Applications for a Dream Job

You’re on the back nine in the final round of Q school, your score hovers dangerously close to the qualifying number. This number will determine whether you have playing privileges next year and have a regular paycheck to play for. Falling short of the all-important number means another year of waiting endlessly for an opportunity. You try to remember your training: all the tournaments you’ve played in your life where you’ve been nervous – I mean, existentially nervous – and you remind yourself this is exactly what you signed up for. In between shots, you breathe as deeply as you can, trying to loosen the vise grip around your lungs (or is that your heart?). The importance of each shot has the power to freeze you in your pre-shot routine if you let it. Now, all that matters is your breath, your target and your process.

It's that time of year again. The time of year where we move heaven, earth, and debt to enter Q school. We check credit card card balances to decide if they can take any more weight and either dig a deeper hole, or start digging a new one.

How does one sign up, you ask? First, one decides where one wants to play. Thousands of applicants will begin their Q school quest in hopes of earning one of the five PGA Tour cards available, or one of the 40 Korn Ferry Tour cards offered at the end of four qualifying stages. Some players are exempt from a stage or two of this qualifying, but most will start at the first stage. If a player wants to save a couple of thousand dollars on their entry fee (PGAT Q school is about $5500), and play a more exotic schedule in the coming season, DP World Tour Q school is for them. If a player is either flush with cash and ambitious, or can stomach over $9,000 in entry fees, they may sign up for both. 

Players signing up for both would do well to make sure the sites they choose for each stage do not overlap, which brings us to the next point: choosing the right courses. If a player is fortunate enough to find one or two sites among the course choices they truly love and thrive at, well, they're on their way. Sites come and go as options every year, but every so often, a player qualifies year after year at the same course. When you see a certain player's name at a particular site, you know they've already got their hands around one of the qualifying spots. If you can be one of those players, more power to you. 

For me, that course was Southern Hills Plantation in Brooksville, Florida, which left the Q school rotation a couple years ago. I haven't advanced past the second stage since. Golf gods willing, this will be the year. 

Last year, I was sent to my 10th choice for the first stage: Walden on Lake Conroe Golf Course. Word about the course was it was quirky, difficult, grainy, bad weather-prone, and required precision. Because it had only been a first stage site for a year, there were few players with significant experience playing there, which was good for course fledglings like me. I made a two-day scouting trip a couple weeks before the tournament and spent one of the days enjoying a golf marathon on a quiet course. As the sun set on the course's most demanding hole, I had a moment of solitude: a feeling that I would hit my best shots when it mattered most. Two weeks later, I did just that.

This year, I was confirmed at my first choice site, Southern Dunes GC just outside Phoenix, a course I love and where I (usually) play well. The Fred Couples design on Ak-Chin reservation land is one of the best courses in the greater Phoenix area, but gets less attention than it deserves due to its proximity to the city. The site assignment makes scouting trips significantly easier, being less than an hour from home, allowing me to stay in my own bed, and importantly, reducing the overall cost of Q school. 

My DPWT first stage assignment is in Stockholm, Sweden, at Arlandastad Golf in September. I've never been to any of the first stage sites on this year’s DPWT Q school application, but I do love the beauty and good nature of Scandinavian countries.

Signing up for multiple Q schools at one time was considered ambitious, but these days, it is entirely common. When you only have one Q school to play per year, each tournament round can feel agonizingly important -- especially the late rounds near the cut line. Perhaps, for some, that is a blessing. Not me. I play my best when golf is in its rightful place in my priorities and I'm enjoying the pressure. More qualifying opportunities can let the steam out of any one round, relieving pressure, and allowing a bad shot or two to disappear from memory quickly. 

I look at players we’ve covered on Monday Q Info in the past year for inspiration. Players like Hayden Springer, Rico Hoey, James Nicholas, and Braden Thornberry: players who had no status in the past couple years and signed up for every Q school they could, jettisoning around the world on a breakneck, exhaustive and expensive schedule, spending tens of thousands of dollars hoping to play their way into the most pressure-packed moment of their lives. Each player, eventually, broke through and earned a place to play. 

So here’s to ignoring rationality, practicality, credit scores, and believing. May everyone signing up for Q school get the sites they love – except the players signing up for my sites.

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