THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 12, 1995 TAG: 9507120033
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY DAVE PATON
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
DUFFERS, TAKE heart - success in golf, the most mental and solitary of sports, usually is fleeting, even for the best players. Lee Janzen was a picture of skill and determination in winning the 1993 U.S. Open. He didn't finish in the top 20 of a tournament for another 11 months.
South Hampton Roads native Curtis Strange hit the pinnacle after winning the 1988 and '89 U.S. Opens, but, perhaps worn down by the effort, then went into a tailspin. Last year he started playing better, and at Oakmont had a share of the Open lead with 12 holes to go before falling short. Although he knew he would replay every bad stroke in his mind, he was upbeat.
``This is what you play the game for,'' he said, ``to get yourself in position at the U.S. Open so you can throw up all over yourself.''
That, in a nutshell, is what John Feinstein found out about golf in working on ``A Good Walk Spoiled: Days and Nights on the PGA Tour'' (Little, Brown, 475 pp., $23.95).
The Washington Post sportswriter likes to follow a sport's season, often a single team, to turn up the human stories behind the action. Through that lens he's viewed college basketball, tennis and baseball.
In his choice of the 1994 PGA Tour campaign, Feinstein hit paydirt. There was exceptional drama: Paul Azinger's struggle with cancer, Deane Beman's farewell as commissioner and long hitter John Daly's travails, including his accusation that tour players abuse drugs, to pick just a few headlines.
Feinstein reaches back to the late months of 1993 to grab the two events that set up the year. He begins with the Ryder Cup, the biennial U.S.-Europe matches.
Non-playing U.S. captain Tom Watson, one of the 17-man ``Team Feinstein'' that the writer focuses on through the season, is intent on avoiding the overheated partisanship that soured the 1991 Cup. But he is sunk in controversy even before departing for England, as the media get hold of the news that Azinger hoped to avoid the traditional pre-Cup meeting with the president, because he ``didn't want to shake hands with a draft dodger.'' Still, as things simmer down, Watson is mainly responsible for the decorum and intensity of the golf.
From there, Feinstein takes us to the other extreme - the annual tour qualifying school, where the survivors among thousands of hope-fuls play for the all-exempt ``cards,'' which give them a ticket to the next season's tour.
If a golfer masters his nerves and is one of the top few dozen at Q-school, he can keep his card by winning a tournament that year, or finishing in the top 125 money winners. Few do, though.
One semi-famous name trying to re-qualify for 1994 was Mike Donald, who won the 1989 Anheuser-Busch Classic in Williamsburg and lost the 1990 U.S. Open to Hale Irwin in a 19-hole playoff.
Feinstein, with a keen sense of the often razor-fine line that separates winners and losers in sport, lets us see just what those blown leads, lipped-out putts and badly-hit shots do to players' lives.
With the stage set, Feinstein takes us out to the courses. Hope blooms in the early-season California events and the Florida swing that leads up to the Masters.
It often wilts in the high temples that are the U.S Open, British Open and PGA, and at the smaller events to which the struggling players head those weeks, hoping to avoid ``slamming the trunk'' on golf bags two days too early after a missed cut.
At season's end, players take stock of failed or grabbed chances, or try to pick up a few big checks to avoid another Q-school.
Feinstein, whose own playing handicap is listed on the book jacket as ``a private matter,'' hits all the high and low notes of the year, and finds many more points of interest.
For fans of golf, there is a rich lode of detail in ``A Good Walk Spoiled'' that isn't scratched by routine media coverage. And those unfamiliar with the game will be amazed by the war of mind and nerve at the pro levels of an elusive, irrational, glorious game. MEMO: Dave Paton is a staff editor and golfer with a handicap of 9.
by CNB