Q School Confidential: Inside Golf's Cruelest Tournament

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 tournaments deep dense story of heartbreak black humor backroom 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 tours annual qualifier with revealing anecdotes about raw rookies aging veterans and every dreamer in between. The vintage stories in the Q Schools near and distant past tell of emotional and physical breakdown---and courage as well---under pressure: Jim Carters self-confessed choke stories of 1990 and 1992; Mark McCumbers recurring lost-scorecard nightmare; Peter Jacobsens ordeal with a cheater on the Mexican border; Jim McLeans bizarre arrest on the qualifiers eve; and Mac OGradys 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 tournaments 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 books 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 golfs toughest test of all.