Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major

by John Feinstein

  It would be difficult to know Mize and not want him to succeed. He is soft-spoken and modest, a deeply religious man, but one who doesn’t wear religion on his sleeve. Jim Mackay, who has been Phil Mickelson’s caddy for the past fourteen years, caddied for Mize earlier in his career and says very succinctly, “I have never met a better human being than Larry Mize.”

  Character doesn’t give you a pass through Q School, although it may help you deal with its vagaries. After Mize played on Sunday, he sat at a table in the dining area with his agent, Jim Lehman (Ryder Cup captain Tom Lehman’s brother); his caddy, Tim Tallman; and a couple of friends. “This time tomorrow, there will be a lot of celebrating going on in here,” he said with a knowing smile as he surveyed the crowded room. “Those who aren’t celebrating won’t be anywhere to be found. They’ll all be down the road licking their wounds. Regardless of what happens to me, I feel good that I’ve hung in and competed.

  “Of course, in the end, no one cares if you competed. They want to know if you succeeded.”

  THE END OF THE FIFTH ROUND meant that a lot of players had to face up to the fact that they weren’t going to get a 2006 PGA Tour card. Hiroshi Matsuo shot 71 for the second straight day and was 10 shots outside the cut line. His realistic goal for Monday would be full Nationwide status. The same was true for Steve Wheatcroft, who had not been able to bounce back from his awful finish in the third round. He was 12 shots outside the number after shooting 71 on Sunday. Other veteran tour players also had fallen back: Jim McGovern, Mike Springer, and J. P. Hayes were all too far back, as were other experienced players such as Esteban Toledo, Perry Moss, Franklin Langham, and Jeff Hart. All had been fully exempt tour players at various times in their careers and now faced a return to the Nationwide Tour in the latter stages of their playing lives.

  Blaine McCallister and Notah Begay III, both multiple past winners on the tour, were still alive but on life support, sitting at three under par. Brian Henninger hadn’t been able to maintain his momentum after his fourth-round 67. He shot 71 and was at four under, as was Steve Stricker. David Sutherland and Tommy Tolles were each a shot better than that, clinging to hope for a low round on Monday. David Peoples, another past winner on tour who had also battled injuries, was at six under, and Bob Heintz, after a 72, was at seven under and in need of a low final round.

  “All the people that you’re talking about—the veteran guys— have absolutely no interest in going back to the Nationwide,” Heintz said. “We’ve all been there, done that. I didn’t have to play Q School at all this year, and I’d be exempt on the Nationwide. Where I’m sitting isn’t bad if I can get something going tomorrow, because the one thing I can guarantee is that the number isn’t going three more shots under par tomorrow. Not the last day of Q School. It’s 11 now; I’d say there’s a good chance it will be 11 tomorrow. Maybe even 10 if the wind blows a little. So my approach has to be that I don’t need to shoot 65. In the 60s, yes, absolutely, and I know I can do that.”

  He smiled. “Of course, it will help a lot if I can sleep tonight.”

  He wouldn’t be the only one worrying about being sleepless in Orlando. Even the rules officials were feeling jumpy as the tournament wound down. “You wouldn’t be human if you said the last day isn’t tough to watch,” Jon Brendle said. “You feel great for the guys who make it, because you know what they’ve gone through and what it means to them. But there are always sad stories. For whatever reason, those are the ones you tend to remember.”

  Brad Klapprott had been the saddest story of the fourth day because of his back miseries. After lots of ice and electrostim he felt well enough to play Sunday, and he played better (73) than the day before. But the 80 had ruined his chances even to get full status on the Nationwide. His round Saturday moved him up two spots, to a tie for 144th, still 11 shots outside the cut line for full status on the Nationwide. His conditional number, however, was improving. Two more players, Phillip Price and Aaron Barber, dropped out after the fifth round, meaning 159 players would tee it up for Monday’s final round.

  By late afternoon, the driving range at the far end of the parking lot was packed. So was the putting green. A lot of players were searching for something—anything—that might jump-start them the next morning. Even though it seemed as if most of the players in the field were on the range, it was quiet, the thwacking sound of balls being hit the only consistent sound.

  David Sutherland leaned on his driver and looked around him for a while, shaking his head. “You know, at this point, the chances that any of us are going to find something out here [are] close to zero,” he said. “You don’t come to Q School looking for your golf swing, and you certainly don’t go looking for it before the last round.”

  Why, then, was everyone out here, the hot sun still beating down on them, when they could be in air-conditioned hotel rooms watching football?

  Sutherland laughed. “Because we would all sit there and stare at the TV, and if you walked in an hour later, most of us wouldn’t know the score or who is playing,” he said. “And most of us are big football fans. The Cowboys and Giants were on inside when I was eating lunch, and I swear no one was watching. That’s a big game.

  “Right now, none of us wants to go back to our rooms because we’re just going to sit there and stare into space and worry about tomorrow. In a different way, everyone is at a crossroads in our lives tomorrow. We’re all going off in one direction or another, and only a handful can be pretty sure right now what that direction is. If you think about it, that’s a pretty scary thought.”

  He teed up another driver. “Which is why we’re out here. Out here, we don’t have to think.”

  Johnson Wagner insisted he was happy to think about golf. “I’m going to go home and think I’m one round away from being on the PGA Tour,” he said. “I’ve never been in that position before. I expect to sleep like a baby.”

  No doubt most of the players would sleep like a baby that night: a baby with colic.

  17

  Final Countdown

  THOSE WHO WERE ABLE TO SLEEP past sunrise the next morning awoke to the sort of day every golfer dreads when facing an important round: a day when the wind would blow.

  By 7 a.m., it was already getting gusty. It wasn’t cold the way it had been on the second day, but it was windy enough that playing conditions would be much tougher than they had been the previous three days.

  “Wind and nerves,” Brian Henninger joked. “A perfect combination.”

  Most of the leaders would play Panther Lake, although a few players who had jumped up the leader board the previous day would be at Crooked Cat. The players were re-paired after the fifth round, but everyone switched golf courses one more time. The players with the lowest scores at Crooked Cat were Dan Forsman, Jeff Klauk, and Cameron Beckman, who all began the last round at seven under par. That meant the top forty-seven players in the field were at Panther Lake.

  One of the myths of golf and the PGA Tour is that every last-day pin position is the toughest one available. When golfers refer to a “Sunday pin,” they mean the flag has been placed in the most difficult spot the rules officials can find on a green—the spot where they expect it to be during the tournament’s last round.

  In fact, pin positions are usually divided up over the four days: four greens will have the toughest spots on Thursday, four on Friday, and then five each on Saturday and Sunday. And picking the toughest spots is always subjective: one man’s Sunday pin might be another man’s easy pin.

  The pin placements on Monday were identical to what they had been on Sunday in order to ensure that all the players faced conditions as close to identical as possible (one half of the field on Sunday and the other half on Monday on each course). But regardless of pin positions, the wind would make the courses play very differently. As Jon Brendle made his early-morning tour of Panther Lake, checking the tees and greens and bunkers to make sure they were as pristine as possible, he paused at the top of the hill behind the 17th green. H
e pointed at the flag, which was located on the back/left of the green, on the upper plateau of the two-level green.

  “Now yesterday, that wasn’t that hard a pin,” he said. “You pick the right club, maybe an eight-iron, and just make sure you don’t pull it in the bunker, and you’re fine. Today, with that wind, given the pressure these guys are going to be feeling when they get to this hole . . . ” He paused and shook his head. “If you make par on this hole today, when you really need it, you’ve earned your card. And a birdie? Hell, I’ll drive to your house and hand you the card in person.”

  He got into his cart and said, “I don’t envy any of these guys today.”

  A LOT OF PLAYERS might have envied Brendle and the rest of the rules staff, sitting comfortably in their carts as the day got under way. Not only was it windy, but it was also humid, making conditions both difficult and uncomfortable.

  Orange County National had a New Year’s Eve afternoon feel to it as players gathered in the clubhouse one last time to sip coffee or eat a Danish before going out to warm up. A large chunk of the PGA Tour staff was now in town. Sid Wilson, vice president of player relations (the PGA Tour is awash in vice presidents) was there to greet those who would be heading to the tour in 2006. On this day, his job would be relatively pleasant. He would congratulate the qualifiers, focusing on the newcomers to make sure they understood there was paperwork they needed to pick up before they left. Then there was a party that night and an orientation session the next morning on matters ranging from insurance to investments to dealing with pro-am partners and the media.

  Most weeks on tour, Wilson spends Tuesday and Wednesday on the range and in the locker room listening to player complaints on everything from the quality of the golf course to the quality of the food to the pace of play in the Monday pro-am. He is also responsible for organizing player meetings and for convincing players to serve on the Policy Board or the Players Advisory Committee (PAC). Players shy away from both jobs because they require a lot of time and have very little influence, since Commissioner Tim Finchem controls five of the nine votes on the Policy Board and since many PAC recommendations—if they aren’t in concert with the commissioner’s ideas—go unheeded.

  Paul Goydos, a many-time Q Schooler who had served on the PAC for several years, remembered a 16–0 vote against giving full exemptions to foreign players who played in the Presidents Cup. Two weeks later, the policy board, at Finchem’s behest, voted in favor of the exemptions. Goydos resigned from the PAC soon after.

  One of Wilson’s other jobs is to formally notify players when they are subject to a fine and to deal with any appeals. The PGA Tour treats fines as if they are matters of national security, but the players—even the very rich ones such as Tiger Woods—resent them. Woods, who is frequently fined for using profanity on the golf course, has complained that the system is unfair because he rarely hits a shot that isn’t captured by a TV camera and a nearby microphone.

  The best reaction to a fine in tour history may have come from Jay Haas, who is as mild-mannered as anyone who has ever played the game. On a hot afternoon in Milwaukee, Haas had a terrible third round, going from in contention to near the back of the pack. On 18 he slapped a miserable chip that ran all the way across the green, summing up his day. As he walked to his ball, thinking all sorts of dark thoughts, someone standing nearby shouted, “Boy, Haas, you really suck.”

  For once, Haas couldn’t keep his frustrations in check. “Fuck you,” he said, looking directly at the heckler.

  The next day, after he finished his round, Haas found rules official Wade Cagle waiting for him. “I knew just what it was about,” Haas said. “I wasn’t that upset about it, [but] Wade was a little pale.

  “‘I got a note, Jay,’ Cagle said. ‘I think it’s a mistake, but I have to ask you about it. A fan claims you said “Fuck you” to him. He misunderstood, right? You probably said “Thank you,” and he didn’t hear you right.’

  “‘No, Wade,’ I said. ‘He heard me exactly right.’”

  Paul Goydos probably held the record for most unusual fine. He was nailed for yelling at a telephone answering machine. Even Wilson, who has spent a good deal of time through the years arguing about anything and everything with Goydos, had a tough time keeping a straight face and maintaining the tour’s strict “we don’t comment on fines” policy when that story came up.

  Goydos was leading the World Series of Golf after the first round, which had been played on Friday because of rain on Thursday. Both the second and third rounds were scheduled to be played Saturday in order to ensure a Sunday finish for TV. Goydos played miserably all day Saturday and went from being in one of the last groups to being in one of the first.

  “The only consolation in the whole thing for me was that it meant I could get an early flight and get home on Sunday night instead of staying until Monday, which I would have had to do if I played late,” he said. “So I called the tour travel office to change my flight.”

  He got a tape informing him that the office closed at 4 p.m. on Saturday. Since he had been in the last group, Goydos hadn’t finished until six o’clock. “I just started screaming into the phone, ‘What do you mean you close at four o’clock on Saturday? We play until six o’clock on Saturdays! We don’t need you in there at ten in the morning. We need you at six at night!’” He smiled while telling the story. “There was probably at least one profanity in each sentence. Maybe two.”

  Thus Wilson had to write Goydos a letter telling him he was being fined for yelling profanities into an answering machine.

  The tour did change the travel office hours after the incident, however. “Didn’t cost me a cent,” Goydos said. “Bunch of guys got together and raised the money to pay my fine.”

  The last day of Q School would be far more pleasant for Wilson than a typical day on tour. None of the men he would be dealing with would have very much to complain about. The person who wouldn’t have as easy a day was Wilson’s Nationwide Tour counterpart Marty Caffey. He would be dealing with a number of players who had just had their hearts broken and who, in many cases, would be going to a tour they had no desire to play.

  “You learn to tread lightly,” said Caffey, like Wilson a southerner who rarely let anyone see him sweat. “For some of these guys, walking out of here today with their Nationwide Tour card is a big deal, and, to be honest, a lot of them are the ones who will have questions for me—the first-timers. The older guys are . . . different. I’ll give them lots of space. If there’s something I have to tell them, I will. And if they have to ask me something, I’ll try to answer in a way that lets them know I understand that this isn’t exactly the best day of their lives.”

  Jodi Herb, who works with Wilson and Caffey in the tour’s Ponte Vedra Beach office, was also in town, set up at a table in a corner of the dining room. Each player would report to her at the end of the day for a set of instructions. The smaller and much happier group would be given information on the orientation session and the 2006 PGA Tour. The rest would be handed a schedule that told them their year would begin in Panama in February, rather than Hawaii in January. “Maybe that’s the approach to take the last day—tell yourself you’re just playing for a trip to Hawaii,” Bob Heintz joked.

  One PGA Tour official who was noticeably absent was Tim Finchem. It had become a tradition at the Nationwide Tour finals each October for the commissioner to present the “graduating” class of twenty with their PGA Tour cards after the last round. There was no such ceremony on the last day of Q School.

  “It’s probably something we should do,” Finchem said when asked why there was no ceremony at Q School. “I guess the notion has been that the guys on the Nationwide play all year to get to that day, and it makes sense to have some kind of ceremony. But it’s certainly just as big a deal for the guys who make it through Q School.” There was no ceremony after Q School in ’06, but Finchem did take the ’07 rookies to lunch the next day.

  The clubhouse scene on the last morning w
as borderline chaotic. Orange County National was now overrun with golf people. Agents and equipment reps were everywhere, either showing support for clients or looking to sign up new ones. Some players had broken down and asked their wives or girlfriends to come in for the last day. Many of the younger players who were in position to get to the tour for the first time were being followed around the golf course by buddies who wanted to be there for their pals’ big moments.

  Most of the important action would take place at Panther Lake, the golf course farther from the clubhouse. By comparison, Crooked Cat looked a bit like a ghost town, with only a handful of players in contention to make it to the big tour.

  “Maybe a few of us can sneak up when no one is looking,” said Dan Forsman, who would be in the last group going off the 10th tee at Crooked Cat. “If I could post a low number without anyone noticing, that would be just fine with me.”

  That wouldn’t be likely, especially for a player as well known and liked as Forsman. If he did make a late move, the Golf Channel would certainly have a camera on him as he finished. Like a lot of older players, Forsman, who is about as cooperative with the media as anyone who has ever played the game, would prefer to play Q School in isolation.

  “I think what they do by televising Q School is great for golf,” he said. “But selfishly, I’d just like to be out there with no one watching when I play this tournament. This isn’t like a regular tour event. This is so . . . ” He paused, looking for a word. “Personal.”