Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major

by John Feinstein

  “Maybe if you’re playing well, you don’t notice things as much,” he said. “But week after week, you’re staying in honky-tonk towns in crummy motels playing second-rate golf courses, and you can make the cut and beat two-thirds of the field and still lose money for the week.

  “I think when you’re young, it’s part of the growing process. When you’re forty-three, you’re done growing. You don’t need it, or you don’t want it. Believe me, there is nothing romantic about going out week after week and beating your head against a wall—and losing money while you’re doing it.”

  By summer’s end, he had a clear plan about what he wanted to do next: take one last shot at Q School, and if he didn’t make it all the way back to the tour, he would retire—this time for good. He had already been approached by equipment companies about being a tour rep—someone who works with the players at tournaments to make sure they have the right equipment. More appealing was the idea of working in player representation. “Not so much to make deals—there are a lot of guys who can do that,” he said. “I’m more interested in the idea of mentoring players. I’ve been a top-30 player; I’ve been a struggling player. I think I’ve seen all sides of it. I feel like I have something to offer.”

  There would still be travel involved, but not the kind of grinding travel that comes with playing—especially on the Nationwide Tour. “You’re out a couple, three days a week maybe, and you can pick your spots a little more,” Fehr said. “Plus, I’ll never slam a trunk [miss a cut] on Friday again.”

  The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that this was the right plan. But he had already sent in his entry form and fee for Q School. So he decided to give himself one more week to play as hard as he possibly could and see what the results were.

  He didn’t play poorly, but he also never got anything going. The five-shot margin, he realized, was a pretty accurate reflection of where his golf game had been the past two years: not awful, but not nearly good enough to get him back on the PGA Tour. Two months after his Q School experience, he was ready to take a job as a player rep—“I’ve already got my agent uniform [a coat and tie] all picked out,” he joked—and felt no tugs as a new season began. He had played exactly nine holes of golf since the end of Q School.

  “I played with Loren Roberts and Vance Veazey [both tour players], and I was missing greens with short irons,” he said. “I came home grumpy. I said to my wife, ‘It’s time to get out the dirt bike.’”

  Of course, in six more years, the Champions Tour would beckon. “I won twice, but that’s not enough to be fully exempt out there,” Fehr said. “I hope by then I’ll be really established at what I’m doing. I certainly wouldn’t want to walk away from something good to go back to Q School again. I mean, enough is enough. I had my time. It’s over.”

  FOR OTHERS, THE DECISION WASN’T as clear-cut. Jim Gallagher Jr. had missed at second stage in Kingwood by one shot. He would continue to do some TV work and play when he could as a past champion. Glen Day also had missed in Kingwood and was willing to split time between the Nationwide Tour and the PGA Tour. At forty, he wasn’t close to considering himself finished with the game.

  The same was true of Steve Pate, who may have been the most distinguished player to miss at second stage. Pate had six PGA Tour wins and had played on two Ryder Cup teams. He probably would have had a far more successful career if not for injuries and fluke accidents, including being injured when the car he was riding in en route to a Ryder Cup dinner in 1991 was in an accident. He was in another car accident in 1996 on his way home from playing in Phoenix and ended up with a broken hand, wrist, and cheekbone. Later that year, he tripped on a dock and broke his left wrist. “I guess you could say my biggest weakness as a player has been clumsiness,” he said, laughing.

  Pate made a remarkable comeback from his injuries, winning again in 1998 and then making his second Ryder Cup team in 1999 when he finished 13th on the money list. That year also included a fourth-place finish at the Masters after he birdied seven straight holes in the third round.

  Early in his career, Pate had earned the nickname “Volcano” because of his temper. If the tour didn’t make fines a state secret, it undoubtedly would have been Pate’s record that Tiger Woods broke when he became the most fined player in tour history fairly early in his career.

  When Pate was angry, it didn’t take a microphone for people to hear his profanity. At forty-four, he had a completely different demeanor and couldn’t remember the last time he had been fined for on-course behavior.

  “That’s probably one of the reasons I don’t play as well,” he said in a rare serious moment. “It isn’t that I don’t care. I do. I want to play good golf. But I don’t burn anymore the way I once did. Maybe it’s because, with all I’ve been through, I think I’m lucky to be able to play. Hell, I must be crazy. I actually like Q School.”

  Pate first made it through Q School in 1984, a year after graduating from UCLA. “That was so long ago, they still made us do classroom stuff,” he said. “It was kind of a wink-and-nod thing, because we all knew it was useless. We weren’t there to be teaching pros. Still, we had to do it.”

  Beyond the lack of classroom time, Pate noticed one key difference when he returned to Q School in 2002. “There’s no comparison in the quality of play,” he said. “When I was in Q School in the ’80s, second stage was pretty much a walk in the park if you could play at all. You might be playing for twenty-five spots, and there were thirty guys in the field who could actually play—if that. My first year, I think I shot 73–72–75 the first three rounds in good conditions, and I was in the top ten. Now you’re playing for nineteen or twenty spots, whatever it is, and everyone out there can play. I’m sure they still get the occasional ringer at first stage, but not second. A lot of good players go home empty at second stage nowadays.”

  Like most of the fortysomething players still trying to compete, Pate found the distances the younger players hit the ball almost shocking. But he had learned to adapt. “Sometimes it can work to your advantage,” he said. “I played with a kid at second stage last year on a really windy day who was losing his mind out there. I didn’t mind hitting a five-iron from 110 yards if that was the shot. He was trying to hit nine-iron or wedge, and there was just no way. He ended up missing by a couple of shots, and he should have made it easily.

  “I look at some of these kids, and I swear I think it’s 1984 and I’m looking in a mirror. I’m having fun—I really am—and they can’t draw a breath. That was me back then. I understand the feeling. I know now that if I don’t make it through Q School, it isn’t going to change my life or my career. I’ve had my career. Anything good from here on is a bonus.”

  Pate still played for one reason: he liked it. He enjoyed seeing old friends who were still playing, and he didn’t mind spending time with younger players either. When he started to play the Nationwide Tour, he was taken aback at times by just how young some of the players were. “My daughter’s eighteen,” he said. “Sometimes I find myself playing with guys who could be dating her.”

  If there was one thing that bothered Pate about falling from stardom into the netherworld of “past champion,” it was having to ask for—and frequently not get—sponsor exemptions. When he first failed to make it through Q School at the end of 2002, Pate figured he would be a lock to get sponsor exemptions most places as long as he asked nicely.

  “I’m thinking, ‘I’ve won six times. I’ve been on two Ryder Cup teams. People know who I am,’” he said. “I wrote all the letters, tried to say all the right things. I think I might have gotten four or five spots.”

  Pate was no doubt hurt by tournament directors’ memories of him as an angry young man who frequently didn’t “play the game” the way tour players are taught to play it: be kind to sponsors; be kinder to pro-am partners; say the right things about the golf course, the people running the golf tournament, and the volunteers.

  “It’s true, I didn’t play those games,
” he said. “But I’m in my forties now; it’s been a while since I was that guy. But I guess people have long memories.”

  Four years later, Pate was still writing letters asking for sponsor exemptions. “The letters are a lot shorter now,” he said. “And I can’t tell you the last time someone said yes.”

  That was why Pate was at Q School. He didn’t want to have to ask anyone for favors. He just wanted to play golf. Which was why he would head back to the Nationwide Tour in 2006 without complaint. “It’s competition; it’s golf,” he said. “That’s enough for me.”

  AT THE OTHER END OF THE SPECTRUM from Pate, at least in terms of making a career for himself, was Ryan Gioffre.

  Pate had made his first Ryder Cup team and finished sixth on the money list at the age of twenty-nine. Gioffre was thirty and still believed his best golf was ahead of him. “I’ve always been a late bloomer,” he said. “The first year I went to first stage of Q School, I had absolutely no chance because I didn’t think I had a chance. I’m not sure why I felt that way, because I’d had a good college career. Now when I go to first stage, I not only expect to get through, I’m hoping to win.”

  Gioffre is another in a long line of Wake Forest golfers. He and his older brother, Sean, had driven from Greensboro to Pinehurst every weekend as kids to take lessons from Ken Crowe, a well-known teaching pro. Living in North Carolina less than thirty minutes from the Wake Forest campus, Gioffre grew up wanting to play there. “I could have gotten a full ride from either North Carolina or South Carolina, but I had my heart set on Wake,” he said. “I guess it’s a little bit like a basketball player wanting to go to Duke or North Carolina. So I went to Wake on a partial scholarship and worked my way up.”

  By his senior year, the late bloomer was an all-American, and he graduated cum laude in 1998 with a degree in sociology. He decided to turn pro not so much because there weren’t other things he wanted to do, but because it seemed the right thing for an all-American golfer to do. After his bomb-out at Q School that first fall, he spent three years on the NGA/Hooters Tour, learning his profession. He learned how to travel and how to save money. And, like a lot of young players working their way up the ladder, he learned how to put together sponsorship groups to finance him until he started to make big money.

  “My brother had done the same thing after he graduated from TCU, so he showed me the ropes,” Gioffre said. “Eventually, I was able to put together a group of friends at home who backed me, and that made my life a lot easier.”

  His play improved steadily on the Hooters Tour, and he began making it through first stage at Q School. As is the case with a lot of good players, second stage became his stumbling block—until 2003. Playing second stage at the Deerwood Course, he started the final day right on the cut number and shot two under for the day. He knew that he’d beaten both players in his group and that it was unlikely that many players in contention had scored lower than he had. Still, he wondered.

  “We had to walk in from the ninth hole, which was where we finished, so I had no idea what was going on,” he said. “I went to the scoreboard and saw all the scores going up. I was at eight under. Everyone was saying the number was going to be six under, maybe five or seven, but no way would it be better than seven. I almost didn’t want to listen. Finally, they put up the last group’s scores and I stood there adding it up, and I could see six under was the number. I was almost frozen on the spot. I kept counting and re-counting to make sure I’d actually made it, that I wasn’t dreaming.

  “When I finally admitted to myself that I’d done it, I felt like I was taking a breath after holding it for three or four minutes. It was such a great feeling of relief to have done it and to know I didn’t have to play the Hooters or mini-tours the next year.”

  The timing was also good because Gioffre had gotten engaged earlier that year and was getting married in May. He didn’t play that well in the finals—“It was like the first time I was at first stage,” he said. “I just couldn’t make myself believe I was good enough to make it”—but he was on the Nationwide Tour the next year. He made the cut the week before he got married and the week after he got married, but that was it.

  “Again, it was me trying to learn and to convince myself I was good enough to play out there,” he said. “I had trouble with the crowds, believe it or not. You get in front of ten thousand people, you really can’t hear anything. But you have ten or fifteen people in your group, you hear everything. I remember one week I was right on the cut number on Friday, and I bogeyed the 16th hole. As I was walking to the next tee, I heard a guy say to his wife, ‘That boy just hurt himself bad.’ I wanted to turn around and say, ‘Ya think?’ I think I missed six cuts by a shot. That’s why I want to at least get back there and see if I can do better. I always do better with experience.”

  After losing his Nationwide card at the end of 2004, Gioffre went back to second stage in Houston. He didn’t play especially well the first two days but got on a roll the third day. After 10 holes, he was inside the cut line and feeling confident that he was going to make it back to the finals.

  Then it started to rain—hard. It rained all afternoon, and it rained again the next day and the day after that. After two full days of torrential rain, the tour officials running the qualifier decided to call it off and let the 36-hole scores stand. It would take at least another two days to dry out the golf course—if there was no more rain—and the rules said that if 36 holes had been played, the qualifier was official.

  Gioffre was crushed. The 10 holes in which he had played himself back into contention didn’t count, and he found himself with no status again in 2005. Rather than play the Hooters again, he played on a couple of mini-tours in North Carolina because the traveling was easier and less expensive. He had sailed through first stage again and came back to Deerwood as confident as he had ever been. “I honestly thought I was going to walk through second stage and get my PGA Tour card at finals—I felt that good,” he said. “I was psyched.”

  On the day before the tournament began, he was hitting balls on the range and realized he couldn’t see the yardage flags very clearly. “I figured my contacts were blurry,” he said. He took them out, cleaned them off, and still couldn’t see. Sean, who was caddying for him, suggested they go see an eye doctor that afternoon. The doctor told him he had a swollen cornea. It would be better, he guessed, in three or four days.

  Gioffre didn’t have three or four days. You can’t apply for an extension at Q School. He had to be on the tee the next morning. He and Sean discussed whether he should withdraw. That was out of the question. He had to at least try.

  “There were times when I was literally closing my left eye when I swung,” he said. “That’s the toughest thing about Q School. No one wants to hear excuses. I could not have felt better going in there. At first stage, I made three bogeys in four days. I went from feeling as good as I could possibly feel to as bad as I could possibly feel.”

  Gioffre hung in for all four days but ended up tied for 56th, way outside the cut number. He had turned thirty earlier in the year and now faced another year of mini-tour golf. “I remember when I was first on the Hooters Tour, I would look at some of the guys out there who were thirty and think, ‘What are they doing? If you’re thirty and you’re still on the Hooters or the mini-tours, it has to be time to give it up.’ Now I’m thirty, and look where I am.

  “The toughest thing about this year was coming home and telling my sponsors what happened. You hate to make excuses, and saying ‘I couldn’t see’ almost sounds silly—even if it’s true. I know they’ll stick with me, because they’re my friends and they still believe in me.

  “Still, it’s difficult when a fluke thing like that forces you to basically go back to the drawing board for another year. I’m going to try to play in some Monday qualifiers on the Nationwide Tour this year. I think if I can get into some tournaments, I can play well. I still feel like I can get better.”

  Spoken like a true late bloo
mer.

  12

  Six Days

  THE PGA TOUR had spent a lot of time searching for the right East Coast site for the finals. In recent years, the finals have alternated between a California site and a Florida site. For a while, the tour included Texas in the rotation, but awful weather on several occasions had led to the decision to stick with Florida and California.

  The West Coast site had been locked in for years: Palm Springs, where the weather is almost always perfect and there is an abundance of golf courses. Most of the time, one of the courses at PGA West served as the host course.

  Florida wasn’t as simple. To begin with, the courses there are a lot more crowded than in California, and finding a resort with two good golf courses that would be willing to give up its facilities for almost two weeks—time to prepare the course, practice rounds, and then six days of play—wasn’t easy.

  The tour had often used the Grenelefe Golf and Tennis Resort in Haines City. It wasn’t far from Orlando, but it was nonetheless a remote place to ask players to spend ten of the more intense days of their lives. Still, the two golf courses and the resort’s willingness to invite the tour back made it an oft-used site. When Grenelefe went out of business in 1998, the tour went searching again. For one year it tried Doral Golf and Country Club in Miami. Doral had plenty of golf courses, but it was so spread out and so busy and noisy that the 1999 finals there were a disaster.

  “We were just another outing to them,” Q School coordinator Steve Carman said. “You can’t have the finals feel that way for the players.”

  In 2001 Carman found what he thought was the perfect spot: the Orange County National Golf Center and Lodge, in Winter Garden. Located just off route 4, just one exit past the Magic Kingdom, Orange County National was both accessible and slightly remote. Leaving route 4, a golfer drove through dozens of orange groves until spotting the sign that said “Phil Ritson Way.”