Rating: 
Summary: A great book for everyone who enjoys golf.
Review: "The Majors" gave me as much pleasure as any golf book I have read. The blend of history and present day action is well balanced, and the movement through the year (1998) from tournament to tournament gives the book an ideal structure.This book is a perfect companion to Feinstein's earlier book "A Good Walk Spoiled". That book was an enthralling description of the PGA Tour and the life of the players. "The Majors" is even more enthralling because the four tournaments that are its subject are at the heart of the game of golf. Because they represent the pinnacle of the game, they deserve the best writing and the finest understanding, and in this book they get it. Like the players, Feinstein has seen the challenge these tournaments represent, and he has lifted his writing another notch to meet that challenge. I did find the lengthy descriptions of the private life of some players a bit trying, but that's a problem easily solved. I just moved on to where the book returned to the narrative of the tournaments and was immediately engrossed in the story again. A fine book and a beautifully presented one too.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book For An Avid Golfer
Review: "The Majors" is a well written, very interesting golf book. It concentrates solely on the 1998 Majors. While entertaining, "The Majors" falls well short of Feinstein's previous work "A Good Walk Spoiled." Likewise, "The Majors" would be most interesting to an avid golfer. I gave the book to my brother, a casual fan, who found it to be rather dull.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book For An Avid Golfer
Review: "The Majors" is a well written, very interesting golf book. It concentrates solely on the 1998 Majors. While entertaining, "The Majors" falls well short of Feinstein's previous work "A Good Walk Spoiled." Likewise, "The Majors" would be most interesting to an avid golfer. I gave the book to my brother, a casual fan, who found it to be rather dull.
Rating: 
Summary: A MUST have book for true golf fans!
Review: After throughly enjoying Mr. Feinstein's "A Good Walk Spoiled", I was pleased to hear that he had released another book so soon. The Majors is a very in-depth look into the lives of the men on the PGA Tour. As an avid golfer who has been "down" with a bulging disc in my back for the past month, I relished having this book to escape with. You can't go wrong buying this one!
Rating:
Summary: A better walk spoiled
Review: Although, as a golfer, I completely enjoyed A Good Walk Spoiled, I found it a little repetitive and slightly unorganized. The mini-bios on the players were great but the transitions used to tie them together were rather weak. In contrast I found that using the majors to tie the story line together made this book a much more fluid read and much easier to get into for a few hours, althought the format is still very similar to A Good Walk. Overall, this is a much better read, and still provides great inside information for us wanna-be PGA players.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating perspective on a non-Tiger era
Review: As it turns out, John Feinstein's The Majors was a perfectly timed book, chronicling a year in which Tiger Woods was at his nadir, winning only one tournament. As a result, we get to learn about all the OTHER players on the PGA Tour, and it's about time: in the last year and a half, new golf fans have been able to witness one of the most extraordinary times in the history of the game, but have lost sight of the fact that golf isn't a one-man sport, and that there are many great players on Tour. In The Majors, the spotlight is on them. Also explored are the travails of qualifying for the majors (and the Tour): the quest for exempt status, Q-school, regional U.S. Open playoffs. Though extremely rigorous, these rituals are a fitting reminder of just how open the sport is. For instance, anyone, if they're good enough, can try out for -- and play in -- the U.S. Open. Fortunately, Feinstein's account doesn't consist entirely of a mere play-by-play of the back nines at all four majors. The background he provides on the history of the tournaments and courses is prodigious. Especially in his extended rendition of Augusta, the reader can easily feel like he or she is right there, standing on the freshly cut grass of the 18th green.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting read to this day!
Review: Feinstein's book chronicles the 1998 PGA Tour Season highlighting the Majors which are the Masters, the US Open, the British Open and the PGA.
This book avoids becoming the run-of-the-mill 1998 PGA Tour Season review by providing us with information on the Major tournaments we cannot get in magazines [tidbits on the US Open "unfair" hole locations, champions' locker rooms(Masters), payment for trophy replicas etc...]
Interesting backgrounders on major protagonists such as Mark O'Meara, Fred Couples, Vijay Singh, Tom Watson etc are provided as well as stories of golfers at the lower rung of the pecking order whose names we may never see again in the entry list.
In short, this book tells us of life in the PGA Tour in the context of the 1998 season. I'm reading this in 2004 and still found it to be quite a good read.
And oh, Colin Montgomerie does have a sense of humor.
Rating:
Summary: Unfolding Drama of Sixteen Rounds at the '98 Majors
Review: Freddie Couples on winning one of the Majors (Masters, U.S. Open, The Open and PGA): "Once you've been in the hunt in a major and know what it feels like, you would never ever compare winning a bunch of regular tour events with winning a major." Feinstein takes us on a tour of each major in order, chronicling the backgrounds player by player who provides in the drama or adds to the color of that tournament (e.g. Appleby in the PGA). This is superb journalism, as it develops and twists and turns coming into that last green. The reader will surely take away many good stories which without this book one would likely never know. For me, at the top of that list will be the switching of the player numbers on the portable scoreboard, O'Meara mistakenly getting Freddie's no. 70; Lee Janzen's almost missing his tee time driving around the Bay; remembering Kirk Triplett's stopping his putt at Olympic's treacherous 18th that year; Janzen's ball falling out of the tree at the last moment; O'Meara's ball found at the last moment at Royal Birkdale. This is such a good read for golfers. Read it, enjoy it. Find out what the players are really thinking as they come down the stretch.
Rating:
Summary: Great entertainment and an interesting peak inside the ropes
Review: I absolutely swallowed this book. There is both amusing, exiting and sad parts in this look into the world of the stars and their entourage. Also it's fun to read about how the BIG pro's react when in a stressfull situation such as a major tournament.... it turns out they are people after all. READ IT!!!
Rating: 
Summary: This has to be one of the worst books I have ever read.
Review: I am an avid reader who has, with the exception of once, has never stopped reading a book without finshing. Make that two with "The Majors". This is a prime example of two things: (a) that the best sports books are historical sports books, and (b) that there are only a few sportswriters in the world with the talent to write a good novel, and John Feinstein is definitely not one of them. He skips around in the book so much it made my head hurt, and he is terrible about reintroducing people that have already been established. I have no explanation on how this book came to be a bestseller other than the public is an illiterate bunch of bandwagoneers. Even my love for golf could not get me through this one.
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