Feinstein Goes Golfing Sports Author Gives Engaging Look Behind The Scenes Of Pga Tour

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

By John Feinstein (Little, Brown; 465 pages; $23.95)

As an author, John Feinstein has staked out profitable ground somewhere between George Plimpton and John Grisham. He is not a participant journalist in the manner of Plimpton, but he throws himself into his subjects with comparable curiosity and vigor and proceeds to smother them with thorough, often insightful reporting.

This approach worked astonishingly well with “A Season on the Brink,” Feinstein’s behind-thescenes view of coach Bob Knight and the Indiana University basketball program. After it became the bestselling sports book ever, Feinstein established Grisham-like popularity among publishers, which meant that subsequent works would be heavily promoted and somewhat eagerly anticipated.

“Hard Courts,” his warts-and-all expose of big-time tennis, was nearly as good, although the topic lacked mass appeal. That was certainly not the case with “Play Ball,” his chronicle of the 1993 baseball season, but much of what Feinstein presented as revelation was common knowledge to semi-serious fans - you might not want to have a beer with him, but that Barry Bonds sure can hit.

“A Good Walk Spoiled” - or John Feinstein on men’s professional golf - falls somewhere between “Hard Courts” (not as good) and “Play Ball” (better). Some golf writers have already derided its naivete, but that’s beside the point - an outsider approach ought to work for an audience that will include few, if any, readers as in-the-know about golf as golf writers.

A greater flaw is what comes across as the author’s mission: In his determination to dispel a fairly widespread notion that the golf tour’s pros are in large part wealthy, pampered, faceless clones, Feinstein ascribes heroic traits to them, fawns over several of them even as they’re emerging as self-centered, single-minded, slightly peevish and not terribly interesting people.

Sure, to play golf well is a challenge as difficult as any in sport; to play it well enough to make a living exceeds the capabilities of all but a relative handful among thousands of aspirants. It might even be harder to nail a 4-iron to the stick than it is to hit a major league fastball or make a three-point basket or catch a pass in traffic.

But is it any more noble? Feinstein, so taken by the skill of those who can do it consistently, seems to suggest here that it is … even as the ball sits motionless on the ground, no Randy Johnson around to deliver it.

The title is from Mark Twain’s definition of golf, and so much for literary considerations. Next to baseball and maybe boxing, golf encourages descriptive, imaginative writing more than any other sport, from the exuberant flourishes of Herbert Warren Wind to the caustic, truth-hurts humor of Dan Jenkins and Rick Reilly.

But Feinstein is no stylist; while relentless reporting is the book’s strength, the absence of variety in the prose is a decided weakness - as the narrative drones on, the year’s best tournaments come to sound like the Greater Greensboro Open. And what does he have against John Daly, anyway?

Still, those who care about such things will read nothing better on how difficult it is to get on the PGA Tour. The chapter on qualifying school has you there, vicariously subjected to the stomach-churning pressure a golfer endures as nothing other than his own performance over six hectic days determines whether he’ll get to play for fabulous purses and perks with the stars of the game. The alternative is eking out a living in obscurity among the wannabes on various minitours, which is akin to playing for the Stockton Ports after auditioning with the New York Yankees.

And a Tour card guarantees nothing - a player has to win a tournament or finish among the top 125 on the money list to retain playing privileges for the following year. You will be checking the list to see if Paul Goydos survives.

Too long by a third is the final verdict - the Book of Genesis tells the story of creation in fewer pages. And if you stick around to the end, you’ll know more than you’d ever want to about Brian and Cathy Henninger and Curtis and Sarah Strange and Davis and Robin Love. These men play golf. They don’t cure cancer or change the world.