Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major

by John Feinstein

  Bill didn’t. The ball tracked across the green and pulled up about four feet short of the hole. “Little bit sidehill, too,” Jay said. “He’s got to be careful not to baby it, because it will slide off if he does.”

  There is no putt a golfer feels more pressure on than a sidehill slider from three to five feet that you must make. Players call anything from three to five feet under pressure “the throw-up zone.”

  Bill Haas was in the throw-up zone, with the next year of his life at stake. “When I walked up to it, I swear to God my first thought was, ‘It’s 10 feet!’” he said. “Then I realized that it was more like four. It just looked like 10 feet at that moment.”

  In the clubhouse, Mac Fritz of Titleist looked as if he might throw up before Bill putted. “That putt may have been more important to Bill and Jay than it was to me,” he said later, “but I’m not sure.”

  The last thing Fritz wanted to do was go back and tell Wally Uihlein, the CEO of Titleist, that their million-dollar baby would be on the Nationwide Tour for another year.

  Bill Haas wasn’t thinking about any of that. “The only thing in my mind was to make sure and hit it, not let it get away from me,” he said. “For some reason, I wasn’t nervous. I really thought I was going to make the putt.”

  He didn’t take too long to line it up, partly because he didn’t want to overthink, partly because he knew exactly what the line of the putt was. He stroked the ball smoothly, saw it roll toward the hole, and, just before it got there, start to slide to the left. One more roll, and it might have missed. But it caught the corner of the hole and dropped in.

  Jay Haas’s knees buckled from relief and exhaustion. He didn’t get a chance to watch Bill accept congratulations from Hunter Mahan and Johnson Wagner because Hirshland had ordered Foltz and crew into action as soon as Bill’s putt dropped. Jay talked about how proud he was of Bill, how he had battled back on the last two holes, and how glad he knew Bill was that this was over. Foltz thanked him. The camera was turned off.

  It was only then that Jay Haas let the tears come.

  Q SCHOOL IS DIFFERENT from any other golf tournament in the world in that most of the final-day suspense is over long before the last groups finish. On Crooked Cat, the last threesomes on the course were those players who were so far back going into the last day that a low round wouldn’t even get them full status on the Nationwide Tour.

  Brad Lardon, who had gotten through the finals successfully on four different occasions, shot 67 in the third-to-last group off the first tee at Crooked Cat and moved from 153rd place to a tie for 142nd. One of those he was tied with was Brad Klapprott, who never recovered after his back woes on Saturday. He shot 75 the final day.

  On Panther Lake, the last groups were in a completely different mode. Only a collapse of biblical proportions would keep them from getting their cards. D. A. Points and Michael Allen both shot 74 in the final round and were still eight and five shots inside the number, respectively.

  Ron Whittaker spent the day avoiding serious trouble, playing for the middle of greens and not taking chances. He shot 72, which left him at 13 under, in a very comfortable and satisfying tie for 13th place. He was finally able to trade in his Ambien and Pepto-Bismol for a beer. The champagne would come after he got home. One of those he tied with was Bubba Dickerson, who also shot 72 the last day after 66–67 in the fourth and fifth rounds had gotten him into a comfortable position. His plan to try to pick up his play and be more aggressive as the tournament wore on had worked. On the calm days, he had taken advantage and produced low scores. On the windy ones, he had been more conservative. On Monday, even par was more than satisfying.

  Like Dan Forsman, Steve Stricker made a late move on the last day, finally finding some fairways with his driver and making some putts. But he had started from too far back, and shooting 67 only got him to nine under par, two shots outside the number. “At least I didn’t come apart, which was entirely possible the way I was hitting the ball the first few days,” he said. “It was disappointing, but when it was over, I actually felt better about my game than I had in a good long while.”

  Brian Henninger finished three shots farther back, at six under, but he also felt better after his last three rounds were under par following three straight days when he was over par. Larry Mize wasn’t nearly as sanguine as Stricker or Henninger after shooting 76 the last day, dropping him from an outside shot to make the number (he had been six under par starting out) to a tie for 88th place at two under par. He would play in 2006 on his status as a past champion, a past Masters champion, and a nice guy. The last two credentials would probably get him into more events than his past champion status would.

  “That’s a long, grinding week,” he said, forcing a smile. “I think it’s fair to say it’s a young man’s event.”

  David Sutherland, who at thirty-nine wasn’t as old as Mize but wasn’t as young as most in the field, also had a bad final day, shooting 77 to finish at even par in a tie for 102nd place. “As it turned out, I needed to shoot 66 today to make the big tour again,” he said. “That’s the only number that mattered to me. If I’d shot 67, I’d probably feel worse than I do now after shooting 77, because I’d have to go home and second-guess ten different places where I could have saved one shot. I wasn’t out here looking to get status on the Nationwide. Thirty-third would have been no different to me than 102nd. In some ways, 102nd might be better for me than 33rd or 43rd because it tells me I need to get serious about finding my next act.”

  Bob May finished one shot behind Sutherland but was pleased that his back had held up for six rounds. “If I can play six rounds here, I should be able to play four on tour,” he said.

  Steve Wheatcroft would be going to the Nationwide as a conditional player after finishing at three over par. He had never gotten it going again after his blazing start in the third round fizzled.

  The cutoff number for full-fledged Nationwide status was four under par. There were 46 players between 10 under and four under, and full status went to the next 50 players after the PGA Tour qualifiers or the number closest to 50. After the 46 players who qualified for full Nationwide status, there were 11 more at three under, meaning those at that number received only conditional status. For players like Patrick Damron and Scott Ford, hanging on to full Nationwide status at four under was important. For Hiroshi Matsuo, missing out by three shots after a final-round 72 also was important because it meant he wouldn’t get into all the tournaments he wanted to play in early in the year.

  “I’ll still have a decent number,” he said. “I just have to take advantage when I get a chance.”

  Nine players had come from outside the number on the final day to get their cards. Alex Aragon’s 65, moving him from a tie for 65th to a tie for 18th, was the most dramatic. No one else had come from more than two shots outside the number to make the PGA Tour. The two players who took the biggest tumbles were Johnson Wagner and Joe Alfieri, who both shot 78 the last day. Alfieri bravely hung around the scoreboard for a while watching the late numbers go up. He forced a smile when people asked him how he had done and said simply, “Didn’t play well today.”

  The worst back-nine collapse belonged to Grant Waite, who shot 32–42 to miss reclaiming full-fledged tour status by one shot, going from a tie for seventh place with nine holes to play to a tie for 33rd at the end of the day. A four-putt double bogey on the 10th hole had started his slide, and unlike at Lake Jovita, where he had been able to turn things around on the back nine, he couldn’t regain control of his swing or his game.

  Scott Sajtinac, who caddied on tour for Paul Goydos, was work-ing for Waite at Q School and looked as shaken as his player walking off the 18th green. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a good player go through anything like that in all my years in golf,” he said. “I don’t know who felt more helpless out there, Grant or me.”

  Three Walker Cuppers playing their first Q School had won their cards, led by John Holmes, who never shot higher than 69 all week
. He was the only player with six rounds in the 60s, and his last-day 69 wrapped up first place by three shots over veteran Alex Cejka. Nick Thompson, tied with D. A. Points for third place another two shots back. Jeff Overton, who had started the day one shot outside the number, came through with a 69 that jumped him past eighteen players into a tie for 13th place.

  Holmes, Thompson, and Overton were three of the ten players who pulled off the unlikely feat of making it through all three stages. A total of 973 players had teed it up at the twelve first-stage sites in October. Ten would be members of the PGA Tour in 2006. In addition to those three, they were Ron Whittaker, John Engler, Alex Aragon, Henrik Bjornstad, Matt Hansen, Michael Connell, and B. J. Staten.

  In October 2006, those ten names would give hope and inspiration to everyone playing at first-stage sites or even at the preliminary-round sites that Steve Carman promised would be in place for the 2006 Q School.

  BOB HEINTZ KEPT HIS PROMISE, lingering by the scoreboard while the late numbers were being posted. As at Lake Jovita, he knew his only hope was that someone in one of the late groups had suffered the kind of monumental collapse that had afflicted Colby Beckstrom.

  “Almost everyone playing late is an experienced player, except for Holmes and Thompson,” he said. “They’d both have to shoot close to 80 to give the 10 unders a chance, and I don’t see that happening.”

  He was right. Several players did what Bill Haas had done, birdieing the 18th to get to 11 under, including veterans Frank Lickliter and Mathias Gronberg. Mike Sposa, another ex–tour player trying to return there, eagled the last hole to jump from 10 under to 12 under. As soon as the final scores went up, Heintz headed for his car.

  “There are a lot of guys I’m really happy for,” he said. “But right now, hanging around to watch people celebrate isn’t going to work too well for me.”

  The scene around the clubhouse had turned into a late-afternoon party. Players who had been living something approaching a monastic life for nine days were letting loose. It was unlikely that anyone would top the David Feherty record for celebration, however. In 1993 Feherty had made it through Q School in Palm Springs and had passed out in the back row, stretched across several chairs the next morning while enduring a media orientation session.

  Still, there were a lot of happy people inside the dining room and on the back patio next to the scoreboard. Most of the players who had made the PGA Tour were celebrating, as were a handful of players for whom full status on the Nationwide was a victory.

  Daisuke Maruyama, a thirty-four-year-old Japanese player who had finished tied for seventh in his first attempt to make it to the PGA Tour, stood in front of his name and score having his picture taken repeatedly by Japanese photographers.

  Mac Fritz sat inside at a table with friends accepting congratulations from people who knew how important it was to him to have Bill Haas on the PGA Tour. One player after another paraded over to the Golf Channel to talk about how thrilled he was to be going to the PGA Tour.

  “It’s an interesting dichotomy,” said Marty Caffey, who had been on hand for many Q School finales. “You will see more happy people—really, truly happy people—on the last day of Q School than at any other tournament all year. Where else do you break out champagne for finishing in a tie for 26th?

  “But you also see more sad people—truly sad people—than [on] any other day of the year, because there are always those guys who have put in heart and soul and have come up one or two strokes short, who have to live with one missed putt or one bad swing for an entire year, or longer, because there’s no guarantee that you’ll make it next year or the year after.”

  Ten players had missed the tour by one shot. No one was more of a hard-luck case than Briny Baird, who was at Q School only because of Jason Gore’s sudden success. He missed his card by one shot. So did Heintz, Waite, and Forsman—each in a different way, each as brokenhearted. Tomasulo and Tolles would each look back at one bad swing that had produced a backbreaking double bogey—Tomasulo at the 17th, Tolles at the ninth. Johnson Wagner and Joe Alfieri would go home and wonder why their games had fallen apart on the last day.

  For those who had made it, the celebration would continue that night at a party thrown by the tour to welcome them—or welcome them back—to the land of courtesy cars, free telephones, and first-class plane tickets. One player who would not be going to that party was Jeff Martin. It didn’t matter. He walked out of the clubhouse with some friends shortly after five o’clock with a bottle of champagne in each hand. Martin had finished 152nd among the 154 players who had completed all six rounds.

  That was just fine with him. He was a club pro who had surprised himself by getting through second stage. He had shared a range with Larry Mize, and he had competed solidly for six days. After a second-round 79, he had shot 75 each of the last four days. He wouldn’t be going to the PGA Tour, but he was justifiably proud of what he had accomplished.

  “Greatest week of my life,” he said, holding up a champagne bottle. “I’ll never forget it.”

  In one sense, he spoke for everyone in the field. No one who plays Q School ever forgets the experience, but only a few get to savor it. In 2005 there were thirty-three players who would relish the memories of their week at Orange County National: the thirty-two who left the premises with PGA Tour cards in their hands, and the one who left with two bottles of champagne in his.

  Epilogue: December 2006

  O NE YEAR LATER, nine members of the Q School Class of 2005 were home relaxing when Q School began again. Two of them—John Holmes, rechristened J. B. Holmes, and Brett Wetterich—had won on the PGA Tour and earned exemptions at least through 2008. Wetterich, after making it through the ’05 finals on the qualifying number, had one of those dream years that all players believe is within their grasp. He finished 10th on the money list with slightly more than $3 million in earnings and made the Ryder Cup team. To go from Q School in December to playing in the Ryder Cup the following September is an almost unheard-of feat.

  It is stories like Wetterich’s that keep players coming back to Q School year after year. Frank Lickliter, the forty-two-year-old tour veteran who had to make a five-foot birdie putt on the last hole on the last day at Orange County National to get his playing privileges back, ended up making $1,655,678 in ’06—good for 44th place on the money list. Bill Haas, who kept his father and Mac Fritz of Titleist in so much suspense until he made his last birdie putt, made more than $887,000 to finish 99th on the money list, keeping him comfortably clear of a return trip to Q School.

  In addition to Wetterich, Holmes, Lickliter, and Haas, five other players kept their cards for 2007: Nick Watney, Hunter Mahan, Daisuke Maruyama, Will Mackenzie, and Mathias Gronberg, who squeezed in by finishing 124th on the money list. Six other members of the class of ’05 finished in the 126th to 150th category, led by Bubba Dickerson (who missed the top 125 by $10,000), Brian Bateman, Jeff Overton, Marco Dawson, Robert Garrigus, and Alex Cejka. All but Dickerson and Overton made it successfully through the ’06 finals, improving their ’07 status.

  Seventeen of the thirty-two players who celebrated on Q School graduation day in ’05 found themselves back at second stage in ’06 after failing to make the top 150 on the money list. Michael Allen, the man who plans his winter vacations around the finals, made it to his thirteenth finals and then survived there again, finishing tied for 25th, giving him yet another chance to play the tour since he would have exempt status in 2007. Other second-stage returnees weren’t as fortunate. Ron Whittaker, now a father, finished 174th on the money list, then missed at second stage by one shot for the fifth time in his career. B. J. Staten, after finishing 182nd on the money list, also failed to make it through second stage. Fortunately for both, they had already guaranteed themselves full status on the Nationwide Tour for ’07 by finishing in the top 200 on the PGA Tour money list. So missing at second stage wasn’t quite as painful as in the past, when it left them with no status at all. The same was true of Nick Tho
mpson, who finished 180th on the money list and didn’t survive second stage. Tom Byrum, like Allen a finals veteran, did make it back there for the tenth time but fell one stroke short of getting his card back. He would play 2007 on past champions status.

  The best story from the Q School Class of 2005 was about someone who failed to get his card. Steve Stricker rallied late at Orange County National but came up two shots outside the cut number. As disappointed as he was, he went home believing he had found something in his swing that would benefit him when he got into events during ’06 as a past champion. Like other good players who had lost fully exempt status, he wrote letters to tournament directors asking them to consider him for sponsor exemptions. “I was thinking between my [past champions] number and a few exemptions I might get to play twenty times,” he said.

  As it turned out, he played in seventeen tournaments in 2006, but that was plenty. He started the year well by finishing tied for 14th at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. He then got a sponsor exemption into Houston in April, played well the first three rounds, and then shot 66 on the last day to zoom past most of the field and finish third. The $374,000 he earned put him well along the road to avoiding a repeat trip to Q School. By the time June was over, Q School was nothing more than an unpleasant memory. Stricker successfully qualified for the U.S. Open, then led after two rounds before finishing sixth, which added another $174,000 to his earnings. A week later, he finished tied for second at the Booz-Allen Classic outside Washington and went over the $1 million mark for the year after cashing a check for $330,000.

  “It’s nice to know that my game was there; it was just a matter of finding my confidence again,” he said, relaxing in the clubhouse during a rain delay at the Booz-Allen. “It’s amazing how playing well in one tournament can remind you that you’re a good player again. I’ll always be grateful to the people in Houston for giving me the sponsor’s spot. That tournament jump-started my career again.”