The truth about Q School
By: Joan Ruddiman
John Feinstein knows sports. Since 1988, he has regaled NPR’s "Morning Edition" listeners with his commentary on big story sports events like the Final Four, the NBA Finals, the NFL playoffs, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open golf championships. Viewers know him from ESPN’s "The Sports Reporters."
Readers may know that he began his career in 1977 at The Washington Post, where he reported on politics and sports. Sports became his focus, though his political perspective tends to slip into his sports commentary. Readers of sports commentary certainly know his name from his contributions to Sports Illustrated, National Sports Daily and Golfer’s Digest, among other magazines.
Then there are his books. Since 1987, John Feinstein has been a name in the publishing world. He has over 20 titles to his credit, beginning with "A Season on the Brink: A Year with Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers" (Little, Brown & Co., 1987). That was the best-selling sports book until his "A Good Walk Spoiled: Days and Nights on the PGA Tour" (Little, Brown & Co., 1995) surpassed his record.
Anticipation ran particularly high for his latest book since Mr. Feinstein explores a little known but critically important event in the world of professional golf in-depth.
"Tales from Q School: Inside Golf’s Fifth Major" (Little, Brown & Co., 2007) offers some fascinating insights about the world of professional golfers and solidifies an awareness that these guys are truly in a league of their own.
Most "duffers" who, after their weekend round of golf, spend hours watching the Golf Channel are not aware of the harsh realities of what is officially known as "The PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament." Mr. Feinstein offers a lawyer analogy that captures the merciless regulations that govern obtaining and then keeping a PGA card that allows play in the bazillion-dollar tour schedule.
Consider a lawyer who spends a year without winning a case and who does not make a predetermined minimum amount of money. In the PGA’s Q School world, he or she would be expected to take the bar exam again the entrance qualifying exam for lawyers.
One of the stories Mr. Feinstein follows at the 2005 Q School is that surrounding Larry Mize, the 1987 Masters Champion who, at age 48, was looking to regain full PGA ranking rather than just rely on the 15 or so invitationals he was approved to play in as a past champion.
The only way to avoid Q School is to be successful. Only a handful of PGA players have no Q School stories.
It’s no surprise that Tiger Woods is one. Mr. Woods, Phil Mickelson, Justin Leonard and, recently, Ryan Moore are "so good coming out of college that they managed to avoid Q School," Mr. Feinstein writes.
"A number of top foreign players also have been able to steer around it. But just about everyone else who has joined the tour since 1965 has been there, and they all have stories to tell…"
Q School involves three stages, as well as a preliminary stage for "noncompetitive players" who have no experience with sanctioned PGA events or major college tournaments. Tour winners like Larry Mize, Steve Stricker, Brain Henninger and a few others in 2005 obviously did not have to do the preliminary round and also skipped the first stage saving all of the $4,500-application-fee and the stress of making it to the finals.
A small number, including Peter Tomasulo, are exempt from the first two stages "those who finish between 126th and 150th on the PGA Tour money list and those who finish between 21st and 35th on the Nationwide Tour money list."
The Nationwide Tour is the consolation prize for those who don’t quite make the numbers in the final stage of Q School to get the coveted PGA Tour card. The economic discrepancy between the PGA and Nationwide tours is pronounced.
In January of 2006, the first PGA event had a purse of $5.1 million with $918,000 going to the winner. The first Nationwide Tour event, held a month later in Panama, offered a purse of $550,000 with $99,000 to the winner.
"The leading money winner on the Nationwide Tour in 2005 was Troy Matteson, who made $495,009. There are 151 players who earned more than that on the PGA Tour including 79 who made more than $1 million in prize money for the year."
Q School, then, is the most significant event in a professional golfer’s life, yet it still is way under the radar of most non-competitive golfers. Mr. Feinstein notes that the players prefer it this way, as the pressure is already so intense that the presence of cameras the Golf Channel now covers the final round may be what puts them over the edge, as indeed it did to Kelly Gibson, who ultimately "passed" Q School on his sixth try.
Mr. Gibson tells Mr. Feinstein, "I know the tour isn’t going to tell the Golf Channel to go away. I just wish there was a way to make them understand when they’re out there that this isn’t the same as a regular tournament. You have to be inside a player’s head to really understand how different it feels. You never feel more alone than when you’re playing Q School."
The day Mr. Gibson climbed out of a bunker to find a camera trained on him after he had had a run of birdies, his mind jumped to how close he must be to the magic cut-off number. He pulled his next shot and "sure enough, missed (the cut) by one."
For Mr. Gibson for all but 30 or so players who make the final cut of the 165 who make it to the final stage the dream of playing with the best for the biggest money on the PGA Tour is over for another year. Perhaps the greatest strength of "Q School" is laying out the intense difference between the very best country club golfer and the pros.
Mr. Feinstein notes, "The gap between a good amateur player the kind of guy who competes for his club championship or even in amateur events around his region and a player good enough to play competitively at first stage is mammoth.
"Two things separate the first-stage player from the tour player, and both are far more mental than physical: the ability to control his swing under pressure and the ability to make putts under pressure."
Mr. Feinstein does tell some great tales from the PGA’s netherworld. True to his literary M.O., he immerses himself in the whole Q School experience for 2005. However, "Q School" suffers from both too much and too little.
The topic is huge. The 2005 Q School involved a thousand players, three stages plus the preliminary round in multiple venues (12 sites across the country for Stage One alone) and lots of rules. BeSides all that, the writer lays out the context with side stories of PGA officials and golf history.
So, Mr. Feinstein focuses on just a few players. Bill Haas, the son of PGA Tour winner Jay Haas, gets a lot of attention, as do several players Brian Henninger for one that Mr. Feinstein followed in his 1993 book "A Good Walk Spoiled."
Thus, his "tales" become sorely limited to a handful of players who Mr. Feinstein interviewed and events he deems significant. Just as one example, the story of Joe Daly’s putt popping out of the cup is told four times over two hundred pages. I considered that perhaps what Mr. Feinstein had going with his selected material would have been better suited as a meaty New Yorker article rather than a book.
But for die-hard golf fanatics, this is a book to read. Though Mr. Feinstein does not follow the names that we know now, two years later (Steve Sticker for one), the book’s detailed index allows the reader/viewer to check out what was happening at the 2005 Q School as they now watch the pros "grind it out" on the 2007 PGA and Nationwide Tours each week.
Joan Ruddiman, Ed.D., is a teacher and friend of the Allentown Public Library.

