Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major

by John Feinstein

  “There are still 36 holes to play. I don’t see myself as being out of this by any means. I go out and shoot 67–67, and I’ll definitely have a shot to advance. Is that easy? Obviously not. But is it impossible? No. My game has always been built on chipping and putting. I haven’t made a putt for two days. I’ve got to make some putts. That’s a familiar-sounding story, I know, but that’s what it comes down to in the end for all of us.

  “You know, the funny thing is, my buddies back home think it’s really cool that I’m down here playing golf. To some degree, they’re right, of course. It is cool, and I’m lucky to have this chance to follow my dream. But if people ask me about playing great golf courses, I tell them, ‘Stay amateur.’ The good amateur events are played on great golf courses. Mini-tours are played on terrible golf courses, often under lousy conditions. It’s hardly a glamorous life. A gallery consists of friends and family—when you’re lucky. I’m not complaining; I’m just saying that’s the reality of it. It isn’t glamorous. But you do it because you love the game and because you honestly believe that someday you’re going to be good enough to go to that next level, and someday you’ll go all the way to the tour.”

  He stood up. It was time to call his dad and give him a report. “He’s always great in situations like this. He never lectures, never gets down. He’s always encouraging. He always says, ‘Okay, get back to work, and you’ll get ’em tomorrow.’ He’s right, of course. The problem is, at some point you run out of tomorrows.”

  5

  Nineteen and Ties

  THE MAIN HANGOUT at a qualifier is almost never the clubhouse, although players will always stop there after a round to eat something and cool off a bit before heading back out into the heat to hit balls, chip, or putt. No one goes straight home. Home is almost always a cheap hotel room, and there’s nothing to do there but think. Or wonder why you aren’t out hitting balls like everyone else in the field.

  The favorite hangout is the scoreboard. There is never more than one at a qualifier, and it is always a far cry from the computerized scoreboards that are prevalent on the PGA Tour. At the TPC Tampa Bay, Karen Widener, who worked at local golf tournaments throughout the year, was in charge of the scoreboard. Prior to the start of the event, she had carefully written down the names of all the players on long strips of cardboard, leaving room to fill in their scores for the four 18-hole rounds. (There are no cuts at any stage of Q School, the tour having decided several years ago that for the kind of money a player pays to participate, he should be allowed to play all the rounds, no matter how far behind he might be.) The players’ names were arranged across the board in alphabetical order. Once the scorecards from a group were signed and attested, they were walked over to Widener, who filled in each score, hole by hole, and then the total. In the middle of the board, she kept a tally of all the scores for the day and, in parentheses, how many under par (or over par) that was.

  That was the section of the scoreboard everyone paid the most attention to. As the scores came in, players, caddies, and friends and family would stand in front of the board and count to 19—that was the magic number, since the top 19 players and ties would advance to second stage—and see what number the 19th player was sitting on. At the end of the first day, exactly 19 players had shot 70 (one under) or better. What that told the players was that if the conditions stayed the same—warm and humid, with a breeze but no high winds—the number after four days was likely to be around four under par. If it rained and the course got wet, the number could go lower. If the wind came up, it could go higher.

  At one time, the number of players who would advance from first stage to second stage or from second stage to the finals had been exact. Ties were broken by play-offs. In those days, most first stages advanced exactly twenty players. Now, most advance nineteen and ties, although occasionally if a site has more or fewer entrants, the number can go up or down by one. “In the end, we usually end up with about the same number of players advancing as in the play-off days,” Steve Carman said. “Ideally, you want seventy-eight players at each of the six second-stage sites, but if you have to add a threesome at a couple of places, it isn’t that big a deal. In the end, I’d rather give a few more guys an opportunity than a few less guys.”

  The TPC Tampa Bay is often used as a first-stage course, so a lot of the players were familiar with it. Jamie Neher, who lives only a few hours away in Hobe Sound, had reason to be confident playing the course: he had won the first-stage event there the past two years. Of course, a first-stage qualifier is one golf tournament where players would prefer not to defend a title. Neher, who hadn’t made it through second stage yet, was back at Tampa Bay trying to advance for the third—and, he sincerely hoped, last—time.

  “There are a lot of players who have the first-stage thing down pretty well,” said Alex Rocha, standing in front of the scoreboard as scores went up on Tuesday afternoon. “I’m not going to say that’s the easy part, but it is definitely a lot different at this level than the next. Second stage, you routinely see guys who have not only been on tour but have been successful on tour. You don’t see that too often at first stage. This isn’t a whole lot different than a mini-tour event. You see a lot of familiar faces.”

  Like a lot of players, Rocha knew the TPC Tampa Bay’s Q School history. “Usually the number here is about three or four under,” he said. “If the wind blows, of course everything changes. Chances are, if you shoot four under, you’re going to move on.”

  Rocha was born in Brazil but raised in Florida. He was twenty-seven years old and, like a lot of players, had studied the course’s Q School history. He had shot 69 in the first round, which put him in solid position. The low score of the day had been a remarkable 62, shot by Vince Covello, which had included a 28 on the front nine. No one else had shot better than 66. A lot of players in the field were playing without caddies. Most of those working as caddies were friends or relatives. A few local caddies were working, but several players, including Rocha, had opted to rent a pull cart. Mike Grob, one of the two ex–PGA Tour players in the field, was carrying his own bag in the searing heat. “Good exercise,” he joked, sweating profusely after shooting 69 the first day.

  The weather was a concern for everyone in the field and for Dillard Pruitt. Not the heat—everyone knows that comes with playing in Florida—but Hurricane Wilma, which was heading toward the state. Six weeks after the devastation of Katrina, people were even more uptight about the approach of a hurricane than usual. The qualifier was supposed to end on Friday afternoon. The hurricane wasn’t likely to make landfall before Saturday, perhaps as late as Monday. Still, Pruitt was worried.

  “A lot of these guys live in Florida, in places right in the path of the thing,” he said. “Some of them have already been nailed this year, and a lot of them just want to get home, get their houses ready, and, in a lot of cases, get their families out. From what I’m seeing, we can get the thing finished by Friday evening without being affected, but I know the closer the hurricane gets, the more uptight players are going to be.”

  Pruitt didn’t like the idea of asking the players to play more than 18 holes a day, but by the end of the second day, he was considering it. He was in communication with tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach but had basically been told, “You’re there; you make the call.”

  On Thursday, while the players were grinding through the third round, Pruitt made the call. The players had been re-paired after two rounds, just like at any PGA Tour event, with the leaders going out last. At Q School, they use a re-pairing format called “reverse horseshoe.” Because there’s no cut, the players continue to tee off on both the front and back nines for all four rounds. In a regular PGA Tour event, unless pressed for time because of weather delays or a West Coast TV finish, players go off only one tee after the field is cut. That makes it easy: the player with the highest score for two rounds tees off first, and everyone falls in line after that, with the leader going off last. When two tees are used, the fi
eld is divided in half. In this case, with sixty-six players still playing after DQs and withdrawals, eleven threesomes went off the first tee and eleven went off the 10th tee. The thirty-three players with the best scores went off the first tee under the normal tour weekend format: highest score first, lowest score last. On the back nine, the format was reversed: lowest score first, highest score last. The reason for this, especially at a qualifier, is to have the players in the middle of the field playing at the same time under the same conditions. “You want to make it as fair as possible, and the more guys with similar scores who are on the course together, the better it is,” Pruitt said.

  A breeze had kicked up on Wednesday and the scores were slightly higher than on the first day. Instead of nineteen players at one under or better, there were now just fifteen players who were under par after 36 holes. There were, however, eleven more players bunched up at even par. Amazingly, one of those twenty-six players who had shot 142 or better was not Vince Covello. Living proof of the vagaries of Q School, Covello had gone from 62 to 83 in a period of twenty-four hours. Even more amazing was the fact that the entire 21-stroke swing had come on the front nine, when he had gone from 28 to 49—49!—on the front nine, including a 10 on the fourth hole, which had started his spiral.

  In a sense, Covello was living proof that players like Marc Turnesa who insisted they weren’t out of it even when they were way behind, weren’t just mouthing hopeful pabulum. If a player could go from 62 to 83, he could also go from 83 to 62, or, at the very least, from 73–76 to 66–66. That’s what the players in the bottom half of the field were hoping for when the third round began—a low round that would bump them back into contention. If there is one good thing about a qualifier, it is that 19th place is just about as good as first place. The only advantage a high finisher has is that he is guaranteed being assigned to the second-stage site listed as his first choice on his application, although most players get their first choice anyway.

  Just before the third round started, Pruitt made a decision: he would err on the side of caution. As the players were about to tee off, they were told to be prepared to play again in the afternoon. There wouldn’t be time to re-pair them based on their third-round scores, so they would be given about an hour off to eat and relax, then would go out and play for as long as they could. It would get dark by about six thirty. Pruitt’s goal was to get in enough golf that the final round could be completed by noon on Friday, to give everyone a chance to get home and prepare for the hurricane.

  “I figure they’ve got enough to worry about without being uptight about getting out of here and getting home,” he said. “The sooner they finish, the happier most of them are going to be.”

  For most players, the third round is critical. Those near the front know that a good round could give them a good deal of leeway for the last 18 holes. Those in the middle want to move up, to get inside whatever the number will be. Those behind know that they have to fire at flags to at least get within shouting distance.

  One of those in the middle was a player whose last name is familiar to people who follow golf: Josh McCumber. His uncle is Mark McCumber, who won ten times on the PGA Tour, including victories in the Tour Championship and the Players Championship. He had also finished second in the British Open in 1996. Now he plays only part-time on the Champions Tour, in part because he’s had surgery on his shoulder and legs and has never felt quite the same physically, but also because he and his older brother, Jim, spend a lot of time working on their golf course design company. Josh is Jim’s son, but it was Mark who inspired him to want to play big-time golf.

  “I still remember going to the Western Open in 1989 when I was thirteen and seeing Mark win,” he said. “I thought it was cool. I thought the whole deal with tour life was cool. I had the chance to be exposed to a lot of good players and a lot of good golf courses as a kid. I feel as if I have a realistic sense of what it takes to play on the tour. Having said that, I know it’s hard—really hard. The number of players I’ve played with in juniors, in college, [and] on mini-tours who could really hit the ball is staggering. When I play with Mark, it isn’t so much that he hits the ball that much better than guys like that, but that he has this ability to always get the ball close to the hole. I’m not sure that’s something you can teach. He just does it, one way or the other, and he does it all the time. That’s what really good players do—they get up and down four or five times in a round when other guys won’t. On a good day it’s the difference between 66 and 71, and on a bad day [it’s] the difference between 71 and 76. Add it up—that’s a lot of shots.”

  Josh McCumber graduated from Florida and then turned pro after playing in the U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach in 1999. He had gone to Q School twice and made it through the first stage but not second. By the end of 2001, he was feeling frustrated and a little burned-out. When Buddy Alexander, his college coach, offered him the chance to return to Florida as assistant coach, he took it. “I enjoyed coaching,” he said. “I enjoyed the guys and working for Buddy. But two years into it, I had the itch to play again. I began to feel as if I hadn’t really given myself a chance to make it. I remembered that Mark went to Q School six times before he got to the tour. In fact, he won the regionals [now second stage] twice and then didn’t make it at the finals. I wanted to see what would happen if I really worked on my game for a while.”

  After he finished the ’04–’05 season at Florida, he turned his attention to playing golf. He qualified for the U.S. Open at Pinehurst, a big confidence boost, and played mini-tours during the summer and fall to prepare. In September he took a break from his preparation to get married. His dad and his new wife, Kerry, were his cheering section in Tampa. He had chosen the TPC Tampa Bay as his first-stage site because Mark McCumber had played in the Champions Tour event there in February. “Mark and my dad both thought it would be a good course for me,” he said. “I came out here and checked it out and agreed. So here I am.”

  For the first three days, Josh’s game was almost agonizingly consistent: 70–71–71. That left him just inside the cut line after 54 holes, with the fourth round beginning shortly. Almost all the contenders knew they would play for a while Thursday afternoon, then come back to finish on Friday. In some ways, that would make things more difficult, since they would be walking to the clubhouse in mid-round, not really knowing where they stood. The only scores posted on Karen Widener’s scoreboard would be for the first three rounds. Other than through gossip, they wouldn’t know who was rallying or who had it in reverse up to that point in the fourth round.

  “I’m trying as best as I can to play relaxed,” Josh said. “If I make a mistake, make sure it’s only a bogey. If I make a birdie, great, try to make another one at the next hole. Being on the clock [as part of Marc Turnesa’s group] the first two days was a little bit distracting, but I thought I handled it well. I know Marc was fighting himself a little bit Wednesday. He apologized to us on the 15th tee. I told him not to worry about it. We’re all grinding out here.”

  “Grinding” is the word golfers use for working hard—when every hole is pressure-packed, and there’s no chance to ease up and relax. Players on tour talk about grinding to make a cut on Friday afternoon. Those on the Nationwide Tour talk about grinding to make the top 20 on the money list so that they can avoid Q School. In the Q School finals, everyone is grinding for a spot on the PGA Tour, or at least a full exemption on the Nationwide Tour. At second stage, everyone’s grinding to make the finals and guarantee himself some kind of job playing golf the next year. But there may be no grind like first stage. One reason for that is that players who don’t make it to second stage have absolutely no place to play the next year except the mini-tours that have cropped up around the country, where the first goal is to recoup your entry fees. Beyond that is the cold recognition that if you can’t get past first stage, you’re a long way from where you want to be as a professional golfer.

  “That’s the hard part,” Marc Turnesa said. “In my he
art of hearts, I think I can be a good player, good enough to play on the PGA Tour. But my results don’t say that right now. I’m still a long way from the tour, not a short way. The guys who make it to the finals and play on the Nationwide, they can honestly say, ‘Hey, if I improve just a little, I can be out there.’ The guys who are falling short at second stage, at least they’ve shown they can get through first, and they’re on the cusp of being able to make a decent living on the Nationwide. All of us struggling in first stage are about three big steps removed from where we want our games to be, and even though we can go home at night and tell ourselves, ‘It’s this close,’ the numbers say it isn’t as close as we think it might be or want it to be.”

  What keeps players like Turnesa out there is that the difference between a first-stage failure and a tour player is not that great physically. Players like Turnesa can hit the ball far enough to compete on the PGA Tour. They can shoot low numbers on occasion, and when they go home and play with their buddies, they are clearly a cut above those guys. 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. If you walk out onto the range at a first-stage qualifier, you won’t see a lot of difference in the swing quality of most of the players—barring the occasional ringer who gets through the system and can’t break 80—and the swing quality of those on the tour.

  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. In 2005 Tiger Woods did not miss one putt inside four feet on tour. That’s an astonishing statistic. Most first-stage players miss at least one short putt per round when playing under pressure. Frequently, those four putts are the difference between advancing and not advancing. Or there might be one wayward drive or iron shot when the player can least afford it. Dealing with nerves—Stephen Gangluff’s demons—is the hardest thing for any golfer, especially one who is trying to crack the elite levels of the sport.