Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major

by John Feinstein

  Staten is about as upbeat a person as you are likely to encounter. His father, Bobby Lee Staten Sr., played backup guitar for the group “Up with People” in his youth and first taught B. J. (Bobby Lee Staten Jr.) to play golf. To make it easier to demonstrate a golf swing his son could copy, the elder Staten had B. J. stand directly in front of him so B. J. could mirror the moves he made. Of course, that meant the right-handed B. J. learned to play golf left-handed. “At least,” he said, “it gives me something in common with Phil Mickelson,” who also learned to play lefty by mirroring his father and did everything except play golf right-handed.

  B. J. also learned to play guitar growing up and had an older sister who had already recorded several successful country music songs. But golf was what he did best and enjoyed most. After paying official visits to five major golf schools, he decided to go to the University of Houston, which was close to home and to his teacher, Randy Smith, who he had started working with as a teenager. Having worked for years with Justin Leonard, Smith had a pretty good eye for talent and saw Staten as someone with tour potential. “The talent has always been there physically,” he said. “The question with B. J. has always been getting him to believe in B. J.”

  Staten’s path was like that of a lot of good, but not great, players. He had a solid college career and turned pro as soon as he graduated. In that sense he was different from a lot of college golfers, many of whom leave without degrees, especially those who aspire to turn pro. Backed financially by his father’s company, he had labored on the mini-tours for five years. For many young players, getting some form of financial backing is critical because it gives them time to work on their games and try to get to the point where they can make it at least to the Nationwide Tour. Most mini-tour players are fortunate to make enough money to cover expenses. They’re fortunate if they have a sponsor, but any sponsor who backs a player with the idea that he is going to get rich is probably making a mistake. Most sponsors do it because they have a connection to the player—family, friend, business partner—and want to help get him started. Frequently, though, they run out of patience.

  Like Staten, Jaxon Brigman had started his postcollege career with sponsors from his hometown. “I think because they’ve seen you play and you’re better than anyone else around, there’s an assumption that it’s just a matter of time until you get to the tour,” Brigman said. “Of course, it isn’t nearly that simple. Every town in America has someone who is pretty good—good enough to at least try to get on tour. The sponsor usually figures he’ll get his investment back and maybe more in a year or two. After three or four years, it’s like any investment—they start to wonder where the payback is.”

  Staten was lucky because his father was executive vice president of the company and because he and his family were well liked by those putting up the money. “Actually, at this point, after five years, I’m the one getting a little impatient,” he said. “This past year is by far the best I’ve had on the mini-tours, but I need to finish the year off by getting something done at Q School.”

  Getting something done meant getting through second stage. After three days in Kingwood, Staten appeared to have finally accomplished that goal. He was tied for sixth place and in the second-to-last group along with longtime tour players Brian Henninger and John Engler. Players often refer to having a “good pairing” (or a bad one). By that they mean they’re paired with a friend, someone they’re comfortable playing with, or someone who makes a point of trying to make them feel relaxed—if that’s possible at Q School.

  Some players prefer to be with someone friendly and talkative. Others prefer someone who is quiet so they aren’t distracted while they’re working. Henninger, in particular, was a good pairing for Staten. He was friendly and, at forty-three, had reached a point in his career where he enjoyed mentoring younger players. Unlike a lot of veterans, he remembered what it was like to be young and struggling, and he also remembered older players—notably his fellow Oregonian Peter Jacobsen—who had reached out to help him in his early days on tour.

  “I knew what a big day it was in his life because I remembered days like that in my life,” Henninger said. “Actually, it was a big day for me, too. I wanted to get to the finals and try to improve my status [as a past champion, Henninger had a partial tour exemption already] and be full-time on tour. But I’d been through it before. I knew I could do it because I’d done it in the past. For B. J., it was different.”

  For 16 holes, Staten handled the pressure almost perfectly. He kept his mind off where he was trying to get by the end of the day and on the task at hand. Walking to the 17th tee, he was six under par for the tournament, which was well inside where everyone figured the cut line would be: two under par, with the outside possibility it might go up or down a shot. “I was thinking it was almost certainly going to be two,” Staten said. “That left me with a huge cushion.”

  Which is why the decision he made on the 17th tee was completely baffling. The 17th at Deerwood is a tough par-three with water in front of the green and on the left. It was playing 217 yards that day, with a swirling wind that would blow the ball in the direction of the water on the left.

  “What I needed to do was simple,” Staten said. “Aim the ball to the right and play a cut. If the ball ended up right of the green, fine. Worst-case scenario, I chip it up and make bogey. Even if I three-putt somehow for double bogey, I’m still in great shape with one hole to play.”

  But Staten wasn’t in protective mode. He was playing well, hitting the ball well, and without giving too much thought to potential consequences, he instinctively played the hole as if he had to make par. “I aimed it right of the flag and tried to cut it in,” he said. “Only it cut too much, and then the wind got it.”

  The ball started left and then drifted left—and left. Staten watched in horror as it flew into the water. Now he had to re-tee, hitting three. “Even then, there was no reason to panic,” he said. “Hit it in the middle of the green, take five if I had to, and get out of there. Six would be bad, but it wouldn’t kill me. I’d still be playing 18 needing par to be 100 percent in, bogey to almost certainly be in.”

  Now, though, nerves were taking over. This time his swing was shaky, and the ball was headed left almost immediately. When it splashed into the water, Henninger looked at Staten. His face was ashen. “I couldn’t even look when he hit his third shot,” Henninger said later. “I felt sick for him. I mean, we’ve all had moments where we’ve lost our composure, but this was stunning, because he’d been playing so well. Then all of a sudden, two bad swings, and now he’s standing on the cliff—or maybe he’s already over it.”

  Staten’s legs were shaking as he teed up his third ball. “I’m not even sure how I got the club back at that point,” he said. “In a way, I made one of the great pars of my life with that third ball.” He just missed the green with the third tee shot, chipped it to four feet, and made the putt—for quadruple-bogey seven. At best, he figured, walking to the 18th tee, he had used up all his cushion and now needed a par. At worst, he might need a birdie.

  Henninger thought about saying something encouraging but decided against it. “At a moment like that, you don’t want to hear someone telling you to keep your head up,” he said. “You’re mad at the world, and you want to be as alone as you possibly can be.”

  The three players were alone as they teed off at 18, but, as is always the case on the last day, there were people waiting for them behind the green. Staten’s parents had driven over from Dallas, expecting to take him out to dinner to celebrate his breakthrough. Nervous and still stunned by what had happened on 17, Staten missed the green at 18, chipped to 15 feet, and missed the par putt. He had played the last two holes in five over par after playing 70 holes in six under. His parents, who had arrived only a few minutes earlier and been told that B. J. had been six under when he’d made the turn a couple of hours earlier, went up to congratulate him after he had holed out.

  “I missed,” he told
them, tears in his eyes. “I finished quad-bogey, and I missed.”

  There was nothing his parents could say. Staten walked slowly to the scoring area with Henninger and sat down to try to add up the numbers on his scorecard. “I remember my hands were shaking,” he said. “I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to sign my card.”

  Henninger, who was safely in by several shots, knew what Staten was thinking. “Do you have any idea what the number is?” Henninger asked the scorer.

  “Looks like one under or even,” the scorer replied casually.

  Henninger looked the man right in the eye and asked him to repeat what he had just said. When he did, wanting to be sure, he asked, “So you’re saying the one unders are in for sure?”

  “One unders are in,” the man said. “The guys at even are the ones that are shaky.”

  Staten was now staring at Henninger in disbelief. “It really hadn’t occurred to me that the number might go back to one,” he said. “I’d thought it might be three, two at worst.”

  “Did you hear that?” Henninger said, shouting, because he was excited for the kid. “One under is in. You are in!”

  He held up his hands so Staten could high-five him—which he did—but then Staten hugged him, too, sobbing.

  “I just lost it right there,” Staten said. “I was completely convinced it was over, that I’d blown it, and then Brian was telling me I’d done it—finally done it. Talk about a roller coaster. I just lost my composure completely.”

  Henninger, an emotional type himself, had tears in his eyes as he hugged Staten. “You deserve it,” he said. “You played great golf except for one hole.”

  Frequently at Q School, those last four words, “except for one hole,” are a lament. In the case of B. J. Staten, they became a story he could tell with a relieved smile for years and years to come.

  11

  Endings

  BY THE TIME DUSK HAD FALLEN across the country on the third Saturday in November, the field for the 2005 Q School finals was set. In all, 165 players had qualified—42 through exemptions and 123 through second stage—for six rounds of golf to be played at the Orange County National Golf Center and Lodge in Winter Garden, Florida, beginning on November 30. That was the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. Many players would leave their homes the day after the holiday so they could have three or four solid days of practice on the two golf courses before the tournament began. A few would bring their families with them; most would not.

  “You really have to look at it as a nine or ten-day grind,” said David Sutherland, who would turn forty in February and would be playing the finals for the seventh time. “I’ll miss my kids [boys 4 and 3] every day, but this isn’t something you can do as part of a family trip. You need to have your mind in shutdown mode—you shut out everything except the golf course and your golf game.”

  This from someone who wasn’t even 100 percent sure he still wanted to be playing golf. Sutherland, whose older brother, Kevin, had become a successful and consistent player on the PGA Tour, had missed most of 2005 because of wrist surgery. David had been a solid player on tour until injuries began to take a toll on his career: shoulder surgery in 2001, a broken wrist in 2002, and then the wrist surgery in 2005.

  “There’s a part of me that thinks it’s time to go get a job as a history teacher,” he said. “Or maybe coaching and teaching, I know I’d enjoy either or both. But at second stage, when I was really in the crucible, especially on the last day, the feeling of competing again, of trying to grind my way through something that was hard, was intoxicating. I realized I had really missed that aspect of golf.”

  Sutherland, who had actually beaten his brother to the PGA Tour when he made it through the finals in 1990, had to rally on the last day of second stage in Seaside, California, to qualify. He had already decided that if he didn’t make it, he would either look for a teaching job or enroll in a master’s program at home in Sacramento, California. When he survived, he decided there was no point in going to the finals unless he put everything he had into trying to make it back to the tour.

  “I’ve done the Nationwide Tour, and it’s okay,” he said. “But right now, I’m looking at this as PGA Tour or bust. I’m going to be forty. I’ve always told myself and other people I can walk away and do other things. If I don’t make it, the time has probably come to call my own bluff.”

  Other veterans who had not made it through second stage were dealing with thoughts similar to Sutherland’s. Rick Fehr had already quit the tour once and had gone back. After he missed the cut by five shots at his second stage in Beaumont, California, he was emphatically convinced he was done.

  “I went out the last day knowing I needed to shoot 65 or 66 to make it,” Fehr said. “That was doable if I got things rolling in the right direction. But as the holes slipped away and the putts didn’t drop, I got to a point where I realized that, mathematically, I just didn’t have a chance anymore. The last hour, I just wanted to get the round over and get out of there. I got in the car to drive home [five hours, to Phoenix] and waited for the tears to come. Nothing. By the time I was halfway home, I was on the phone talking to people about what I might do next and starting to feel excited about it. It was as if a burden had been lifted. If I needed any reinforcement that my time had come, I got it right there.”

  Fehr had been a reluctant traveler almost from the moment his first child was born in 1993. He talked often in those days about balancing his travel schedule with making time for his family. “Your kids only grow up once,” he said soon after his third child was born. “I know a lot of guys out here go through this. On the one hand, you’re doing something you love and making a good living. On the other hand, you’re missing a lot.”

  Because golfers often don’t begin to succeed and make serious money until their late twenties or early thirties, and because they can play longer than athletes in other sports, they frequently find themselves dealing with family issues that other athletes don’t encounter. Athletes in team sports have lengthy off-seasons and play half their schedules at home. The only sport that mirrors golf in terms of length of season (endless) is tennis, and most tennis players are retired by the time they turn thirty. Tom Kite, whose three children were born during his peak years as a player, summed up the dilemma better than anyone: “When you’re home, you feel as if you’re missing something not being on tour,” he once said. “When you’re on tour, you know you’re missing something not being at home.”

  Fehr was thirty-one when his first child was born, and he was just starting to make serious money. He won twice on tour during the ’90s, which provided a good living for his family. In 2001 he injured his right thumb and struggled with his game. “I couldn’t even practice,” he said. “It just hurt too much.”

  When he finished out of the top 125 at the end of that year, he decided it was a sign. He had toyed with the idea of becoming a teacher, so when he was offered the chance to become the director of golf at a brand-new facility in Redmond, Washington— right near his home—he decided to take it. “It seemed ideal,” he said. “I was the boss, it was a new venture, but the most important thing was that I would be home with my family. It seemed like a no-lose deal.”

  What he hadn’t counted on was that his new bosses wanted the golf course up and running by the fall of 2002, and there was an extraordinary amount of work to be done. There were no phones in the clubhouse or the pro shop, so calls to the 800 number the club had set up for inquiries (about memberships, when the course would open, and where building materials needed to be delivered) were all routed to Fehr’s cell phone.

  “I was working until three o’clock in the morning most days,” he said. “I was actually spending less time with my family than I had when I was on tour. I thought maybe when we opened it would let up, but it didn’t. I remember one night I did make it home for dinner, and I fell asleep at the dinner table. I knew I had to rethink. This wasn’t what I’d had in mind.”

  He had surgery on the thumb at
the end of 2002. In the spring of 2003, he went out to hit some balls and found himself pain-free. He decided to give golf one more shot. He stayed at the club until the end of 2003 but spent a lot more time practicing than answering his cell phone. He went to Q School that year and didn’t make it through second stage, but he had some status on the Nationwide Tour as a past PGA Tour winner. The world he entered in 2004 was a shock to his system.

  “I honestly believe I would have been more competitive if I’d been on the PGA Tour,” he said. “My game has always been about hitting fairways. On the Nationwide, you really don’t have to hit fairways. The guys hit it so far and the rough most places is so forgiving, you can just go out and bomb the ball and play for birdies. That was never what I did.

  “There were times I felt embarrassed because I’d be playing with some twenty-five-year-old kid, and he would consistently be 50 yards past me off the tee. I’m not exaggerating—50 yards. I’m a professional golfer, a guy who has had some success, and I could tell some of these kids were looking at me and thinking, ‘What’s he doing here?’”

  Fehr decided to give himself two years to get back to the tour. After failing at Q School again in 2004, he started 2005 determined to have a more positive attitude and not to worry about how far anyone else was hitting the ball. His goal was simple: make the top 20 on the money list and get back to the big tour.

  He never came close. Occasionally, he would make a cut, but he never finished high enough to cash any checks that he considered worthwhile or that would put him where he needed to be on the money list. By the end of the summer, he was heartily sick of everything about the Nationwide Tour.