Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major

by John Feinstein

  It went on for about twenty minutes. By then, he and his parents and Amy were sitting on a golf cart making plans to celebrate. A golf cart marked “Rules,” driven by Steve Carman, pulled up. Brigman recognized Jim Duncan, a Nationwide Tour official, sitting in the cart with Carman. He didn’t know Carman by name, but he knew he was in charge of the tournament. “Jaxon, have you got a minute?” Carman said.

  “I knew right away it was trouble of some kind,” Brigman said. “He wasn’t pulling up like that to congratulate me. I couldn’t imagine what it was.”

  Carman was holding a scorecard. “I need you to take a look at your card for me,” Carman said. “Do you remember what you made on 13?”

  “Of course I do,” Brigman said. “I made a three.”

  Carman handed the card to him. When Brigman looked at it, he began to shake. Hobby had circled his score for the 13th hole to indicate he had made a birdie, but he had written down the number 4.

  The most famous moment in golf history involving a player signing for a higher score than what he actually shot came in the final round of the 1968 Masters, when Tommy Aaron (a future Masters champion) wrote down a 4 for Roberto De Vicenzo on the 17th hole when De Vicenzo actually made a birdie 3. Because he signed for the 4, De Vicenzo ended up losing by one stroke to Bob Goalby rather than being in a play-off with him. De Vicenzo, an Argentine, was quoted as saying, “What a stupid I am,” perhaps the most famous self-put-down in golf history (until Phil Mickelson’s “I’m an idiot” comment after his brain-lock double bogey at Winged Foot cost him the 2006 U.S. Open).

  To this day, if a golfer accidentally gives another player a score higher than he made on a hole, it is called “pulling an Aaron” or “Tommy Aaroning him.” None of the three men involved in the incident—De Vicenzo, Aaron, or Goalby (who had to deal with people saying he wasn’t a “real” Masters champion)—ever completely got over it.

  Brigman wasn’t being watched by millions on TV when he looked at the scorecard Carman handed him, and there was no Masters at stake—just his livelihood and his future. Before he could find his voice, he heard his dad, looking at the card over his shoulder, say, “That’s a 3. It looks like a 3 to me.”

  Years later, Brigman was able to laugh about his father’s save attempt. “It was a nice try,” he said. “But if anything, you would have had a better chance selling that it was a 5. There was no way it was a 3.”

  Brigman felt sick to his stomach. His first thought was that he would be disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard. “The funny thing is, my initial reaction was, ‘You just blew $25,000,’” he said, referring to the prize money the players who qualify for the tour received then at Q School. “My biggest check to that moment was $16,000. When the guy [Carman] told me I wasn’t DQ’d, I just had to take the score I signed for—which meant I missed the tour by one shot—that’s when I kind of came to my senses and realized, ‘You idiot, forget the money. You just knocked yourself off the PGA Tour!’”

  Everyone involved remembers feeling sick at that moment. Carman still shakes his head when retelling his side of the story. The person who might have felt worse than anyone was Hobby, who sought Brigman out to tell him repeatedly how sorry he was for the mistake. “I know he felt awful,” Brigman said. “But it was my card and, in the end, my responsibility.”

  Brigman became the poster boy for how cruel the rules of golf can be. During 2000, playing on the Nationwide Tour, he became everyone’s “early in the week” story at every stop on the tour. He somehow managed not to snap at anyone when he was asked to repeat the story over and over. “It wasn’t their fault it happened,” he said. “It was mine. And I could understand why people wanted to write about it.”

  He played better on the Nationwide that year, finishing 58th on the money list. In keeping with his luck, that was the last year only the top 55 on the tour were exempt from first stage. The next year, the number went to 60. He made it back through first stage and found himself tied for the last spot at second stage. Back then, ties for the last spot played off.

  “It was three of us for two spots,” Brigman said. “It was cold and rainy. I swear it wasn’t more than 40 degrees. The two guys I was playing against were bombers. They’re hitting mid-irons to the green on the play-off hole; I had my utility wood out. I make bogey from there; and I’m out. Then I find out that, unlike in the past, you no longer had conditional status on the Nationwide if you lost a play-off at second stage. They had changed that rule too. So in less than twelve months, I went from being on the PGA Tour for about twenty minutes to no status anywhere at all. It was discouraging.”

  One person who witnessed that play-off was Carman. “It just occurred to me then that it was unfair to ask guys to play one hole with their entire year hanging in the balance. You can get unlucky, or the conditions might favor one guy over another. If it’s over four days or even 18 holes, okay. But one hole to decide an entire year of your life doesn’t seem right.”

  So, in what might be called “the Brigman rule,” all Q School play-offs were done away with beginning in 2001. Instead of a hard 20 as the number moving forward from first and second stage, it became either 18 and ties, 19 and ties, or 20 and ties, depending on the size of the field.

  Since the play-off loss, Brigman has wandered through the pro golf netherworld, although his high moments have been remarkably high. In 2003 he made it through a Monday qualifier for the Texas Open and finished tied for 11th. In 2005 he did the same thing at the Byron Nelson and finished tied for 10th. “That one was a very big deal,” he said. “Amy was pregnant with our first child, and I was having all sorts of doubts about my ability to make enough money to support a family. Talk about prayers being answered.”

  Brigman made $148,800 at the Byron Nelson, and by virtue of being in the top ten as a non–PGA Tour member, he earned a spot in Memphis two weeks later. He couldn’t keep the roll going, though, missing the cut. He spent the rest of the summer trying to get ready for Q School, hoping the confidence boost he had received by playing so well against the world’s best players would benefit him in the fall. Ultimately, he had an inconsistent year, playing only well enough to finish 103rd on the Nationwide money list. So it was back to first stage for the twelfth straight year. He made it through again and headed to Panama City, hoping he would make it back to the finals one more time.

  “I’m thirty-five years old,” he said. “I’m at the point where I know to make the kind of living I want to make to support my family by playing golf, I need to be on the PGA Tour. You can only scrape by for so long. The Nelson windfall gave me a little cushion for a while, but not forever.”

  Did he believe he had ever completely gotten over what happened at Doral?

  He paused for a long moment. “I’ve thought about that a lot,” he finally said. “To be honest, I think it hurts more now than it did then. Back then, I was almost nonchalant about it. I figured if I was good enough to do it once, I’d do it again. Back then, I told myself, ‘Good things will come out of this.’ Well, it’s six years later, and I still haven’t done it or even come close again, and I can’t really see what good came out of it, at least not for me and my family. I’m not sure I’ll be over it until the day comes when I make it to the tour. Then I’ll be over it.”

  He shot 72–72 the first two days at Hombre Golf Club in Panama City, putting him right on the number with 36 holes to play. One good round and one okay round would clinch a spot in the finals. Of course, he had been a lot closer than that in the past, and, as everyone knew, regardless of where they were playing, a lot was bound to happen over the last two days.

  IN KINGWOOD, TEXAS, there were no fewer than nine former winners on the PGA Tour playing, not to mention Brian Watts, the near British Open champion. One player who wasn’t in awe of the competition was Ron Whittaker. He had too much on his mind to be awed.

  Like Jaxon Brigman, Whittaker had gone to a great golf school: Wake Forest. In fact, Whittaker appeared to have been born to
play at Wake and on the tour. Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, he was the nephew of Lanny Wadkins, a Wake Forest alum who went on to win twenty-one times on tour. His first golf lesson, at the age of two courtesy of Uncle Lanny, was from another Wake alum: Arnold Palmer. Whittaker grew up with golf and Wake Forest, and it only seemed natural when he was recruited by the school and enrolled in the fall of 1990. His game continued to improve in college, and by the time he graduated (unlike a lot of Wake’s stars, including Palmer, Wadkins, and Curtis Strange, he did graduate), he had played well enough to be convinced he could be a pro. He spent 1995 playing mini-tour golf. At the end of the year, he finished tied for 37th at Q School, having made it through all three stages to land on the tour at the age of twenty-four. Life seemed pretty easy at that point. “Piece of cake,” Whittaker said, smiling. “To me, it seemed a natural progression: play college golf, go through Q School, and then play on the PGA Tour for the next twenty years before you retire to your mansion and your yacht.”

  Things turned out not to be quite that easy. Whittaker made a measly $29,656 as a tour rookie, which put him 224th on the money list. By the end of 1996, he understood that the tour was a lot tougher than he had imagined, but he felt that he had learned a great deal and had improved as a player. “I wasn’t all that upset about it,” he said. “I was learning my trade: golf courses, how to compete, how to travel. I figured it was all part of the process.”

  He wasn’t even that upset when he made it to the finals at Q School but didn’t get his card back and ended up on the Nike Tour. He played reasonably well in 1997, finishing 46th on the money list, but again failed to get through finals. “That was probably the first real disappointment,” he said. “I’d made it once, I was now two years older, and I really thought I was good enough to get back on tour at that point. By then, though, I knew there were a lot of good players who had been up and down [between] the two tours, so I kept telling myself it wasn’t a big deal.”

  It became a bigger deal at the end of 1998, his third full season as a pro. Instead of improving his position on the Nike money list, Whittaker dropped and had to go back to the first stage of Q School. He survived that pretty easily but failed to get through second stage. That was, as the police like to say, when the trouble began.

  “The first year, it was a shock to my system, but I just thought it was a fluke,” he said. “I figured I’d get my confidence back for a year on mini-tours and then work my way back to where I wanted to be. I was still pretty young and single, so I wasn’t panicked.”

  Seven years later, he wasn’t as young and he wasn’t single, and he and his wife, Gerritt, were trying to get pregnant. “We talked a lot this summer,” he said. “Second stage had become such a wall for me that I just couldn’t get through. I had played well on mini-tours, won tournaments, [and] made okay money, but if we were going to start a family, the time was probably past when I could be playing mini-tour golf for a living.”

  Although Gerritt never pressured him to make any sort of now-or-never decision, Whittaker had made one anyway: if he didn’t at least get through second stage and back to the Nationwide Tour, it was time to look for another job. Even if he made the Nationwide but not the PGA Tour, he might have to give some thought to quitting. But second stage was going to be the key. “I think the first couple of times you go to Q School, your nerves are kind of numb,” he said. “I remember in ’95, one of the guys I played with at second stage got sick on the golf course. I thought, ‘Jeez, isn’t that a bit of an overreaction to playing in a golf tournament—even an important one like this?” He laughed. “I can tell you now, my eleventh time through this, I understand just how the guy felt.”

  Whittaker knew what he was up against in Kingwood, but he wasn’t daunted by the number of name players in the field. “This isn’t like any other golf tournament you play,” he said. “You aren’t really trying to win. If you do, fine, but 19th place is just as good as first. What you’re tracking during the week is where you stand in terms of the cut number, not where you stand in terms of first place.”

  For three days, Whittaker played steady golf at the Deerwood Course, avoiding major mistakes while understanding that the number probably wasn’t going to be all that low because the weather was windy and the golf course was playing fast. If nothing else, having gone to Q School so many times had allowed him to figure out a routine he was comfortable with. “Sleeping is easy for me during Q School,” he said with a smile. “Some Pepto-Bismol for my stomach after I eat and an Ambien before I go to bed, and I’m fine. Tricks of the trade, I guess.”

  On the last day at Kingwood, the wind blew harder than it had the first three days. Warming up on the range, Whittaker knew scores wouldn’t be low. He was three under par, which at that moment put him one shot inside the number. He figured that if he could shoot even par, he would be a lock. He also knew shooting even par would be easier said than done. “The whole day was a battle,” he said. “I had some birdie chances but didn’t convert them.” He scrambled for pars coming down the stretch but never threw in any of the big numbers that had caused him to miss at second stage in the past. “You know, you don’t want to go around the last day thinking about what the number might be,” he said. “I’d missed by one shot four times, and I didn’t want to think in those terms. In the back of my mind, though, I was thinking it might be two under, could slip to one under.”

  By the time he played the 18th hole, he was three over par for the day and even for the tournament. In his heart of hearts, he felt he had played a decent round of golf. “The kind of round where you shoot 75 and you can’t explain to people who weren’t there that it was really a good round,” he said. “I knew no one was going low, and I knew I’d hung in there. But I didn’t know if it was enough. I suspected it might not be, but I didn’t want to think in those terms.”

  When he signed his scorecard and walked over to the scoreboard, his heart sank. As he had suspected, no one had gone low. In fact, a lot of people had slid backward, as he had. But not enough—or so it seemed. There were still players on the course, but most of them had been far enough ahead of Whittaker that they would have to shoot very high numbers to finish at even par or worse. “I stood there adding up the numbers again and again,” he said. “It was pretty clear it wasn’t going to change. The number was going to be one under. I had missed by one—again.”

  He decided not to wait around until it was official. The sight of players who had made it through, or even the condolences of those who could understand his disappointment, was more than he could bear. He put his golf clubs in the car and drove back to the hotel where he had been staying. He called Gerritt and gave her the news. “I missed it,” he said. “Probably by one shot.”

  He told her he was going to relax for a little while before starting the eight-hour drive back to their home in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was dreading the drive, but beyond that he was dreading what was coming at the end of the drive. A decision would have to be made. It was time to move on with his life. Part of him didn’t want to. He’d been so close. He had played a good round of golf under very difficult conditions and huge pressure. He hadn’t choked. He could still play. And yet he was thirty-four, and if he and Gerritt did manage to get pregnant anytime soon, he needed a job with a steady income.

  It was all rolling around in his head when the phone rang. It was Gerritt, and she sounded slightly breathless. Her brother Garrett had just called, she told him. “He was looking online at the final results,” she said. “He says you made it.”

  Whittaker stared at the phone for an instant, then shook his head. “That’s impossible,” he said. “I checked the board over and over before I left.”

  “I know, but he says he just looked, and you’re in—tied for 19th.”

  Whittaker didn’t want to get his hopes up. He didn’t have a computer with him, so he went downstairs to the hotel lobby and explained to the manager that it was urgent that he get online for just a minute. The manager found
him a computer, and he went to PGATour.com, where all the Q School results were posted. His heart in his throat, he scrolled down until he found his name: T–19 at even par. Playing in the last group, Franklin Langham had shot 77 and Jason Enloe had shot 78. Both ended up at even par. Instead of 20 players finishing at one under or better, 18 had finished at one under or better. That left the six players who had finished at even par in a tie for 19th. They were all going to the finals.

  Whittaker didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or yell. He called Gerritt back, screaming, “You were right! You were right! I’m in! I made it!”

  Retelling the story, he shook his head and said, “Up until that minute, that might have been the happiest moment of my life.”

  Until about thirty seconds later. “I’m thrilled,” Gerritt said. “I was going to wait until you got home to tell you this, but this is probably as good a time as any: I’m pregnant.”

  That was when T–19 at second stage became the second happiest moment of Ron Whittaker’s life.

  LANGHAM AND ENLOE had also let Dan Forsman, who had played one of the best rounds of the day (69), into the finals. Several of the veteran past tour winners had advanced to the finals easily, including Bill Glasson, Steve Stricker, Tom Byrum, and Brian Henninger. Several others hadn’t been as lucky: Jim Gallagher Jr., the former Ryder Cup player, had missed by one shot. Glen Day, Mike Heinen, and Joel Edwards also had failed to make it, as had Brian Watts, who finished way back in a tie for 58th.

  One of the late players Whittaker had thought to be out of his reach was B. J. Staten, who had reached second stage for the sixth consecutive year. “I’ve always played well at first stage but found a way some way, somehow to miss at second,” Staten said. “I’ve missed by one twice and by two twice. If you don’t think that will get you thinking, I don’t know what will.”