At the grueling Q. school, a ragtag collection of thirty-something pros overcome every obstacle golf can throw in their way to win a spot on the PGA tour. But now their test is only beginning. To make it, they must succeed against the best players in the world. Tin Cup Dreams follows them for the season, focusing on a self-taught golfer named Esteban Toledo, an unlikely hero from a literally dirt-poor background. With uncommon grit and determination, Toledo triumphs where others fail, and along the way teaches us about mastering the mental side of the game, about ignoring the odds, and about when to lay up and when to go for it. Golf has always been a game in which impossible dreams could be achieved. But is that still true, in an era when champions are groomed from infancy? Determined to find out, D'Antonio went looking for a long shot to follow. He found one in self-taught Mexican Esteban Toledo, and this account follows Toledo's first year on the PGA Tour. Of all the "year in the life" golf books that have appeared in the wake of John Feinstein's best-selling A Good Walk Spoiled (1995), this one is the least derivative and most satisfying. Toledo's story is a human-interest bonanza--dirt-poor childhood in Mexico, former boxer, caddy turned champion--and D'Antonio lets the facts speak for themselves, never piling on the pathos. Best of all, golf fans will see a side of the tour here they have rarely seen before--the nameless grinders who must struggle to win enough money to keep their tour cards for another year. Toledo's triumph makes a genuinely inspiring sports story. Bill Ott