Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major

by John Feinstein

  Ritson, a longtime teaching pro, had brought his golf academy to the open spaces beyond Disney World and helped open two golf courses on the site: Panther Lake, named after the lake it was built around, and Crooked Cat. Both boars and bulls had once roamed in the orange groves that were cut down to build the golf courses, it was said, but none had ever been seen prowling the two courses, just the occasional Florida alligator.

  Orange County National is a sprawling facility that includes a modern, low-slung clubhouse, Ritson’s golf academy (complete with classrooms), a number of motel rooms that snake around the putting green and the driving range, and a huge parking lot. The golf courses are like most in central Florida: relatively wide-open, with a lot of bunkering and not much water. They are both long—for Q School finals, Panther Lake played at 7,369 yards and Crooked Cat at 7,411—and they both played a lot tougher when the wind blew, which it often did.

  The average golfer pulling into the parking lot at Orange County saw what was, in effect, a golfing Wal-Mart. It had everything the average golfer could want at reasonable prices without a lot of fancy amenities or romantic vistas. During the height of the winter season, an out-of-county resident might pay $150 to play—still relatively cheap by Florida resort standards—and off-season rates could be as low as $35 (and local residents got a discount on all fees).

  “It had everything we had been looking for,” Carman said. “Plenty of space, rooms for the players to stay on-site if they wanted, lots of room on the practice facilities, and, because both golf courses have front nines that come back to the clubhouse, no one teeing off on number 10 of either course had to be carted out to start or carted back when they finished. It was perfect.”

  What’s more, since Orange County National is a public facility, there are no members to get upset about not being able to use their golf courses for nine days. Most of the golfers who play there on a regular basis have plenty of other places in the Orlando area to play while the finals are taking place.

  The idea to bring Q School to Orange County National came from Bruce Gerlander. He had just taken over as general manager of the two-year-old facility when he saw “the Disaster at Doral” on TV in 1999. He contacted Carman, who was intrigued but had already made a commitment to Bear Lakes Country Club in West Palm Beach for the finals in 2001.

  “My thought was, we were perfect because everything here is self-contained—the golf courses, the lodging, the practice facilities,” Gerlander said. “To get our name out there as the host site for a PGA Tour event could only be good for us in terms of branding. Nothing carries weight with golfers like saying you have a PGA Tour event at your facility. For us, Q School was a great fit.”

  Carman tested the site in 2001 and 2002 by holding second stages there. Second stage is an entirely different animal than finals, with less than half the number of players, but it gave the tour a chance to work out any bugs and to establish a force of volunteers—always key at Q School—before the finals arrived in 2003. In 2005 the tour paid $150,000 for the nine days—a relatively cheap price—and also picked up the tab for the players’ food. Given that the tour made close to $500,000 in entry fees each year, that wasn’t too hefty a price to pay. The tour and Orange County National already had a verbal agreement in place for 2007.

  “I think it’s been great for both sides,” Gerlander said. “I know the tour’s happy, and having the event has definitely increased our profile across the country. Imagine getting six days of advertising on national TV (Golf Channel) and being paid for it. It’s the proverbial win-win.”

  For the players, there was no win-win. It was either win—get your PGA Tour card—or lose. The Nationwide Tour was a consolation prize but not the holy grail.

  THE GROUP OF 165 PLAYERS who began gathering amid the orange groves of Winter Garden was at the very least an eclectic one.

  There was one major champion—Larry Mize, who had finished second at the second stage in Panama City. In addition to Mize there were twenty-one players who had won at least once on the PGA Tour. There were players like Jeff Hart, who was playing in the finals for the fifteenth time, and Michael Allen, back for the twelfth time. “I just consider this my winter vacation,” Allen said.

  There were thirty-nine players who were in the finals for the first time. Some were just out of college—players like John Holmes, Nick Thompson, and Jeff Overton, who had represented the United States during the summer in the Walker Cup before turning pro. Others, like thirty-year-old Nick Malinowski, were amazed to be playing in the finals. Malinowski had been to the finals in 2003 and 2004—as a caddy for Kris Cox, a close friend from mini-tours. He had been a mini-tour player since turning pro after playing at the University of Texas. Like all the players in the field, Malinowski had to fill out a biographical form, since all of them would appear in either the Nationwide or the PGA Tour media guide in 2006. When Malinowski got to the question about “greatest thrill in golf,” his answer was simple: “This week.”

  A total of sixty-five players had made it through the first two stages to reach the finals. For each of them, getting to the finals was a major achievement, since they had gone from no status at all when they started the three-stage grind in October to knowing they had a job playing golf the next year, regardless of what happened in the finals.

  Although securing a spot in the top 30 and ties, which would grant the player access to the PGA Tour, was the ultimate goal for everyone teeing it up at Orange County National, a lot of players would be happy to finish in one of the next 50 spots and have full playing privileges on the Nationwide Tour. Everyone after that would have conditional status on the Nationwide— from conditional number one to conditional number seventy-five or so, with those finishing at the back of the field unlikely to get into many events early in the year.

  “If you finish low, you have to hope that you’ll play well when your chances come,” Ryan Gioffre said, remembering his year as a conditional player. “That’s the only way to get into a lot of tournaments before the end of the year.”

  Of course, for some players, anything short of making it to the PGA Tour would be a huge disappointment. For the forty-two players exempt into the finals, the only reason to show up was to get full access to the big tour for 2006. Most of them had either been on tour in 2005 and finished between 126th and 150th on the money list or had finished between 22nd and 36th on the Nationwide Tour. (Normally, players 21 to 35 are exempt into the finals, but because Jason Gore had been given a “battlefield promotion” to the PGA Tour for winning three Nationwide events, his third-place finish on the Nationwide money list didn’t count among either the top 20 or the top 35.) In some cases, the Nationwide players and the 126th to 150th PGA Tour players had been only two or three shots away from retaining or receiving their playing privileges without going through the six-day grind of the finals.

  Perhaps no one in the field faced more pressure than Bill Haas. In a sense, that was extremely unfair. Still one of the youngest players in the finals, Haas was only twenty-three and had graduated from Wake Forest just eighteen months earlier, in the spring of 2004. But his golfing pedigree, combined with the success he had already had, made him one of the most visible players on the premises. His father was Jay Haas, a nine-time winner on tour, a two-time Ryder Cup team member, and one of the most popular players in golf. Jay had been playing successfully on tour for nearly thirty years (he made the Ryder Cup team in 2004 at age fifty) and is one of the tour’s brightest, funniest, and most engaging people.

  Because Jay had gone to Wake Forest with Curtis Strange and had been Strange’s closest friend on tour, Haas and Strange were often compared with each other by the media. Strange was mercurial: charming one minute, angry the next. Not someone to be trifled with after a bad round, he frequently stormed straight to the range, his face red with frustration, after he had played poorly. He was also the game’s best player in the late 1980s, winning seventeen tour titles while becoming the first man to win back-to-back U.S. Opens (1
988 and 1989) since Ben Hogan (1950 and 1951).

  In 2005 Haas received the Jim Murray award from the Golf Writers Association of America. The award, named for the late great Los Angeles Times columnist, is given annually to a player who has a history of being cooperative with the media. In his acceptance speech, Haas said, “I guess you could call this the ‘Curtis blew us off so we’ll go talk to Jay award.’”

  It was a funny line, though self-deprecating, since Haas had done plenty to merit being interviewed about himself during his career. The next morning, the first day of the Masters, Haas’s cell phone rang early.

  “I heard you nailed me last night,” Strange said.

  “Nailed you good, Curtis,” Haas answered.

  Strange laughed. It was virtually impossible for anyone to get angry with Haas.

  Jay’s second son, Bill, has many of the same qualities. He has an easy smile, and even though he is often quiet when in the company of the pros he grew up around, he has a lot of confidence in his golf game—although golf wasn’t always his favorite sport.

  “I actually liked basketball more than I liked golf right into high school,” he said. “If I hadn’t been 5-4 as a freshman, it might have been my main sport instead of golf. If I’d known I was going to grow [he is now a lean 6 feet 2] I might have kept playing basketball.”

  He and his older brother, Jay Jr., learned the game of golf from their father. They also took lessons from Billy Harmon, their father’s close friend and occasional caddy, and from their great-uncle Bob Goalby, the 1968 Masters champion. When Bill was a high school senior, he was recruited to go to Wake Forest by his uncle, Jerry Haas, who had played on tour for several years.

  As it turned out, Bill was a better player than Jay Jr. Even though Bill’s number one goal as a kid was to beat his brother— who was three years older than he—in everything, it became awkward when he became the Haas son whose golf everyone talked about.

  “I know that was tough for Jay, and it’s still tough for him at times,” Bill said. “He’s a very good player, but I’ve never sensed that he absolutely loves it. My sense has been it’s something he’s done because he has natural ability, and it didn’t get hard for him until after he turned pro.”

  Jay Jr., who went to Augusta State, had played most of his professional golf on mini-tours. He hadn’t signed up for Q School in 2005 because he wasn’t sure if he still wanted to play golf.

  Bill had great success at Wake Forest. He was an all-American as a sophomore and reached the semifinals of the U.S. Amateur, played that year at Oakland Hills Country Club outside Detroit. With his father and mother, Jan, following him around (something Jay didn’t do that often, because of his schedule and not wanting his kids to feel any more heat than they already did because of their last name), Bill lost on the 18th hole to Ricky Barnes, who would go on to win the tournament the next day. If he had won that match, Bill would have qualified for the Masters, since both finalists in the U.S. Amateur are invited to Augusta. That would have made him and his father the first father-son combination to play in the Masters together. Davis Love Jr. and his son Davis III had both played, but not at the same time.

  “The funny thing is, the Masters never crossed my mind until I shook hands with Ricky and it suddenly occurred to me, ‘He’s going to the Masters, and I’m not,’” Bill said. “The match was fun because we were both playing good golf. I tried to focus on that aspect of it.”

  So did his father, who was disappointed, too, but found himself enjoying being told what a fine player and nice young man his son was. “I thought I’d be a wreck out there watching,” he said. “I know from talking to Jan and others that watching is harder than playing. But I actually enjoyed it.”

  Bill could have turned pro right then and received a boatload of money from sponsors. But he wanted to play on the Walker Cup team the next summer, and he was enjoying college. Unlike a lot of college athletes who are pushed to turn pro, he didn’t need the money, so he saw no reason to rush.

  He was an all-American twice more, finished second in the NCAA championships as a senior, and was voted the college golfer of the year. He also did something his father hadn’t done— graduate from Wake Forest with a degree in religious studies. He chose his major because he met a professor early on whose view of religion from both a historical and a spiritual perspective fascinated him.

  Once he graduated, there wasn’t any doubt about where he was headed: the PGA Tour. Titleist instantly signed him to a five-year contract that would be worth at least $500,000 a year once he was on tour and about $200,000 a year if he wasn’t. As a decorated college player with a famous last name, he was a natural for tournament directors when they started handing out sponsor exemptions. It seemed very possible that he might make enough money to avoid Q School completely, going the Tiger Woods/Justin Leonard route. He made six cuts in nine tournaments (earning an extra start beyond the eight sponsor exemptions he was allowed by tying for ninth at the Deutsche Bank Championship), but the $359,000 he earned was well short of the $605,000 he needed to match the money made by the 125th player on the money list—which would have given him a get-out-of-Q-School card.

  Disappointing, but hardly a disaster. Going to Q School wouldn’t hurt him. “Everyone says it’s a rite of passage,” he said. “I just looked at it as an opportunity.”

  It turned out to be an opportunity lost. He made it to the finals in 2004 but came up short of his PGA Tour card and headed for the Nationwide Tour. Another disappointment, but not a big deal. “I wanted to be on the big tour,” he said. “I had played out there enough in ’04, thanks mainly to my dad, to think I could play with those guys. But I also knew a lot of very good players had played on the Nationwide and considered it a good learning experience, so I tried to look at it that way. Plus, there were a lot of guys in my age group who were going to be playing there, so I knew it would be fun.”

  Bill Haas might very well have made the top 21 on the Nationwide money list, but he decided to play six PGA Tour events for which he was offered sponsor exemptions, and he played in only twenty-one Nationwide events.

  “Looking back now, you can say I made a mistake,” he said. “If I had played those six weeks on the Nationwide, I’d have my card right now. And if I don’t make it this week, I’ll probably kick myself once or twice about it. But my attitude has always been that if I’m good enough, I’m good enough. Obviously, I didn’t anticipate [the Nationwide tournament in] Miami being canceled by a hurricane. I was rested for that tournament and think I would have played well.”

  He smiled. “When people bring that up, I like to tell them I don’t think I was the person who suffered the most because of the hurricane.”

  Haas had taken the week before Miami off after playing six straight weeks. “I was completely burnt—toast,” he said. “You play too many weeks in a row, you start to hate every hotel, you hate the people you’re around, you hate everything.”

  When Miami was canceled, he went into the Nationwide Championship in 21st place on the money list—holding the last spot that would get him on tour. That week, perhaps for the first time in his golf career, Haas let the pressure and expectations get to him.

  “I’m not sure why, but I felt as if I was going to let a lot of people down if I didn’t play well enough to get my card that week,” he said. “My family, my friends, my sponsors—I knew they were all expecting me to get my card. I was, too. I don’t like to fail people, and I let it get to me that week.”

  He played decently the first two rounds, shooting 70–71, but fell to 74–75 on the weekend. He ended up tied for 24th place— three shots away from the number he needed to hang on to 21st place. Two players passed him, and he ended up 23rd for the year. What’s more, for the first time in his life, he couldn’t bring himself to face the postround music, stalking away from a handful of writers who wanted to talk to him after his rounds on Saturday and Sunday.

  “Bad week all the way around,” he said, relaxing on the last pr
actice day before the finals began. “I played poorly; I behaved poorly; I really didn’t do anything right. I hope I learned from it. I hope I’ve learned from everything that’s happened in the last year. I’m trying to take the approach here that whatever happens, happens. If I make it, it’s because I’m ready for the tour. If I don’t, it’s because I’m not.”

  He paused, took off his cap, and ran his hand through his dark, thinning hair. “If I’m being honest with myself, though, I want to be out there with the big boys,” he said. “I’ve played with them. I’m ready. I just have to earn the right to prove it.”

  THE LAST DAY OF NOVEMBER, the first day of the 2005 Q School finals, dawned warm and breezy. Most of the players had already noted that almost any wind would play havoc with their shotmaking, since there were almost no trees on the golf course to block the gusts. A lot of them teed off in the morning wearing jackets, with temperatures starting out in the 60s and warming through the day.

  The tour pairs players for the first two rounds, re-pairs them for the next two rounds, and then re-pairs them again for each of the last two rounds. Neither golf course was considered to be noticeably easier than the other, so the first-day scores would be a fair reflection of where players stood in the field.

  The finals are a marathon. Until 1998 there was a four-round cut, which meant that the pressure to get in gear after a bad opening round or two ratcheted up quickly in the third round, because half the field—about 180 players in those days—would be cut after 72 holes.

  In 1993 three young players trying to get their tour cards for the first time got off to poor starts and found themselves outside the cut number going into the fourth round. Jim Furyk shot 69 to make the cut on the number (two under par), as did Steve Stricker. Both went on to get their cards—Stricker easily after a fifth-round 65, Furyk on the number. The third player, David Duval, shot 67 in the fourth round and thought he had rescued himself by going from four over par to one under. But the cut slid to two under late in the day, and Duval went home.