Search for books and compare prices on all major online booksellers with one click!

Home  About UsSuggest BookstoreRecommend Us 
    Title/Keywords ISBN  

A Good Walk Spoiled : Days and Nights on the PGA Tour

AUTHOR: John Feinstein
ISBN: 0316277371

SHORT DESCRIPTION: In the highly acclaimed bestseller A Good Walk Spoiled, John Feinstein captures the world of professional golf as it has never been captured before. Traveling with the golfers on the PGA Tour, Feinstein gets inside the heads of the game's greatest...

Compare Price


HOME--->> Sports --->>Individual Sports --->>Golf
 
Golf
         Editorial Review

A Good Walk Spoiled : Days and Nights on the PGA Tour
- Book Review,
by John Feinstein


Amazon.com
On those magnificent days on which your drives split the fairway down the middle and your wedge shots leave you putting for birdie, you think: "I wonder if I could do this for a living." After all, guys in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, guys no one heard of until recently, are making planeloads of money on the various golf tours (and buying private planes to take them from one big-money tournament to the next). A Good Walk Spoiled is a bit of a reality check. John Feinstein chronicles the struggles of the top golfers in the game, as well as those trying to get onto the PGA Tour. These are gifted players who've devoted their lives to the game, and on any given day they could just flat out stink. A Good Walk Spoiled is a completely engaging book from first page to last, a wonderfully observed and masterfully told story of pain and profit in the world's most frustrating sport.


From Publishers Weekly
Following the events of one year on the PGA tour, sportswriter Feinstein tells of the nerve-racking pressures and successess of professional golf. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Golf talk from the author of the best-selling A Season on the Brink, LJ Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Feinstein hit the ground running with A Season on the Brink (1986), his best-selling account of a year with Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight. Since then, his subjects have included professional tennis (Hard Courts, 1991) and major-league baseball (Play Ball, 1993); now he turns his microscope on pro golf. What separates Feinstein's year-in-the-life accounts of professional sports from many other, similarly constructed overviews is the way he manages to get inside the heads of the competitors. Intending neither to crucify nor to sanctify, he shows us both the inner and outer lives of the athletes, transforming them from heroes or villains into the kind of multidimensional characters you expect to find in good fiction. Along with revealing profiles of the game's big names--Norman, Price, Watson--Feinstein's sojourn through the 1994 PGA tour also offers remarkable glimpses of the marginal players who struggle to first qualify for the tour and then maintain their tenuous places on it. It's a fascinating look at a category of pro athlete unlike any other: no fixed salary, no guaranteed appearance fee, no meal money, no celebrity; only the dream of competing successfully with the "big boys." (Interestingly, one of Feinstein's unknowns, Brian Henninger, recently made his breakthrough, first qualifying for the Masters and then leading the tournament after the third round.) What emerges most forcefully from Feinstein's investigation is a sense of just how incredibly difficult the game of golf is for competitors at all levels: "No game is more imprecise, more elusive. The greatest players alive wake up most mornings having no idea whether the day will produce a 65 or a 75. If they have a gut feeling, it will be wrong nine times out of ten." Golfers of all ages simply won't be able to put this book down; it compares to all the other volumes written about the PGA tour like Jack Nicklaus in his prime compares to your local club champion. Bill Ott


Buy from Amazon     Compare Prices



         Book Review

A Good Walk Spoiled : Days and Nights on the PGA Tour
- Book Reviews,
by John Feinstein

A Good Walk Spoiled: Days and Nights on the PGA Tour

FROM OUR EDITORS

In this New York Times bestselling book, John Feinstein chronicles the time he spent on the 1993 and 1994 PGA tour, walking the links with the likes of Greg Norman, Tom Watson and Tom Kite. The result is stunning revelation of all that goes into the game at its highest levels: Nick Price nailing a 50-foot putt on the 17th hole to ensure victory at the British Open, Paul Azinger shocking the world with new of his cancer, John Daly upsetting the establishment -- and his fellow golfers -- with allegations of drug use on tour. Feinstein reveals the astounding tension at the top, the inconceivable pressure of staying on form in a game in which last year's star often becomes this year's casualty, the do-or-die pressure on nonstar players fighting for a spot on the tour, and how the grind of the tour can take its toll on family life. Written with insight, authority and humor, A Good Walk Spoiled is a masterful account that will enthrall everyone who loves the impossible game of golf.

ANNOTATION

From the author of the bestselling A Season on the Brink, a brilliant, behind-the-scenes look at the murderous pressure of big-time college basketball, comes a highly readable expose that takes readers into the world of men's professional golf -- with close-up portraits of Tom Watson, Greg Norman, Nick Price, and others on the tour. Photos.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In the highly acclaimed bestseller A Good Walk Spoiled, John Feinstein captures the world of professional golf as it has never been captured before. Traveling with the golfers on the PGA Tour, Feinstein gets inside the heads of the game's greatest players as well as its struggling wannabes. Meet superstars like Nick Price, who nailed a fifty-foot putt at the seventeenth to win the British Open, and Paul Azinger, who marked his return from a bout with cancer with an emotional appearance at the Buick Open. Go behind the scenes for Davis Love III's unforgettable come-from-behind victory in the Ryder Cup. In golf, Feinstein eloquently relates, the line that separates triumph from disappointment is incredibly fine. "One week you've discovered the secret to the game; the next week you never want to play it again."

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

To Mark Twain, golf was ``a good walk spoiled,'' but to the 200 or so top professional players, it is a sometimes lucrative but always nerve-wracking career in which this week's hero can be next week's bum, and in which athletes have only themselves to blame if they fail. Feinstein's (A Season on the Brink) lively and anecdotal style makes for an interesting read but cannot overcome the 1990s' objection to the sport-that there is no superstar of the stature of Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus to capture the public's fancy. So although there are media favorites such as Greg Norman, there are many outstanding players (Davis Love III, Paul Azinger) whom Feinstein brings to life here but who fail to generate the excitement of the greats. Feinstein, kind and upbeat, also points out that, almost without exception, golfers share a political viewpoint that is far to the right of Rush Limbaugh, with much self-pity for the taxes they have to pay on their six-and seven-figure incomes.

Library Journal

Golf talk from the author of the best-selling A Season on the Brink, LJ 4/15/89.


Buy from Barnes & Noble     Compare Prices




HOME  |  Recommend bookstore  |  Rate bookstore  |  Link to us  |  Report bug  |  Contact us
Copyright© 2003 - 2005, PowerBookSearch.com. All Rights Reserved.