Author: Chris Nelson
Last weekend was the PGA Tour’s Qualifying Tournament, better known as Q-school. In Q-school, 160 golfers play six grueling rounds and the top 40 finishers earn the right to play on the PGA tour. The other 120 players must survive on the lower tours—the Nationwide, Hooters, and California tours are all options for those to don’t qualify. Playing in Asia has also become an attractive option for those golfers who do no earn their PGA tour card. Since the PGA tour is the only arena in golf where players can actually earn enough money to live comfortably, the pressure of Q-school is as much financial as it is about chasing a dream.
There are a million rags to riches stories about golfers, more so than any other sport. This is probably because of the PGA’s laissez faire approach. Unlike the NFL, MLB, or virtually every other competitive sport out there, there is no minimum salary in golf or player’s union to protect those who are struggling and need some extra help. Golfers earn their living entirely based upon their tournament results. One simple shank on the driving range or one swing that gets too far off plane may threaten a professional golfer’s tour status and thereby his entire financial future.
Take Mark Hensby, for example. Before Hensby secured a spot on PGA tour, he was selling insurance to make enough travel money to get to his tournaments. Going home wasn’t a problem for the Aussie, as he lived in his car at that time. Now Hensby is a very successful golfer at the top level: he won the 2004 John Deere Classic and qualified for the 2005 International President’s Cup team. Hensby’s Alger-esque rise through the golfing ranks is not at all uncommon. There are stories about tour players working at gas stations, working in record stories, selling encyclopedias door to door and a host of other odd jobs so they can have enough money to barely get by and continue to try for the big show.
Wannabe professional golfers sacrifice more than any other aspiring professional athletes, which is why Q-school is the most pressure-packed event in sports today. Granted, there is a lot of pressure in playoff games, the Super Bowl, the World Series or any game where national interest peaks and a win basically ensures sporting immortality. But in these games, already wealthy players are competing to achieve their wildest dreams. At Q-school, golfers are competing for simple opportunity: they fight to have the opportunity to play on the PGA Tour—the only tour where wildest dreams come true—and for the opportunity to earn a decent living.
The financial motivation is all too real. Frank Lickliter, who won the 2007 Q-school on Monday and thereby kept his PGA tour card, was followed every hole by his pregnant wife. “It was good because I know where she is and that she is not off buying something,” Lickliter joked about having his wife in the gallery; but there is some truth behind his quip. If Lickliter had not earned the right to play on the PGA tour, his financial solvency would have been threatened and that is not something a soon-to-be-father can accept. There is no other sport where an athlete must battle for his dreams and financial security for six days with his pregnant wife looking on the entire time.
The pressure these golfers face in Q-school is like nothing else in golf and is rarely paralleled in sports (perhaps in training camp for baseball and football). Moreover, golf is a sport where nerves play a huge role in tournaments. How these guys do it is amazing. Chris Riley, who has won several times on the PGA tour over his career, lost his card at Q-school this year. Riley, whose game has been showing signs of life over the course of this season, has publicly posed the question of retirement rather than go through another Q-school. Riley’s attitude toward the process is nothing new.
Q-school participants go to bed each night with their dreams threatened. One bad round can take a golfer out of the money and off the PGA Tour. Despite this enormous pressure, the 120 who don’t qualify usually, like Mark Hensby, do whatever they can to keep playing golf and PGA tour players who lose their card almost always try to regain their right to play on tour in Q-school.
The Q-school process is probably one of the most amazing things in the sporting world, but it never gets attention. Perhaps, for the golfers as well as the fans, that is a good thing. Watching a man win or lose both his dream and his financial future at one time is perhaps too much for us to take. We congratulate and celebrate the 40 golfers who are PGA tour players as of Monday afternoon, but what happens to the rest?
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