Florida Golf Monthly

Ah, school days. Aren't they supposed to be times you remember fondly? Weren't they the period in which you learned everything from the causes of the Crimean War to the fundamentals of asking someone out on date, only to find yourself unclear about both for the rest of your life?

Well, in the golf world Qualifying School (popularly known as Q-School), offers hopeful players one truth and one truth only: either the ball goes into the hole or it doesn't. There is nothing unclear about that. This is the sole factor determining success and failure. Q-School is a classroom in which failure can be so emotionally devastating that success is bittersweet.

Yet in spite of the emotional extremes, the sport's hopefuls journeyed to Florida in search of a defining moment in their golf careers. The under 50s had 35 chances for the big show of the PGA Tour. The 50 and older crowd had eight opportunities at a full-time golfing job on the Senior Tour for one year and another eight conditional memberships up for grabs. So after Thanksgiving, the dreamers came to Florida en masse and separated at the northern border. The fat bellies stayed in Ponte Vedra to tackle the Valley Course at the TPC at Sawgrass, while the flat bellies ventured to Haines City to cast their lot at the Grenelefe Golf & Tennis Resort.

There was a day not so long ago when the tension at regular Tour Q-School was so bad, players would walk off the 18th green and break into tears &emdash; and that was with two rounds left. By the time they reached the final holes, some players would become visibly and violently ill as they trekked to the final green where they had to quickly pull it together and make a final putt for their Tour card. The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but you wouldn't want to step in some of the paving on the road to the PGA Tour.

Ah, those were the good old days. If there wasn't an auto race to watch in hopes of a good crash, you could always go to Q-School and watch an otherwise bright, healthy young man melt into a pile of goo before your eyes. For the most part, those days are gone. Before they teed it up at Grenelefe, all 168 players, barring disqualification, were assured of some sort of playing status. The top 35 and ties (38 in all) gained full playing status. The next 77 players received full-time Nike Tour status, and the rest accepted conditional cards for the Nike Tour. Because everyone had a job, the youngsters were merely jockeying for 1998 schedules and pay rates.

"It's a great feeling to know I'm going to play somewhere this summer," said Fran Quinn of Northboro, Massachusetts, who has held playing privileges on both the European and U.S. PGA Tours for a year each. "I'll be able to set some sort of schedule. Regardless, I'm leaving here right after I'm done on Monday to fly back to Asia. I'm around 10th on the money list for the Omega Tour, and the Hong Kong Open is next week, and there's some good money there."

Because of an opening round 76 and a third round 75, Quinn finished at two-under par for the six-round marathon and missed his PGA Tour card by four strokes. He knows all he has to do is finish in the top 15 on the Nike list this year or win three times and he's back in the big show, just in time for the 1999 purse explosion to a $3 million-per-tournament minimum. If he doesn't make it, there's always Asia, South Africa, South America or some other foreign locale where there's enough money scattered around to stitch together a six-figure income.

"Hey," says Quinn, "it's not bad. It doesn't cost much more to play around the world than to play the U.S. Tour."

Quinn's was the attitude that permeated the atmosphere surrounding the 1997 Q-School ordeal. With this apathy in place, a bit of excitement was required to spice up the early round activity. Casey Martin, a 25-year old member of the 1994 Stanford NCAA championship team provided it and in so doing, changed the tenor of the game. Martin, who suffers from Kilppel-Trenaunay-Webber syndrome, a birth defect that slows the blood flow to his right foot, thereby necessitating that he wear a special support stocking on his right leg to help the blood flow and keep the swelling down, made the golf world stand at attention &emdash; by sitting down. An Oregon magistrate granted Martin an injunction that allowed him to use a golf cart &emdash; a move contrary to PGA Tour rules. To provide equity, the Tour had to allow use of carts by the entire field, thereby preventing possible law suits by anyone finishing below Martin in the final standings. It would be great to report that Martin was one of the top 38 to gain full playing privileges, but he missed by two shots. He is now eligible for full-time employment on the Nike Tour.

"I know I won't be able to play in 30 Nike tournaments," says Martin, who is legally disabled, "but I'll play in as many as I can. How many depends on how the judge finally rules [about full-time use of carts]. I have played without a cart. It's not my idea of a fun day because it's painful, but I will do it as often as I can."

Martin was granted a 3 week injunction allowing him to use a cart for the first 3 tournaments on the Nike schedule. He cashed in immediately, winning the Nike Lakeland Classic, the first tournament on the schedule. At the time of this printing, the PGA Tour promised to fight for the restriction of carts using all legal avenues. This promises to be one of the major golf stories of the decade.

About 25 players took advantage of the free ride, including PGA Tour veterans Scott Verplank and Bruce Fleischer. Let's just say it didn't hurt either player. "I don't think carts should be used," said Verplank, who is a diabetic and has had major elbow problems that hindered him in 1991 and '92, keeping him off the Tour in 1993, "but if they're going to use them, I will. There's no doubt that by using a cart, I felt a lot stronger, and certainly my feet weren't as sore."

It probably didn't make that big a difference, but Verplank did finish ahead of the rest of the field by six shots, coming out ahead of Blaine McCallister with a 22-under-par 407 total.

Fleischer, the 1991 New England Classic champion who plays out of Ballen Isles, finished in the middle of the pack of qualifiers, but at age 49, he didn't mind the rest the cart offered. "Hey, for six days of slow golf out here," he says, "I'll take the cart. There was a lot of standing around and waiting. That gets to you after a while. I don't think I'd use one all the time if I could, but I didn't mind it this week."

Intertwined with the cart controversy was another story that proves that once the game of golf has its hooks in you, it doesn't let go. For one season, Jeff Lewis had his Tour card. Like many before him, success eluded him, sliding out of his grasp with a missed three-foot putt. But Lewis never gave up the dream. He was a professional golfer, and he continued playing golf in a way that smacked of professionalism. While the Tour players settled in for a week of practice rounds, pro-ams and a stab at a piece of a seven-figure purse, Lewis, who lives in North Miami Beach, would play anywhere. Put up a purse with a hole in it, he wanted his piece. If not the king of the mini-tours, Lewis was the crown prince. He demonstrated that if you put your game on the line and treat it like a thankless job, rather than one bathed in glory, you could make a decent living swinging a club.

"I can still do my martial arts stuff and other things," Lewis says prior to the start of Q-School, "but I can't really play golf anymore. Rheumatoid arthritis. But, I still love it. I'll never leave it." With that, Lewis strapped the oversized golf bag to his right shoulder and joined John Riegger &emdash; the player for whom he was caddying.

"Watch for this guy," says Lewis, "he'll be there at the end and when he gets out there, he has the game to win." At the end, Lewis and Riegger patiently watched the scoreboard, confident that the 10-under-par 419 they posted did the job. "Jeff certainly made it easier for me," says Riegger. "He really helped me manage my game. He gave me a lot of good yardages and a lot of good clubs." For his efforts, Riegger cashed for $6,375. This enabled Lewis to cash his first check as a Tour caddie. I had to wonder if this would be a regular tandem by the time the Tour reached Florida in March. "I'd like to be out here with him," says Lewis.

"We'll talk," says Riegger.

Q-School also saw some Cinderella hopes go unrealized. Top Florida amateur, Robert Floyd, the son of World Golf Hall of Fame member Raymond Floyd, profited from the benevolence of the Tour. He didn't attain PGA Tour status in his first Q-School attempt, but he did finish in the last spot for full Nike Tour exemption. "I knew this would be a hard week," says Floyd. "I knew the caliber of play here would be good, so I'm not surprised. I didn't play well this week, but it was good experience, and I plan to play the Nike Tour."

It took a while, but there were at least two tales of nervous disorder, and both came from across the Atlantic. "I didn't sleep a wink last night," says Ireland's Richard Coughlan, who finished at 420 and easily earned his card. "My stomach churned all night. I thought I was going to be sick a couple of times. If I knew every tournament was going to be like this, I'd quit the game."

Coughlan, a former Clemson star, might want to find a comforting sports psychologist. If any of the players had reason not to worry, it was Coughlan. Two weeks earlier, he qualified for full playing privileges on the PGA European Tour.

Another Irish lad, Keith Nolan from Dublin by way of East Tennessee State, suffered the Q-School version of vertigo coming in on the last day. He was operating on cruise control. With four holes to go, he could smell the barn, and at 12-under-par for the tournament, his card was as safe as he once was in his mother's arm. Without warning, however, the wheels spun off, and Nolan was out of control. He bogeyed 14 and 15 and threw in a double bogey on 16. Suddenly, the last two holes looked like a death march.

"This was my first time at Q-School," he says, "so whatever I experienced, I knew it was going to be new. Here I am four under par for the day with five holes to go. I'm cruising with five holes to go. All of a sudden I got this feeling in my stomach. It was the worst feeling. It was like someone kicked me in the stomach. I told myself I had to rely on what I'd done in the past. I fought the panic; that's what I did."

Nolan's experience reminds us that, even with the safety net of the Nike Tour in place, Q-School changes a player's view of the game forever. "I remember when golf used to be fun," says Nolan with the color finally returning to his cheeks. "Now, it's my profession. I mean, I like golf still, but it's different. Is it fun? Not really."

Ah, but Q-School isn't supposed to be fun. It may not be the sweat-pouring, gut-wrenching affair it once was, but it still bears some of the same morbid charm for onlookers that a three-car wreck on the third turn at Indy has. Now that the neophytes have graduated to the PGA Tour, they'll discover their next test in the weekly Friday afternoon meltdown that occurs between 4 and 6 p.m., the period when they'll realize they need to par the last five holes to make the cut and have any money in their wallets for the week. The fun never stops on the PGA Tour.