Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major

by John Feinstein

  “I’d seen a guy get in the back left bunker on the first day,” he said. “I knew it was almost impossible to get up and down from there. I just wanted to get the ball on the green, make par, and go for birdie at the 18th.”

  As soon as the ball was airborne, he knew he was in trouble. It started right at the flagstick and began drifting left, the wind pushing it toward the bunker he wanted to avoid at all costs. The ball took one big bounce and landed in the bunker. Tomasulo looked sick.

  Staten hit the shot Tomasulo wanted to hit: the ball drifted left of the flag but stayed safely on the green. He carefully putted downhill from 20 feet, leaving himself with a knee-knocking four-footer.

  “Oh, God,” Smith said. “I don’t think I can breathe.”

  Fortunately, Smith wasn’t putting. Staten knocked it in for par.

  In the meantime, Tomasulo, knowing he had to make par, tried to open the face of his wedge and somehow stop his bunker shot from running through the green. He couldn’t do it. The ball squirted from the bunker, through the green, and almost into the water fronting the green. That was the moment when it first occurred to him that he wasn’t going to get his card. His knees almost buckling, he tried desperately to hole his third shot but was lucky to get it within 15 feet out of the weeds in front of the water. When he missed the bogey putt, he knew he was done. Putter on top of his head, clearly in shock, he stood aside to watch Wetterich and Staten putt out. Walking to the 18th tee, he fired his ball into a waste area behind the tee and stood staring in that direction as if hoping he might wake up and find that it was Monday morning and he still had 18 holes to play instead of one.

  Staten and Wetterich, both at 11 under, were delighted to have only one hole to play. Staten crushed his drive down the middle, shook his head, and said, “That’s all I’ve got.” Tomasulo’s drive found the fairway, but it didn’t really matter. He walked behind Staten and Wetterich, trying to find his composure.

  Staten had hit his drive so far that he had only a five-iron left to the green. But as he got over the ball, the enormity of what he was about to do hit him. His hands started trembling. He tried to shake it off and put a smooth swing on the ball, knowing that even if he missed the green, getting down in three from there would be good enough.

  “I almost shanked it completely,” he said.

  The ball flew to the left in the direction of a water hazard that was, for all intents and purposes, out of play. Staten almost brought it into play. The ball stopped no more than five yards from the water.

  “This round is never going to end,” Smith said.

  Staten composed himself and hit a solid chip to about 15 feet above the hole.

  “Oh, God, he’s got a downhill putt,” Caponi said. “I don’t think I can watch.”

  Wetterich was comfortably on in three, with about a 10-foot birdie putt. Tomasulo was also on the green in three, but at that moment he seemed more concerned with catching the eye of his friend John Merrick, who was finishing on the ninth, which runs parallel to 18. When Merrick finally saw him, Tomasulo put his hands out, palms up, as if to say, “And?”

  Merrick shook his head and pointed his thumbs down. Then he pointed at Tomasulo. Sadly, Tomasulo had to send the same signal back.

  Staten took plenty of time over his birdie putt and hit it just the way he wanted to, the ball trickling to a stop about four inches from the cup. “I think,” Smith said, breaking into a huge grin at last, “he can handle that one.”

  Staten tapped in. A moment later, so did Wetterich, and Tomasulo congratulated both of them. The number, they would soon learn, had gone back to 11 under but wasn’t going to go any lower.

  The three players made their way through what had now become a battery of fans—some just waiting to watch players finish, others there to see specific players. Staten and Wetterich were being pounded on the back. Tomasulo had become invisible. He walked into the scorer’s trailer, signed his card, and then stood watching as Staten talked to Rich Lerner of the Golf Channel. Later, he would have absolutely no memory of standing there. “From the moment I shook hands until the moment I got to my car, I really don’t remember anything,” he said. “It’s all a blank.”

  Staten was still a tad shaken by the near disaster on his second shot. But once the congratulations began, he moved into celebration mode. “It’s one of those things,” he said, “where no matter how many times you’ve dreamed it, the actual moment is even better. Much, much better.”

  ALL AROUND THE TWO GOLF COURSES, dreams and nightmares were being realized—often, as with Staten and Tomasulo, at the same moment in the same group.

  While Tommy Tolles was fighting his way to 11 under, only to see all his work blown up when he drove the ball into the water on his last hole of the day, Alex Aragon, playing alongside Tolles, was having that magical day that everyone who begins the last day outside the number dreams about.

  Like Staten, Aragon had played all three stages after finishing 212th on the Nationwide money list in 2005. He was twenty-six and had never played in a PGA Tour event in his life. Now, after shooting the low round of the final day (65), he was going to the PGA Tour as a full-fledged member.

  Bob Heintz, playing in the same group with Tomasulo’s friend John Merrick, also put on a late charge. After he birdied the sixth hole, he was at 10 under par with three holes to play. “In my heart of hearts, I knew I needed one more birdie,” he said later.

  He came close on each of the last three holes. But when his 15-footer on the ninth slid below the hole, something told him he had just missed getting back to the tour by one shot. “By one shot or three inches, depending on how you want to look at it,” he said.

  In the scorer’s trailer, he was told the number at that moment was 11—but there were exactly thirty players sitting on that score.

  “On the one hand, it’s the last day of Q School, and people do choke,” Heintz said. “But almost all the guys still playing who were at 11 were on the back nine, meaning they were finishing on the 18th, which was a birdie hole for everyone. And there were also guys at 10 who were finishing on that hole, too.”

  Heintz stood outside the scorer’s trailer for a few minutes, watching the bedlam around him as players who had earned their cards celebrated. “I’m going to wait this out at the scoreboard like I did at Lake Jovita,” he said. “I have a feeling the ending isn’t going to be as happy this time.”

  Dan Forsman didn’t even bother going to the scoreboard when he finished about an hour after Heintz. When he walked into the scorer’s trailer, the volunteers working there confirmed what his gut had already told him: the last birdie chance he had missed on the ninth green at Crooked Cat had sealed his fate. Forsman is, by nature, an emotional man. He said his thank-yous, then asked the volunteer who offered him a cart ride to the clubhouse if he would mind taking him straight to his car.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” the man said. “You’ve had a long day out there.”

  “I don’t feel much like eating right now,” Forsman said. He didn’t want to tell the man that he thought it might be tough to get any food past the giant knot in his stomach.

  When he got to his car, Forsman changed into comfortable shoes, put his clubs in the trunk, and then sat leaning against his car for a solid thirty minutes. No more than 50 yards away, Peter Tomasulo was leaning on the trunk of his car, lost in thought just as Forsman was. One was twenty-four, with an entire career still ahead of him. The other was forty-seven, with most of a distinguished career behind him.

  At that moment, they were feeling almost identical emotions: both disbelieving that all their work, all the hours, and all the emotion they had poured into the last six days had left them leaning on their trunks, with nothing to take home except a knot in their stomachs.

  “I just kept looking around at places that had become so familiar to me in the past week,” Forsman said. “I’d spent hours on the driving range and the putting green working toward one thing, and I’d come up one shot sho
rt. Those two golf courses were my field of dreams, and now there was nothing left for me to do except go home. All the years I’ve played golf, I can’t remember a more melancholy feeling than right at that moment.”

  OUT ON THE GOLF COURSE, a number of players were still hovering around the number. One was Bill Haas. He had watched the other two players in his group go in opposite directions as the afternoon wore on. All three players—Haas, Hunter Mahan, and Johnson Wagner—had started the day at 11 under par.

  Mahan was only a week older than Haas, having turned twenty-three on May 17, but he already had two years’ experience on tour, having made it all the way through Q School in 2003 after leaving Oklahoma State at the end of his junior year. He kept his card in 2004 by finishing 100th on the money list, but slipped to 131st in 2005, sending him back to Forsman’s Field of Dreams.

  His experience was clearly paying off on the last day. Even in the wind, he was in complete control of his ball all day, rarely in trouble, and sitting comfortably at 15 under par as they came to the final holes.

  Wagner, who had given much thought to how close he was to realizing his dream, hadn’t been able to hold his game together in the crucible of the last day. He was on his way to shooting 78, the second-highest score in the field all day. He would drop all the way to a tie for 70th place and leave devastated in a completely different way than Forsman and Tomasulo. For them, it had come down to one swing or one putt. For him, it had come down to one bad day.

  “I still believe I’m going to be on the tour someday,” he said. “I guess this wasn’t my time. No one hands this to you. You have to take it. I didn’t.”

  Haas was the one player in the group still very much on the bubble down the stretch. He had made the turn at 12 under, but like Tomasulo, he had started very poorly on the back nine. He hit his second shot hole high at number 10 but short-sided himself. He had a bunker between his ball and the hole and almost no green to work with. Trying to get cute, he dumped his wedge shot in the bunker and made a bad bogey from there. On 11, he crushed a three-iron, but it went over the green. He chipped back to within three feet but missed the putt to drop to 10 under.

  At that point, Jay Haas called Jan at home. “She said the number is 10 right now, but they’re saying it’s almost certain to go to 11 because 18 is playing downwind. That means he’s got no margin for error at all on these next few holes.”

  Bill was convinced the number was going to be 11. As he walked to the 12th tee, for the first time all week the thought crossed his mind that he might spend a second year on the Nationwide Tour. He pushed the thought away and made solid pars at 12 and 13, which brought him to the par-five 14th, a hole he normally would have been able to reach in two. But with the wind in his face, he laid up. He then hit a good wedge shot to about 10 feet, but his birdie putt slid below the hole.

  “Bad move,” he thought. “Now you can’t afford anything even resembling a mistake the rest of the way.”

  Later, he laughed remembering that thought. “Of course, I went out and immediately made a dumb mistake on the next hole.”

  The mistake was his first putt. He had hit a five-iron on the tee and found the middle of the green, about 25 feet from the hole. Rather than just make his par and move on, he tried to make the birdie putt. He rammed the putt six feet past the hole, then missed coming back for his third bogey in six holes. Now he was well outside the margin of error. Assuming the number was going to be 11, he needed to birdie two of the last three holes or make an eagle at 18. That was possible, since the green was reachable in two, but the last thing Haas—or anyone— wanted was to stand on the 18th tee at Q School needing an eagle to get to the number. A birdie would be daunting enough.

  Realistically, his best chance to make a birdie before 18 would be on the 16th, since it was playing driver–wedge for most players. Trying to bomb his drive, he pulled the ball just a tad, and it rolled into the edge of the rough on the left side. He still had only a pitching wedge left, but the ball skittered just off the green, leaving him with a 25-foot chip. Trying too hard—again— he chunked the chip. He was now looking at a 15-foot par putt, knowing that a miss would make it virtually impossible for him to make the tour.

  It was at that moment that his father began preparing his consolation speech. “I started to think about what I was going to say to him,” Jay Haas said. “I knew I wasn’t going to say a thing right after the round was over, because I know from my own experience that the last thing I want to hear when I’ve come up short of a goal on the golf course is, ‘Hey, nice job’ or ‘You’ll get ’em next year.’ There just aren’t any words that are more hollow than that.

  “At some point, though, I figured we would sit down and I would say, ‘You’re still only twenty-three years old, and you’ve proven you’re good enough to get out there and stay out there. I know it will be hard, but you need to go and play great on the Nationwide next year and just take Q School out of the equation completely.”

  Fortunately, Bill wasn’t thinking about consolation speeches at that moment. He was well aware that if he didn’t make the par putt, his chances were, realistically, done. “I figured if nothing else, I was due to make one,” he said.

  He was right. The putt went dead center, and he was still alive—albeit just barely—at nine under. He now had to finish birdie–birdie or par–eagle. His dad knew that, too, having checked with Jan, who confirmed that the number had gone back to 11 under.

  Sitting on the 17th tee, waiting for the group in front to finish, Bill Haas was trying not to think about anything beyond the tee shot he was about to hit. Often, the most difficult thing for an athlete to do at a crucial moment is to stay in the present, not to let his mind wander to the glory or the consequences that may lie just ahead. It was okay for Jay Haas to think that way, but it would have been disastrous for Bill.

  “All I could do at that point was tell myself I had to finish birdie–birdie,” he said later. “I didn’t even want to think about par–eagle. I had to believe I could make a two on the hole right in front of me.”

  Given the wind and the pressure and the treacherous pin placement, most players were hoping and praying for a three on the hole. Twenty minutes earlier, Peter Tomasulo had stood on the same tee believing if he could make a three, he would have a great chance to get his tour card. He had made a five.

  Haas decided on a nine-iron, figuring the wind would give the ball an extra hop toward the pin if he hit it the way he wanted to—starting it right of the flag and hoping it would drift in. He wasn’t playing for the middle of the green or to find the green safely. He knew he had to get close. Having a long putt was just about as worthless as missing the green. “Boom or bust at that point,” he said.

  As soon as the ball came off the club, he knew he had made a good swing and had hit the ball about as well as he possibly could. Now it was all up to the vagaries of the wind and the bounce. The ball landed just right and short of the flag and pulled up eight feet away from the hole.

  “Tell you what,” Jay Haas said, “I’ve seen Bill play a lot of golf. I’m not sure, given the circumstances, he’s ever hit a shot that was any better—or, for that matter, as good—as that one.”

  Bill felt pretty good about the shot, too, but it would be meaningless if he didn’t make the putt. Par after a pretty tee shot was no different than par after an ugly one.

  He took his time looking the putt over—everyone was taking his time over every putt by now—and finally stroked it at the hole. For an instant, it appeared as if it might break away at the last moment, but it held its line and dropped into the cup as the couple of hundred people around the green roared.

  Bill smiled—barely. Jay let out a sigh of relief. “Now,” he said, “he’s got a chance.”

  He had checked in at home one more time on the 17th tee, and Jan had told him that 11 under was almost certain to be the number.

  Pumped up, Bill bombed his drive off the 18th down the left side, only to watch it slide int
o the rough just as his drive had done on 16. But the ball carried so far that he had only 194 yards to the hole. Downwind, with his adrenaline running amok, he decided on a seven-iron.

  That was plenty of club, but coming out of the rough, he pushed the ball just a little. The ball easily reached the putting surface, but it hung out on the right side, a good 50 feet across the green from the hole location.

  Walking up the right side, surveying his son’s putt, Jay Haas said quietly, “That is not an easy two-putt.”

  Jerry Foltz, who did the postround interviews for the Golf Channel, had now walked down to where Jay was standing. Foltz was a Q School veteran himself, having been through the finals seven times, so he could empathize with the players and, no doubt, the fathers as well. The closest he had come to making the tour had been in his first finals at PGA West. He had arrived on the 17th tee one shot inside the number and, after one of those interminable last-day waits, had hit his tee shot into the water and made triple bogey. He knew the empty feeling of being “that close.”

  “The last thing in the world I wanted to do was stick a microphone in Jay’s face after Bill had three-putted to miss by one,” he said later. “If Bill didn’t make birdie, the plan was to check with [producer] Keith Hirshland to see if he still wanted me to talk to Jay. I was hoping he would say no. Most of the time, Keith will let me make a call like that, and even though I knew Jay would do it no matter what, I really would have felt awkward asking him. I was probably pulling for Bill at that moment about as much as Jay was.”

  Probably not quite as much. Jay had now pulled his cap as low on his forehead as it would go, hoping no one could see his reaction as Bill lined up his eagle putt. “Just don’t do anything crazy,” he said in a whisper.