutely aware of all those eyes on me. I had never hit a ball in front of a gallery bigger than my pal Jeffrey. And the new clubs—my uncle was 6 feet 2 1/2 inches-felt unwieldy in hands that, despite the early spring chill, had turned clammy.
I remember it as if it were yesterday. I took a big windup and whiffed. Then, with the crowd’s collective gasp still echoing in my ears, I quickly swung again and sent the ball dribbling down the fairway where it settled, dead center, about 75 yards away. It could have been three times as far and not have been far enough to escape the scorn and ridicule that followed me down the fairway. That swing and miss effectively ended my golfing career. The moment simply overpowered the joy I had felt the previous summer when I had hit a perfect 6-iron within two inches of a hole in one.
The visceral distress of that humiliation has diminished only slightly over the decades. Even now my face is blanching, my stomach is churning as I dissect the painful memory. And it is no comfort at all that virtually everyone who has ever tried to play golf or any sport probably has an equivalent moment buried somewhere in his cerebral cortex. Even Michael Jordan has his minor-league baseball days and the memory of curveballs to remind him of the limits of athletic prowess.
While our greatest plaudits are reserved for the champions—Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Michael Phelps, Peyton Manning and, of course, Jordan—failure will always be rather more interesting than success. That is why the Chicago Cubs are a better story now than the Boston Red Sox. Why two simple words—“wide right”—can evoke such complex emotions. And why nothing the guys from Florida or the gals from Tennessee did in the NCAA basketball tournaments will stick with me like Xavier’s final, futile seconds or the young lady from top-ranked Duke who bricked the two free throws in the last second.
Golf, because the players are so nakedly alone out there, involves a deep reservoir of failure. I can summon up a smile as well as some details for each of Tiger’s major wins. But none of them are as vivid as the memory of Jean Van de Velde’s triple bogey on the 72nd hole of the ‘99 British Open, made even more excruciating by the fact that he then had to continue on through the inevitable playoff loss. I have no doubt golf fans can recall Van de Velde’s name far more easily—and with far more emotion—than that of the eventual winner of that tournament in Carnoustie, Paul Lawrie.
John Feinstein clearly appreciates the allure of the dark side of sport, and particularly, golf. The veteran sportswriter, who churns out books at a remarkable pace—some stellar, none less than readable—on a wide range of sporting subjects, has now returned to the links for the fourth time with “Tales From Q School: Inside Golf’s Fifth Major.” In his introduction, Feinstein notes that the feedback to his 1995 book, “A Good Walk Spoiled,” showed that many readers found his stories of champions like Greg Norman or Nick Faldo less compelling than those of the non-household names whose connection to the PGA Tour would prove to be far more marginal.
Now Feinstein returns to those margins, to the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament, known as Q School. In recent years, this tournament has risen from obscurity—it is now televised on the Golf Channel—to become a remarkable everyman drama. In the 2005 tournament that Feinstein chronicles, more than 1,200 golfers played in one of the Q School’s three stages, climaxing in December, with the goal of finishing in the top 30 and securing a spot on the PGA Tour for the next season. These are the players trying to capture or recapture a dream, the ones who could, woulda, shoulda, all of whom have tales about one unlucky bounce or one yippy putt that stood between them and the PGA gravy train.
It’s a ride that’s remarkably easy to fall off. For instance, in the 2005 PGA Season, the 126th-ranked golfer on the money list was Briny Baird, who despite winnings of $624,191, was cut when he finished $2,600 short of the automatic berth one spot above him. (Baird would compound his misfortune by missing out at Q School by a single stroke.)
Still, this story is not to be confused with tragedy. Many of these players in golf’s minor leagues, the Nationwide Tour, earn far more than a teacher or a policeman does (and the top Nationwide players automatically move up to the PGA without having to endure the Q test). Yet there is something poignant about golfers who have succeeded on the PGA Tour, even found momentary glory on it, and are now taking a shot—in some cases one last shot—at getting back to the limelight with its silken courses, complimentary luxury cars and rich pursues.
Among those playing the pressure-packed Q Tournament in 2005 were Larry Mize, whose 140-foot “miracle” chip-in to defeat Greg Norman for the 1987 Masters is one of the sport’s most enduring moments, and no less than 35 players who had previously triumphed on the PGA Tour. Those include names familiar to golf fans, such as Bill Glasson, who has won seven PGA tournaments; Steve Pate, who represented America twice on Ryder Cup teams, Steve Stricker who did the same in a Presidents Cup, Matt Kuchar, who as U.S. Amateur Champion, was a “can’t miss” after sensational showings at the ‘98 Masters and U.S. Open; Brian Watts, who lost a playoff to Mark O’Meara for the ‘98 British Open; and Casey Martin, who never won on the PGA Tour, but famously won—before the U.S. Supreme Court—the right to use a golf cart while competing because of a degenerative leg condition.
I won’t give away any of the endings, except to say the true fairytale stories are few and far between. One of the Q School qualifiers from 2005 would go on to finish in the PGA’s top ten and play for the United States alongside Tiger Woods in the Ryder Cup. But just a year later, more than half of the qualifiers would be back at Q School, having fallen short of the top 125 (or a tour victory) and needing to once again propel themselves onto the PGA Tour.
Feinstein’s story is not one of verdant courses and green jackets, but rather of those other “greens”: the ones where the putts don’t fall; the one that is fatal inexperience; the one that describes the sickly pallor of nausea; the one that speaks to envy. Some may prefer the next chapter in Tiger’s tale. But to me this is an equally captivating yarn. And one to which I can more readily relate.
