Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major

by John Feinstein

  There were, as usual, some eye-catching scores. Isabelle (Izzy) Beisiegel, who in 2004 had become the first woman to enter Q School, was allowed to enter again even though she had shot 324 in ’04. She had full playing status on the LPGA Tour in 2005 after finishing 81st on the money list in 2004, so her entry was accepted on that basis. She proceeded to shoot 339—51 over par—at La Quinta and missed advancing by 55 strokes. Her score wasn’t even close to being the worst one posted. In Florence, Sergei Pidukov pieced together rounds of 94–100–99–89 (a strong finish) to shoot 382—102 over par and 108 shots behind medalist Scott Parel. He only missed the cut by 94 shots. Pidukov might have had some competition for high score if not for the fact that Greg Moak, playing the same site, was disqualified after shooting 85–97 the first two rounds.

  Robert Floyd also played in Florence. He finished tied for 32nd, seven shots outside the cut. Floyd was the second son of four-time major championship winner Raymond Floyd. He and his older brother, Raymond Jr., had both been very good junior players and had received a good deal of attention as the sons of a Hall of Fame player. “I think it was a lot harder on my brother than on me, because he was older and he had my dad’s name,” Robert Floyd said. “For the most part, being dad’s son was all good. We got exposed to teachers like Butch Harmon and David Leadbetter. We had dad there as an adviser—never a pushy one, just there for support. We played great golf courses, and there wasn’t any new equipment we didn’t get to try.”

  Ray Jr. went to Wake Forest, tried to play professionally briefly, and then decided Wall Street and amateur golf were the right combination for him. Robert had a better junior record and was recruited to play at Florida by longtime coach Buddy Alexander. He did very well in college and reached the semifinals and quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur in 1996 and 1997. Had he won his semifinal match in 1996, he and his father, the 1976 Masters champion, would have been the first father and son to play in the Masters together.

  “That would have been neat, no doubt,” Robert said. “I wish it had happened, but it didn’t. To be honest, at the time I thought it was just postponing something that was going to happen. I had a lot of confidence in my ability to get better and to make it on the PGA Tour. If I had thought then that would be my best chance, I’m sure I would have been more upset. Back then, I was just unhappy about losing the match.”

  He decided to leave Florida after his junior year and turn pro. “I was playing well, I’d done well in college golf and amateur golf, and I thought I was ready,” he said. “When I was in college, I was pretty confident. I didn’t think anyone was all that good.”

  Because he was his father’s son, he had a quick opportunity to find out just how good the players on the PGA Tour were. “I got five sponsor exemptions right after I turned pro,” he said. “I had some decent rounds, but I went zero-for-five making cuts.”

  Welcome to the tour. As the marketing slogan goes, “These guys are good.”

  He played a few mini-tour events to get ready for the 1997 Q School and then breezed through first stage. He still remembers the first hole of his first round at Bear Lakes Country Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. “It was soggy because it had been raining. One of the guys I was playing with hits a shot into the green, and it plugs. He thinks he has to play it plugged. I tell him he can lift, clean, and place on the green, but the guy says no, he’s sure we can’t. I’m about to argue with him or call a rules official when P. J. Cowan, the third guy in the group, says to me, ‘Let him go ahead. I want to see this.’ P. J. was a veteran. I shut up. The guy punched the ball out, and it went about six feet straight up into the air, bounced and rolled, and stopped eight feet short of the cup from 30 feet. I felt kind of guilty I didn’t do more, but it was funny.”

  With Alexander, his old college coach, volunteering to caddy for him, he played second stage at Hombre Golf Club, a course in Panama City, Florida, often used as a Q School site. On the second day, the wind howled, rain fell in sheets, and Floyd shot 68. “I think I passed just about the entire field,” he said. “Then I went to a restaurant with a bunch of guys, and they were all talking about how they were going to have to rain the round out and replay it. I’m thinking, ‘Oh, God, please don’t do that.’”

  They didn’t, and Floyd was comfortably inside the number until the last nine holes, when he began to feel the pressure. “I started hitting it all over,” he said. “I was leaking oil all the way. I think I shot 40 the last nine holes and made it by a couple. The only person more nervous than me was Buddy. He told me afterward, ‘I didn’t want to be the one to call your dad and tell him you shot 42 the last nine holes and missed by one.’”

  Floyd didn’t miss, and there he was in the finals, still not twenty-two years old and brimming with confidence. “I think the first time you’re in the finals, especially when you’re that young, there’s a tendency to be relaxed,” he said. “You’ve already guaranteed yourself a place to play, and even though you say the only thing you want is the PGA Tour, you know you have a fallback position. I think for some guys, that can work well, because they aren’t nervous. For me it was different. I need some kind of extra incentive, some kind of push, I think. I just never got going the whole week.”

  He landed on the Nike Tour in 1998, which was fine. He started the year playing well. He made seven straight cuts and was in contention several times. He heard his name mentioned on the Golf Channel as already being one of the best players on the tour. He was breezing.

  Only it didn’t last. “When I didn’t win when I had those chances, I went backward instead of forward,” he said. “I went from contending every week to missing cuts. Next thing I knew, the year was over, I was 82nd on the money list, and there I was back at first stage. To be honest, I was kind of shocked.”

  This is what golf can do to young players—even confident, talented, and, in Floyd’s case, privileged young players. All of his father’s contacts, all the equipment, all the lessons, and all the publicity could do nothing more than get him the occasional sponsor exemption. The rest he had to do on his own, even as it became increasingly difficult.

  He again made it through first stage with ease in 1998 but missed second stage by two shots. All of a sudden, he found himself playing mini-tours. “Even that didn’t bother me that much,” he said. “I played some good golf and played with some good players. Briny Baird went from the Golden Bear Tour that year to the PGA Tour and has done well ever since. You can learn there, and I thought I was learning.”

  But even as he was improving, Q School was becoming a wall he couldn’t get over. One year Rick Smith, now Phil Mickelson’s teacher, came out and caddied for him. He had long talks with his father about what he needed to do. “Dad had never had to go because when he came on tour, they didn’t have Q School yet. He tried very hard to relate to it, though. He said he tried to imagine how he felt on a Friday when he was grinding to make a cut and needed to make key four-footers just to play the weekend. When that happened, that meant you were struggling, and there’s no struggle quite like Q School.

  “That’s the thing, though, it is different than missing a cut. You can go play next week. At Q School, if something’s wrong that week or if you have a bad round or if you’re in a bad mind-set for whatever reason, that’s it for the year.”

  Floyd continued to plug away at mini-tours for the next few years. He had some success and played the occasional Nationwide Tour event. But he never made it back to the finals. In 2003 he got married and started thinking it was time to find another way to make a living. He got a real estate license, even though he continued to play golf and continued to enter Q School every year. “The thought of not making it through first stage never occurred to me—until I missed first stage three years ago. It’s amazing how quickly things change in golf. Now, when I go to first stage, I see kids with a look on their faces that’s familiar. Then I think about it and realize it’s the same look I had on my face seven, eight years ago—a look that says, ‘I know I can
beat you.’ They look at me now and see an old guy who has been around and hasn’t made it. They’re not wrong. I’m about to turn thirty. That’s a long way from twenty-one or twenty-two in any sport, especially when you’re still trying to get to the big leagues.”

  Floyd skipped Q School in 2004, but the bug was still nipping at him in 2005. He tore some ligaments in his wrist midway through the year after playing well in mini-tour events. He was back and forth about whether to send in an entry. On the one hand, he’d played well and felt less pressure to succeed than he had in recent years. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure if he would be 100 percent ready physically for the mid-October first stage. He finally sent in his entry just prior to the September 7 deadline. Because his was one of the last entries to arrive, and because the two Florida venues he had requested first were already full, he was sent to Florence.

  “Didn’t bother me at all,” he said. “I figured it would be 70 degrees instead of 90, and maybe it would be good to try a new route. Then, a few days before I was supposed to go up there, someone gave me an unsolicited tip on the range, and I couldn’t seem to get it out of my head.” He laughed. “If you’ve got confidence in your swing and your game, something like that doesn’t bother you. You don’t even hear it. But I’m a long way from that. Then I got to Florence, and it was about 30 degrees and the wind was blowing like crazy. The scores were very high [Florence had by far the highest cut line number, eight over par], but I just couldn’t play well enough.

  “After all these years, I’m mentally fragile. It didn’t used to be that way. I’ve learned, if nothing else, that being naive is king. You need to put yourself in a cage mentally so nothing bothers you.”

  The year 2006 would be a watershed year for Floyd: he was turning thirty and becoming a father. “My deadline for making it or going home has passed,” he said, laughing. “But there’s still a part of me that hasn’t quite given it up yet. I did play some good golf last summer before I got hurt. This year, I’ll try to get into some Nationwide events, and I’ll play some mini-tour events once the real estate season quiets down in June. I’ll go back to Q School. I think if you’re a pro and you can only play one tournament every year, it should be Q School. You hear stories about guys finding it in their thirties. I know it doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. I’d like to see what might happen if I can play some tournaments, go in there fresh and healthy mentally and physically.

  “I know there are about a million guys out there saying the same thing. But golf is full of one-in-a-million stories.”

  He paused. “You know, I remember when I was a kid playing. I wasn’t afraid of anything. There wasn’t a shot I couldn’t hit, a putt I couldn’t make. I always thought that I’d always feel that way. Now I’d just like to feel that way again one more time.”

  ROBERT FLOYD WASN’T the only golfer who was searching for those feelings of supreme confidence again. In fact, it’s probably fair to say that almost every player facing second stage was searching for that boyhood feeling that he could do anything. The number of well-known players dragging themselves to the six second stages around the country was staggering. The first name that jumped off the page was Larry Mize, the 1987 Masters champion, whose chip-in to beat Greg Norman is one of golf’s most memorable shots.

  In addition to Mize, there were no fewer than thirty-five players who had won at least once on the PGA Tour. Bill Glasson had won seven times. Steve Pate had won six times and had played on two Ryder Cup teams. Dan Forsman had won five times. Steve Stricker had three victories and had played on a Presidents Cup team. Duffy Waldorf, Rick Fehr, Donnie Hammond, Mike Hulbert, and Blaine McCallister had all won multiple times. Matt Kuchar was a U.S. Amateur champion who had been a phenom at the 1998 Masters and U.S. Open and had won on the tour in his second year. David Gossett had won as a rookie.

  Brian Watts had never won on the PGA Tour, but he had lost a play-off to Mark O’Meara at the 1998 British Open and had dominated the Japan Tour for a number of years as an American playing overseas. T. C. Chen had been leading the U.S. Open in 1985 when he infamously hit the ball twice while trying to slash a wedge from the rough and ended up losing the tournament by one shot to Andy North. Bubba Dickerson had won the U.S. Amateur title in 2001 but still hadn’t made it to the tour.

  And Kelly Gibson liked to tell people he was responsible for Tiger Woods becoming Tiger Woods. “People forget I was leading the tournament at Las Vegas in ’96 until I hit it in the water at 17 and then bogeyed 18,” he said with a smile. “I par in and I win, and Tiger and Davis [Love] are a shot behind me. Instead, I finish one shot behind them, and Tiger beats Davis in the play-off. Since then, Tiger’s won $50 million, and I’ve won $500,000. I launched him. It all started because of me.”

  It took Gibson six tries to get all the way through Q School to the PGA Tour. He was on the tour full-time from 1992 to 1998 and had bounced back and forth between the PGA Tour and the Nationwide since then. He had never won, although he’d had several near misses, including the one in Las Vegas that he liked to joke about. He was one of the best-liked players on tour because of his easygoing manner and sense of humor and because he enjoyed byplay with the fans. During a practice round for the U.S. Open in 2004, he had demanded that the starter introduce him as “the 2004 United States Open champion.” When the starter simply introduced him as “from New Orleans, Louisiana, Kelly Gibson!” he enlisted the fans standing around the tee to demand that he be introduced as the soon-to-be U.S. Open champion. The starter finally gave in at that point.

  When Gibson arrived for the qualifier at Lake Jovita Golf and Country Club—technically in Dade City, Florida, but actually somewhere between Tampa and Orlando on back roads that made the place almost unfindable—he was not in his normal jovial mood.

  With good reason. “I’ve played 18 holes of golf since August—nine holes of practice yesterday and nine the day before,” he said quietly on the opening day of the qualifier. “I haven’t had the time or the desire to play any golf at all since August 29.”

  Most Americans might not remember that date as vividly as someone who had lived in New Orleans his entire life would. That was the day when Hurricane Katrina blew through the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, leaving unparalleled devastation in its wake. Gibson, who lives in downtown New Orleans, didn’t lose his home, although it was looted after he and his wife, Elizabeth, evacuated. “We got off easy,” he said. “The kinds of things I saw are the kinds of things you never forget, the kinds of things that change your perspective forever.

  “It isn’t that golf became unimportant, not at all. I love golf, I love to play. It’s still what I do, and I still believe, even at forty-one, that there are things I can still get done in the game. That’s one of the reasons I’m here. The last couple of days before I came down, I really didn’t want to come. I just felt as if my heart wouldn’t be in it. But people back home told me they wanted me to play, that I am the pro from New Orleans, and there are going to be people following how I do and enjoying it if I do well.”

  Still unsure, Gibson called David Toms, another native of Louisiana who he had worked with setting up a relief fund after Katrina. Toms, winner of the 2001 PGA Championship and eleven tour events, was in a very different place in his career. But he also encouraged Gibson to play—for himself and for others. “He told me I needed to start to move on with my own life and also let other people know it could be done,” Gibson said. “He also said I might pull a Bruce Lietzke and just go out and play great.”

  Lietzke, a longtime tour player, is legendary among his peers for taking off months at a time and then coming back and playing well without ever seeming to practice. During the opening round, Gibson did a decent Lietzke imitation—getting to four under par for 11 holes. Having played the back nine first, he made his first bogey of the day on the third hole and then mis-clubbed himself on the fourth. “Having only played the hole once probably hurt me there,” he said. “I had 210 to the pin into a stiff breeze. My
caddy thought, with the wind, I couldn’t fly the green with a three-iron, that I’d get it to the back where the pin was. Well, he was wrong. I flew it over the green onto a downslope and had no shot. Hey, it’s on me—I made the decision, and I hit the shot. But occasionally you depend on a caddy and he gets it wrong. Happens.”

  From an impossible lie behind the green, Gibson ended up making a triple-bogey six. In an instant, he had gone from four under to even par. He managed to right himself the last five holes and finished the day with a one-under-par 71, which left him in a tie for 34th place with lots of holes to play. Still, his mind wasn’t really on his golf as he sat on a golf cart outside the clubhouse trying to convince himself to go hit some practice balls.

  “I’ve never needed to hit that many balls,” he said. “I’ve never been injured. That’s why I still think I can play and play successfully. Regardless of where I play or how much I play the next couple of years, it’ll be different.

  “When we went back to our house, a SWAT team took us inside, because we weren’t sure what we’d find or who we might find. I mean, guys carrying M4s. Later, they took me up in a helicopter so I could get a good look at what was going on. I saw people being rescued. I also saw people who weren’t rescued. My wife and I worked feeding rescue teams. I didn’t dive in after anyone, but I helped take care of the guys who were. There’s part of me that thinks I should just take the next year off and work in New Orleans. There are a lot of things I can do. I’ve already talked to some people about helping to bring back some of the golf courses. That’s an area where I have expertise. Plus, I’m good at networking. The last couple of months were good for me in terms of feeling like I can do things besides play golf. I got things done—that was a good feeling.”