Author John Feinstein on Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major, unusual putters on PGA Tour, and Torrey Pines' tee times 'scandal'

Hear this latest episode of TravelGolf.com This Week.

No event in professional golf is as grueling and agonizing as the PGA Tour Q-School. In this week’s podcast, host Dave Berner talks to author John Feinstein about his new book on the qualifying tournament, Tales from Q School: Inside Golf’s Fifth Major.

“The players call it the fifth major, so that’s where I got that part of the title,” Feinstein says. “Virtually every player who’s come on the tour in the last 40 years has gone through Q-School. And they all have stories about it: they all have funny stories; they all have sad stories.”

Famed author John Feinstein talks with Dave Berner about his new book “Tales from Q School.”

The putter is becoming the most watched club in professional golf, but the short sticks the PGA Tour stars are pulling out of their bags these days can be a bit unusual, according to Equipment Editor Kiel Christianson.

“In the recent Masters tournament, did you happen to notice anything about Zach Johnson’s putter?” Christianson says. “It had this odd kind of two-toned shaft. It was in fact a SeeMore putter, which was first thrown into the limelight by Payne Stewart when he won the 1999 U.S. Open at Pinehurst.”

With the U.S. Open coming to San Diego’s Torrey Pines golf course in 2008, locals are making a fuss about losing tee times to outsiders eager to get a round on the future championship venue. But Senior Writer Chris Baldwin doesn’t see what all the fuss is about.

“They think it’s a major outrage. But it’s funny, I thought I would go there and find all these locals waiting to get on the course,” Baldwin says. “But I was there last Saturday, a beautiful sunny San Diego day, and it was easy to walk on the course. I just found it to be a whole lot of fuss over nothing.”

This podcast is supported by MyrtleBeachGolfHotels.com and Las Vegas Golf Travel.