For Rich Beem, just making it onto the Tour was a long shot. He arrived, after wending his way through the PGA Qualifying Tournament, as the greenest of rookies, having never played in a PGA Tour event before the 1999 season. By May, Beem, wasn't playing well, and his earnings alone wouldn't keep him in golf balls, much less cover the cost of travelling the circuit. And caddie Steve Duplantis had just let the plum assignment of caddying for professional Jim Furyk slip through his fingers. Fired after a long series of late arrivals and near absences, his expected income had dropped from six figures to zero. Duplantis needed a job, and Beem needed a caddie.

Miraculously, in the first week of their unlikely pairing -- which found them as often at strip joints as on the practice tee -- Beem managed to win the 1999 Kemper Open. Overnight, he had leapt to a coveted place that takes the few who make it years to reach.

Bud, Sweat, and Tees is a gritty portrait of the rarely seen underside of the PGA. Laying out the truth with plenty of gossip and dish -- including the untold story of why Tiger Woods really fired his famous caddie -- this is a story of high hopes, hard times, and, just maybe, personal and professional redemption.