Golf Books #41 (Paper Tiger: An Obsessed Golfer’s Quest to Play with the Pros)

For all the low-handicap golfers who have ever wondered if they were good enough to play with the pros, here’s the book to prove, once and for all, that, no, you’re not good enough. Coyne, a freelance writer and onetime junior golf star, decided to see just how good he could be.

Leaving his longtime girlfriend behind in Minnesota, he moved to Florida, aiming to work for a year at lowering his handicap to the sub-scratch range and then enter the notoriously grueling PGA Tour Qualifying School.

This painfully funny, self-deprecating chronicle follows Coyne’s odyssey: 75,000 range balls hit in one year, 15 shots shaved from his handicap, $52,000 amassed in credit-card bills. The result: not nearly good enough to compete with the pros but more than good enough to tell the story of why. Every golfer who has ever set a personal goal and failed to reach it (and that’s every golfer who has ever touched a club) will identify with Coyne’s odyssey, laughing and crying all the while at the absurd complexity of this confounding game.

Tom Coyne has written for Golf Magazine and Golfweek magazine. He is the author of Paper Tiger and the novel A Gentleman’s Game, which was adapted into a movie starring Gary Sinise.