Perhaps being forced back to the Nationwide Tour had humbled Willis a bit. Or perhaps, being on the verge of his thirty-second birthday, he had matured. But more likely, as some players speculated, there just wasn’t anyone in the world who didn’t like Mike Hulbert.
Hulbert—“Hubby” to almost everyone in golf—had been a consistent and successful player on the tour from the mid-1980s until the end of the 1990s, finishing in the top 100 on the money list for thirteen straight years while winning three tournaments. He had finished as high as 18th on the money list (1989) and had finished in the top 25 on three occasions. Like a lot of the over-forty players Donnie Hammond talked about, it had gotten harder for Hulbert after he turned forty, and he was now a part-time player, spending more time doing TV commentary than playing golf. He had made two cuts on tour in the past three years, both at the B.C. Open, his local tournament, since he had grown up in nearby Elmira, New York.
Hulbert looks and sounds more like a schoolteacher or a bank teller than a professional athlete, with his thick glasses and squeaky voice. Always in shape, he still has the same wiry build that he had when he was a big moneymaker on tour. The warm smile hasn’t changed either. The major difference was the confidence level.
Hulbert was one of three players who had come out of upstate New York at about the same time and found success on tour. Jeff Sluman, the 1988 PGA champion; Joey Sindelar, a seven-time tour winner; and Hulbert were born within nineteen months of one another between 1957 and 1959 and grew up within a few miles of one another. “We were always together as kids,” Hulbert said. “We’d play golf all summer, and when the weather got cold, we’d put the clubs up for the winter and bowl.”
Sluman, as he still likes to point out, was the best bowler in the group. They all made it to the tour at about the same time. Sluman made it through Q School in 1982, although he had to go back in 1984. At second stage in 1984, Sluman brought Billy Harmon to the TPC Sawgrass as his caddy. Sluman’s teacher then, as now, was Harmon’s brother Craig, one of the four golf pro sons of Claude Harmon, the 1948 Masters champion. (Butch Harmon is the most famous of the four because of the work he did with Greg Norman and, later, Tiger Woods.) Billy Harmon had done a lot of caddying and volunteered to help his brother’s young pupil try to get his playing privileges back.
“I thought it was a great idea to have Billy on the bag,” Sluman said. “I knew it would relax me to have him with me, and it had to help to have someone with me who knew what he was doing. First day, I walk to the first tee and go over to Billy to get my driver. There’s one problem: he picked up the wrong bag on the putting green. We’ve got someone else’s bag. He sprints back to the putting green, finds my bag, and sprints back with my driver just in time. There’s still one problem: my putter is in the other guy’s bag. So he has to sprint back again and get my putter while I’m walking down the first fairway.”
Sluman survived those travails to make it back to the tour and has been a human ATM machine for most of the past twenty years. He has six tour victories, including the win at the PGA, and has won more than $1 million in prize money in seven of the eight years since he turned forty. Sindelar got through Q School in 1983 and was 12th on the money list in 1985, his second year on tour, after winning twice. He won again as recently as 2003. Hulbert first made it to the tour in 1984, went back to Q School the next year, and was a consistent money winner after that.
Although Sluman and Sindelar have continued to play well on the tour, it hasn’t been as easy for their buddy Hubby. “I keep thinking that I’m close to getting back to where I want to be,” Hulbert said. “You know, every great golfer has to have a little bit of, well, turd in him. I mean, you have to be selfish, you have to be mean, you have to be able to worry only about yourself, and you have to believe completely in yourself. I had that for a lot of years, and somewhere along the line I lost it. Being around the top guys all the time because of doing TV makes me want to get it back. I see those guys up close, and a lot of time I find myself thinking, ‘I can still do that.’ That’s why I’m here. I know I’ve done it before. I think I can do it again.”
It is difficult to picture Hulbert being selfish and mean. Greg Norman and Tiger Woods, neither of whom is noted for having an especially wide circle of friends, consider him one. He is the guy on the practice tee who is always willing to offer help. He is the guy who plays in everybody’s charity tournament. “I’m flattered that a lot of guys—really good players—will come to me and say, ‘Hey, check me out, will you?’” he said. “A few weeks ago, Davis [Love III] is having trouble on the range, and he asks me to look at him. I do, and it takes me about five minutes to get him fixed. Him, I can fix in five minutes. Me, it’s not so easy.
“It’s always been the turd factor for me. I swear to God that’s it. I remember in ’85 I had to go back to second stage after I lost my card. We’re playing in Boca, a hundred guys for twelve spots. The first two rounds I shoot something like 72–73, and I’m in the middle of the pack. After the second round, one of the guys I’m playing with, a lifer on the mini-tours, starts lighting me up—really getting in my face. He says to me, ‘What the hell is wrong with you? You’ve got more talent than any of us, and you don’t look like you care or you want it. You want to come and spend your life on the mini-tours with me? That’s where you’re heading right now unless you kick yourself in the butt and start playing like you care.’
“I went back to the Days Inn where I was staying and lay there staring at the ceiling for a good long while. I finally decided the guy was right. I was just out there playing, not competing. I needed to compete. I shot 65–68 the last two days and finished second. After that, I rolled pretty good for a long time.”
He wasn’t rolling now, though, and it bothered him. He didn’t need to play financially, and the TV work kept him around the game and around his friends. But he wanted to play; he wanted to compete. He wanted to be a turd again.
On the first day, a warm day with just a hint of a breeze, he shot 74, two over par, which left him way back in the pack, tied for 61st place in a field of seventy-four players. The leader, Brad Klapprott, shot a seven-under-par 65. Eighteen players shot four under par or better, and ten more were at three under. Hulbert had a lot of work to do to get back into contention. “It’s there,” he insisted. “I just have to stop leaving shots out on the golf course like I did today.”
He smiled. “I’m going to go home and get pissed off.”
THERE ARE NO BAD PLAYERS at second stage. The people who shoot 100 over par or can’t break 80 are long gone from the competition. Everyone in the field has some kind of golf résumé, even if it’s just having gotten through first stage. That in itself is no small achievement.
Second stage is a mixture of players frequently going in opposite directions. On the one side are the Hulberts and Hammonds, the Boroses, Waites, and Gibsons—players who have had success in golf but don’t think they’re done yet. On the other side are the kids, youngsters for whom Q School is still an adventure—albeit a scary one. They know the names and faces of the older, more accomplished players, but they are long past being intimidated by them.
There were a number of examples of that kind of youth and confidence at Lake Jovita. No one had more of both than Colby Beckstrom, a rangy twenty-two-year-old who had dropped out of Texas Christian University (TCU) after his junior year to turn pro—a move that had surprised friends and family if only because few had expected him to stay in college even that long.
“I can remember sitting on my bed talking to my mom one night when I was in tenth or eleventh grade,” Beckstrom said. “I was starting to get letters from college golf coaches, and I said to her, ‘Mom, I don’t want to go to college.’ I was never a good student; school was always a struggle for me. I knew then—just knew—that I wanted to play golf. My mom was great. She said to me, ‘Colby, college isn’t for everybody. Let’s see what happens.’”
What happened was TCU coach Bill Montigel. Having grow
n up in Michigan, where the golf season is relatively short (he was a hockey goalie until age fourteen), Beckstrom wanted to play golf someplace where the weather is warm most of the year. TCU fit that bill. “I just really liked Coach Montigel,” Beckstrom said. “He let me know who he was and what he would expect of me if I came. He convinced me, without a hard sell, that a couple of years of college would benefit my golf. My high school coach told him straight-out, ‘Colby won’t stay four years. If you get him for two years, you’ll be lucky.’ He was okay with that.”
Beckstrom stayed three years because of his relationship with Montigel and his teammates, and because he could see steady improvement in his golf. He even made it to class enough to be on schedule to graduate in four years had he stayed. “It turned out to be a great decision to go,” he said. “But after three years, I was ready—really ready. I knew in November I was ready to go. I finished my junior year so that I’d be there for the team in the spring. But I was done in terms of college. I couldn’t wait any longer.”
He waited until after the Michigan Amateur to turn pro and then, as a hometown kid, got a sponsor exemption into the Buick Open in Flint in early August. “It was the most unforgettable week of my life,” he said. “I made the cut and played about as well as I could have hoped.” He smiled. “I know Tiger, Vijay, and [John] Daly had their crowds, but I had a pretty good crowd of my own rooting me on. God, was it fun.”
The only hitch in the entire week came on Sunday, when he hit his second shot into a bunker at 16. Even though he was in the bunker, he was closer to the hole than J. J. Henry, whom he was paired with that day. “J. J. walked into the bunker where my ball was to line up his putt. He was nowhere close to where my ball was. When he finished, as a courtesy, my caddy raked where he had walked. I played out, and [when] we finished, J. J. said to me as we walked into the scoring trailer, ‘Don’t sign your card yet.’ He went and talked to a rules official, and then they came back and said I had to add two to my score at 16 because my caddy had raked the bunker before I played my shot. J. J. hadn’t seen him rake, but someone did and told him about it. He was sick about it. He kept telling the rules guy how unfair it was, but I was saying, ‘Hey, that’s the rule. I understand.’ It dropped me from a tie for 30th to a tie for 50th, but I’m telling you nothing could wipe the smile off my face that week.”
Beckstrom had been in a pretty good mood throughout first stage. He had chosen the TPC Tampa Bay as his first-stage site strictly based on logistics. He had moved to Naples, Florida, in part for the weather but also because his mother, stepfather, and eight-year-old brother lived there, as did his older brother, J. J., who had just turned pro that summer. After an opening-round 71, Colby shot 65 the second day and cruised from there, finishing third. “I remember on the back nine the last morning feeling so in control of my game,” he said. “I wanted to win because I thought that would have been good for my confidence, but it didn’t matter that much. I just felt terrible for the guy I was playing with [Ted Potter Jr.], who shot 43 the last nine holes. I couldn’t imagine what that felt like. He really handled it well at the end, though. That impressed me. A lot of guys would have just lost it.”
Brimming with confidence, Beckstrom arrived at Lake Jovita feeling about as comfortable as a player can feel at Q School. “I know the golf course,” he said. “We played our conference championships here twice, and I played well. That’s why I asked for it for second stage.”
Beckstrom had about as big a cheering section as anyone at Lake Jovita: his mom, stepdad, and younger brother, as well as his father, a friend from back home, and J. J., who had joined him playing mini-tour events. “His first tournament as a pro, he made the cut and I won,” Colby said. “It was pretty close to perfect.”
This week looked perfect, too. Playing in the first group of the day, on opening day, Beckstrom shot 66, holing out twice from bunkers, including on 18. During first stage, it had been just Colby and J. J. in Tampa, and they had gotten into a routine of going to the same Outback Steakhouse near their hotel and eating the same meal every night: a couple of gin and tonics followed by Monterrey chicken and mashed potatoes. Since they were staying in the same hotel (about forty minutes from the golf course) as in October, they went back to their old routine. Only now the table was for seven instead of two. “I can honestly say we were having the time of our lives,” Beckstrom said. “I’m playing well, I’ve got all this support, and I feel about as confident as you can feel.”
The opening-round 66 put him in second place, one shot behind Klapprott and in a tie with Bubba Dickerson, another young gun, and Hiroshi Matsuo, a perennial mini-tour player who was trying to break out of that life and jump-start his career at the age of thirty-six. Matsuo was a first-generation American. Born in Queens, he learned the game from his father, who was an assistant pro at Westchester Country Club. Matsuo played college golf at Auburn. Not long after graduating and turning pro, he decided that tour life or club pro life wasn’t for him, and he went to work for his father, who had moved to Jupiter, Florida, and owned two restaurants there. “It took me a few years to figure out I wasn’t ready for that sort of work,” he said. “I decided to try golf again.”
In a sense, his timing had been perfect. During the 1990s, the sport’s popularity had created a boomlet in mini-tours. Prior to that time, there hadn’t been very many mini-tours, and breaking even financially was about all a player could hope for once he got through paying his entry fees and travel expenses—even though travel was generally limited to cars and the cheapest motel that could be found. By the time Matsuo started playing mini-tours, however, the money for the top players on a number of the tours had become respectable. In 2001 and 2002, he was the leading money winner on the Golden Bear Tour, finishing 2002 by winning the season-ending tournament and a check for $60,000.
“It was a living, a decent one,” Matsuo said. “But I’d had one year [2000] on the Nationwide and flamed out. I really felt I was a better player than that, and I’ve wanted to prove to myself that I can be better than I have been.” He smiled. “It needs to start happening here pretty soon.”
Matsuo is tall—6 feet 3—and very outgoing. By his own admission, he has also enjoyed himself in the past, at times to the detriment of his golf game. “I’ve always had a fallback position—my dad’s business,” he said. “I worked in the restaurants long enough that I know my way around, and I can go back there and do well if I want to. But now, as I’ve gotten older, I realize I’ll be disappointed if I don’t give myself a chance to live up to my full potential. I’m at the age where my wife and I want to start a family. So I can’t say ‘Wait till next year’ too many more times. I need to at least get out of second stage this year.”
If Matsuo didn’t make the finals, his only option if he wanted to stay in golf was another year on the mini-tours. Klapprott, at thirty-six, was in the same boat. At the other end of the spectrum was Ty Tryon, a player who had seemed ticketed for stardom just a few years earlier. In fact, he had appeared, along with Charles Howell III, David Gossett, Adam Scott, and Matt Kuchar, in a PGA Tour public service announcement touting the sport’s young guns. Scott was now ranked in the top 15 in the world, and Howell was an established tour player. Kuchar and Gossett were both at Lake Jovita, but each had won once on tour before falling back.
Tryon hadn’t won on tour, but he had probably received more attention than the other four players combined during his one year as an exempt player. That was in 2002, when Tryon was seventeen and still in high school. In the fall of 2001, he had done what had been considered impossible: make it through all three stages of Q School before the age of eighteen. PGA Tour rules prevent anyone from being an official tour member before his eighteenth birthday (June 1, 2002, for Tryon), but after he played well in a number of tournaments for which he received sponsor exemptions, Tryon and his parents decided that he was ready to turn pro. Their decision was, to say the least, controversial.
Tiger Woods had waited until he was alm
ost twenty-one and had been in college for two years before turning pro. History shows that those who have tried to make it on tour before age twenty-one—most of them prodigies like Tryon—have flamed out fairly quickly. The fact that Tryon had been able to stand up to the crucible of Q School, even with his every move and every shot being chronicled by the media, seemed to indicate that he could deal with all the pressures of life on tour.
But life on tour is about much more than what goes on between the ropes. In many ways, especially for a player as young as Tryon, that’s the easiest part of his day. Dealing with media and sponsors, being ten to twenty years younger than most of your peers, living out of a suitcase—regardless of how fancy the suitcase or the hotel rooms may be—and knowing that you are now playing golf for a living rather than for fun are all far more difficult than standing up on a tee and hitting a golf ball.
It didn’t help that Tryon struggled with health issues—another problem among young athletes who are pushed too hard, too early. (See women’s tennis.) He had a bout with mononucleosis early in the year, which caused him to lose about fifteen pounds from an already thin 5-foot-10-inch, 160-pound frame. He couldn’t play full-time until he turned eighteen on June 1, and he believes that the momentum he had coming out of Q School, hopped up and full of confidence, was lost during the six months when he was sick and played very little golf.
Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major Page 12