He would be the first to admit, however, that he wasn’t the same player now that he had been then. His game wasn’t all that different, but his attitude was. “I was very cocky when I first got out here,” he said. “I’m not sure I respected my peers as much as I should have. I’ve certainly learned that lesson over the years.
“Back then, I had this hunger to prove to everyone how good I was. People would look at me and say, ‘That guy’s on the tour?’ because I was little and looked young. Now I really don’t care anymore about that stuff. I just want to enjoy doing what I do—whichever tour I do it on. I’d like to be a mentor to some of the younger players, because I’ve seen a lot and learned a lot. I would enjoy that.
“When B. J. [Staten] found out he had made the finals after that collapse in Houston, I was so happy for him that I almost started crying myself. I liked the fact that he cried. I think any man who can cry that way must be a pretty good guy. I’m rooting for him here. That’s the funny thing: I want to do well here, obviously, but there are a bunch of other guys I’m rooting for to play well, too. Some are guys in my age group, like Steve Stricker and Grant Waite and David Sutherland—guys I’ve known for years. Then there are some of the young guys I’ve met on the Nationwide, like B. J. and Chad Collins.”
He shook his head. “I’ll tell you one thing: I’m glad I’m not starting out now. I don’t think I could hit it far enough to compete consistently. These kids have so much more game than we did when we were young. It’s almost scary.
“I think the one thing I have going for me now is that I understand this event. You can’t sit around and figure out what it’s going to take or worry about anyone else but yourself. A few years ago, I shot 38 under par at second and third stage combined, and I didn’t make the tour. I was 25 under at second stage— won by 12 shots—and 13 under at the finals, and missed by one. Think about that: I averaged almost four under par for ten rounds of golf—averaged!—and it wasn’t good enough.
“That’s golf. That’s Q School.” He smiled. “I guess that proves why Q School is like life: there is absolutely no guarantee that it will be fair.”
IF THERE WAS ONE THING that frustrated Henninger and a number of players on the first day, it was the pace of play. There is nothing on earth slower than the pace of play at Q School, with the possible exception of the time it takes to get to a human voice when calling any government office.
“Generally, the unwritten rule on tour is, if you’ve got a putt of 18 inches or less, you walk up and finish,” Henninger said. “Here, you see guys inside a foot marking their ball. We were out there more than five and a half hours today, and we all know it’s only going to get worse as the week goes on.”
Rules officials can put players on the clock at Q School, especially if they lag behind the group in front of them. But groups rarely lag behind, because everyone plays slowly. Backups of two or even three groups on a tee are not uncommon. Stories about players losing their minds while waiting for twenty minutes to tee off, especially later in the week, are part of Q School lore.
“It’s amazing the stories that come out of Q School,” David Sutherland said after shooting a frustrating 76 on opening day. “I played in the British Open a few years ago, at St. Andrews no less. I think since then, maybe three people have said to me, ‘What was that like?’ I get asked all the time what Q School is like. I think it may have something to do with the fact that a lot of people, especially low handicappers or anyone who ever played college golf, sits back and thinks, ‘I wonder how I would do.’ Of course, the answer for most of them is they wouldn’t make it out of first stage. But they don’t really know that.
“Q School is like a brotherhood.” He laughed. “In fact, it may be the one thing guys like me have on Tiger and the handful of other guys who never had to go. If you’re sitting around during a rain delay in the locker room and you really want to get a good conversation going, just start telling Q School stories. Just about everyone in that room will have a story that’s sad or funny or poignant or outrageous.
“It’s like being initiated into a fraternity. It may not be fun at the time, but it bonds you with people in ways very few things can. It is also a complete meritocracy. You don’t make it through because you have a guaranteed contract. You make it through because you play well enough—period. Look at my brother [Kevin]. He went to Q School eight times before he made it. Now he’s a millionaire, because he stuck with it and because he was determined to really make it once he was out there. I remember in 1996, when we both made it, we were rooming together at La Purisima. We got back to the hotel afterward—Kevin made it on the number by holing out from the fairway at 15—and he looked at me and said, ‘You realize, don’t you, that we haven’t done anything yet.’ That may be why he’s done as much as he’s done.
“To me, what’s neat about Q School is, it is completely up to me at this point in my life if I want to enter. No one calls me in and says I’m being cut or I’m being put on waivers. If I want to try, I can try. I’m the one who decides when it’s time to quit, not anyone else.”
Sutherland’s presence at Q School was something of a conundrum. Part of him was ready to move on with his life. He would turn forty in February and had two young sons at home. In conversation, he appeared to be every bit as passionate—if not more passionate—about Civil War history and politics as he was about golf. He talked about getting a high school teaching job—history or English—or a coaching job. He had filled in as a cohost on a morning drive show on the all-sports radio station in Sacramento, his hometown.
He and his brother had learned the game there from their father, Bill Sutherland, an Air Force pilot who had flown F-111s. There was a nine-hole, par-three golf course right near their house outside Sacramento, and Kevin and David had paid 75 cents a day to go around and around until their father decided it was okay to take them to a real golf course.
Neither was a star in high school, and both were walk-ons at Fresno State, but they were determined to keep improving and make it to the PGA Tour. Kevin was thirty-one when he finally made it in 1995, but he had to return to Q School a year later. Both he and David made it through that year, and both were steady presences on the tour until injuries began to plague David in 2001.
Now, by his own admission, David was searching for his second act—and was well-read enough to understand that phrase— but a piece of him still wasn’t quite finished with golf. He’d had both wrist and shoulder surgery in 2001 and had come back. After a second wrist surgery and seven cortisone shots, and after being told by doctors in 2005 that he’d be lucky ever to play even recreational golf again, he was back once more. He had a condition in his wrist known as synovitis, which meant that the joint was chronically inflamed.
“The doctor told me I should start thinking about finding a job,” he said. “Having the wrist fused was a possibility. Even now, if I hit balls for thirty minutes, it swells. I ice it and take Advil. I know, even if I make it back to the tour, that I haven’t got twenty to twenty-five tournaments in me. No way. I’d like to be able to say I retired as a member of the PGA Tour. That’s one reason I’m here. If I made it back, I’d play as much as the wrist allowed, get a cortisone shot every six weeks, and take twelve to fifteen Advil a day when I was playing. That’s the only way I could do it. If I make the Nationwide, I might play a little, but probably not much.
“I have to admit, though, that I was surprised at second stage by how good it felt just to be back in the heat of competition. I mean, it had been a long time since I came to the back nine on the last day of a tournament and knew I had to really grind to get what I wanted. It was work, but it felt great because I felt like I was a golfer again. That’s what I told my wife when I got home. Even if I had missed by one shot, I would have walked away saying, ‘So that’s what real players do to compete.’ I felt like a real player again.”
The bonus came on the 18th hole of that final day. Like any veteran player, Sutherland was pretty sure h
e knew what the number would be, and he was right on it. “I had made a 10-footer for par on 17, and I knew I couldn’t make worse than par on 18 and still get in,” he said. “And then I proceeded to drive it in the rough. Bayonet [the second-stage golf course at Fort Ord, California] is a tough golf course. Difficult, gnarly rough. No give. I hacked it out of there and put my third shot about 10 feet from the hole. Do-or-die putt, and I made it.”
Even after he had signed his card, Sutherland wasn’t certain he had made it. Nevertheless, he left the golf course to go get lunch. He called back after lunch and was told he was in. “I did that for several reasons,” he said. “One, I don’t like hanging around scoreboards. Two, there are going to be guys who just miss, and I don’t enjoy watching them try to deal with the disappointment. And three, I’m not going to say it wasn’t important—I mean, I really worked for it—but if I hadn’t made it, I was going to be okay. For me, being there and being competitive was what it was about. The same thing is true this week. I’m going to give this everything I’ve got. I got here early to get to know the courses, and I’m ready to grind for six hours a day for six days.
“But I’m comfortable with where I am right now. I know, best case, I’ve got one more year left in me. I’ve got a wrist that makes opening the refrigerator difficult and picking up my kids with one arm impossible. I understand where I am.”
He smiled. “The good news is, I feel like a golfer again—one way or the other—and I like the way that feels.”
14
Cold and Wind and . . . Cold
THE CONDITIONS HADN’T BEEN EASY the first day, but they had been mild enough to allow more than half the field to shoot even par or better. Things turned tougher on the second day. The weather was cold—somewhere in the 50s when the early groups teed off at 8 a.m.—and the swirling wind made it feel even colder. The more difficult conditions, combined with some players needing to play some catch-up, ratcheted up the tension just a bit for everyone.
Brian Claar was patrolling the front nine of Crooked Cat in his Rules Cart early in the morning, huddling in a Windbreaker to stay warm, when he heard someone calling his name. He was surprised to see Brian Henninger walking toward him. If Henninger had wanted a ruling, he would be standing on a specific spot. Clearly, this was something else. Claar and Henninger were friends, contemporaries who had played on tour together for a number of years. Claar was fairly certain this wasn’t a social call.
“Hey, Brian,” Henninger said, his normally friendly voice filled with sarcasm. “Nice setup on number one. Did you guys happen to notice we’re playing in a hurricane?”
Claar knew exactly what Henninger was talking about, and he shuddered. The first hole at Crooked Cat was playing dead into the wind, and the tee had been moved back as far as possible, perhaps because the course had played a full shot easier than Panther Lake the day before. With the tee back and the wind up, it was almost impossible for many, if not most, players to reach the fairway, even with a good drive.
Henninger hadn’t been that upset about shooting 74 on the first day, but when he walked onto the first tee to begin the second round and found the fairway virtually unreachable, his normally calm demeanor disappeared. He was even less calm when he walked off the first green with a bogey. Claar, sitting on a cart path to the left of the second fairway, was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“My heart sank when I heard Brian,” he said. “I told him I was sorry, I hadn’t done the front nine setup, and he let me have it again. I knew right away it was going to be a long day. When Brian Henninger gets upset like that, you know a lot of guys are going to be upset.”
There were, in fact, numerous complaints to rules officials that day about different aspects of the setup on both golf courses. Jon Brendle made the mistake of sitting down at lunch with Grant Waite, another normally mild-mannered fellow, and found himself getting an earful in between mouthfuls about a waste area on Panther Lake that Waite thought was unfair and unplayable. Waite almost never raises his voice. But he was leaning forward in his chair, his face filled with anger and frustration as he spoke. “Jon, you guys don’t understand,” he said. “We’re out here playing for our lives.”
“No you’re not, Grant,” Brendle said. “You are not going to die if you don’t finish in the top 30 on Monday. Your family isn’t going to go hungry either. I know this is important, and I know you guys are under a lot of pressure, but let’s not make this bigger than it is. For your sake, don’t make it bigger than it is.”
Waite cooled off a little. “Maybe I exaggerated,” he said. “But you know what I’m saying here. All we want is a fair course setup.”
“And all we want to do is give it to you,” Brendle answered.
The consensus among the players was that the tee at Crooked Cat number one had been a mistake. The rules officials conceded that it might have been “borderline.”
“You can’t let it ruin your day,” Brendle said. “It wasn’t as if the fairway was unreachable. I had guys tell me they reached it, so it wasn’t impossible. The one thing I’ve learned about working this week is to not take anything guys say to me seriously. They just aren’t themselves.”
Brendle had heard about the mini-tirade Henninger had directed at Claar. “That’s what I’m talking about,” he said. “I mean, Brian Henninger yelling at people? Come on. Brian Henninger? That’s a different person.”
“My evil twin,” Henninger said that night. “Sometimes I think you need to become your evil twin playing in this thing.”
Henninger had shot 73 in the second round on a day when the average score at Crooked Cat had gone up just about one shot per round from the day before. Panther Lake, where the wind seemed a little less difficult, had scored almost exactly the same.
Clearly, another thing that had gone up was the tension level. “It’s only going to get worse, I suspect,” said Steve Stricker, one of the mildest-mannered men on tour under most circumstances.
Stricker had come off the course that afternoon frustrated after a second straight even-par 72. That left him smack in the middle of the field—tied with eighteen other players in 73rd place, three shots away from where the cut would have fallen if it had been day six. Forty-two players were at three under par or better, and those who were not under par knew that although the time to stop saying “plenty of golf still to be played” hadn’t arrived yet, it wasn’t that far off.
Stricker was angrier with himself than with the course setup. He knew that he was lucky to be as close as he was, because the golf courses, though not extremely hard, had enough danger in them that someone hitting the ball all over the place—the way Stricker was—could easily put up a high number. He had watched Ryan Hietala, one of the players in his group, go from 68 the first day to 78 the second.
“I think I made a mistake deciding to stay here,” Stricker said, referring to the room right behind the putting green where he was staying for the week. “I’m starting to feel like I’m in Groundhog Day. I wake up every morning, eat the same breakfast in the same place, walk to the range to warm up, play, eat lunch in the same place, practice, and then go back to the room.” He smiled. “I feel like I’ve been here my whole life.”
He had been there only five days, including the practice rounds. There was no doubting that the marathon aspect of the event wore on everyone, especially when you threw in what was at stake. Jon Brendle was correct that no one’s life was at stake, but the quality of the next year of their lives was hanging in the balance. Everyone knew that one blown shot—whether on the opening Wednesday or the closing Monday—could radically alter their lifestyle for twelve months, and possibly beyond.
“You just can’t allow yourself to think that there can be a one-shot difference between playing for $5 million a week versus $500,000 a week,” said Bob Heintz, who had been on the right side of the cut line by one shot at Lake Jovita. “If you start to think that way, you won’t be able to hold a club. What’s more, we all know the stories about
the guys who double-bogeyed the last hole to miss by one and never got back. Or that poor guy [Jaxon Brigman] at Doral in ’99.
“It’s the elephant in the room all week. You go back to your room every night and sit there and say, ‘I’m not thinking about it.’”
A number of players produced good bounce-back rounds on day two. David Sutherland recovered from his god-awful 76 to shoot 69 and move to within four shots of the cut line. Nick Thompson, the young Walker Cup player from Georgia Tech who had won the first stage at the TPC Tampa Bay and then cruised through the second stage in Kingwood, had put a nervous 74 behind him and produced a 67 that put him right on the number at 141. He was smiling as he hit range balls late in the afternoon.
“I played poorly the first round at Tampa and then had a really good second round there when I had to have it,” Thompson said. “I felt pretty confident I could do it here, too. Of course, doing it as opposed to thinking I could do it is pretty nice.”
B. J. Staten went from 72 to 68 and was feeling a lot more relaxed at his first finals than he had felt on day one. Larry Mize also played better, going from 72 to 69. Bubba Dickerson rebounded with a solid 70 after an opening 73. “Last year, I played my way from inside the number to outside,” he said. “This year, I’m trying to do the opposite.”
Some players who had played well on day one went backward on the second day: Heintz went from 68 to 74; Bill Haas followed his 68 with a 72; Tom Byrum had good reason not to look at the scoreboard after following his 67 with a 73; and Tommy Tolles, after an okay 71, shot a not-so-okay 74.
Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major Page 23