Q-School Cast Exemplifies Unpredictable Nature of Professional Golf on the Fringes

One of the primary goals of PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem and his minions heading into the 2008 season was to create a buzz surrounding the FedEx Cup finale (never intended to be known as playoffs) by narrowing the gap between No. 1 and No. 125 at year's end, thus creating a more volatile postseason atmosphere.

The experiment failed, and has again been reworked for 2009. While the Tour has struggled to create drastic swings at the end of its four-part FedEx Cup event, hopeful Tour players relegated to the doldrums of Q-School are surrounded by a culture of instability capable of leaving one player with the means to purchase an Aston Martin a calendar year removed from qualifying school finals, while his unlucky counterpart is stuck roaming from city to city on the mini tours in a Toyota Prius.

On the fringes of professional golf, where name recognition isn't a guarantee of success and almost certainly a sign of failure, the storylines and life-altering scenarios are in most cases more dramatic than anything that takes place between players residing atop the Tour money list.

Just how wide can the chasm between the haves and have-nots be, and can it seriously be created by a single shot? Yes, just ask candidate for PGA Tour Rookie of the Year, Kevin Streelman.

The former Duke University golfer birdied four of his last five holes just to advance through the first stage of qualifying school on the number last year. He parlayed that momentum into a successful PGA Tour season, earning $1,352,705 and finishing 35^th in the FedEx Cup Standings. Just for fun, Streelman led the Tour with 54 rounds in the 60s.

If Streelman missed the number and didn't advance past the first stage, he would've been lucky to finish as the top money earner on the NGA Hooters Tour. Tyler Hitchcock was the No. 1 money earner on that Tour in 2008, bringing in just under $17,000.

For every Kevin Streelman, there are five or six sad stories of players at each stage who suffer an injury, miss a crucial putt or just plain collapse during Q-School and fail to earn their Tour card. Success at an early age doesn't necessarily guarantee that the best is yet to come; the moniker at Q-School is that if an opportunity is in front of you, you'd better seize it because it might be your last.

Wednesday, Dec. 3, the annual final stage of the PGA Tour's Qualifying Tournament will commence, with 163 golfers currently entered in the field. The six-round tournament will be split between PGA West's Nicklaus Tournament Course and the TPC Stadium Course.

The top 25 players, plus ties, earn PGA Tour cards for the following year. Their priority ranking for purposes of tournament entry is 24; this ranking enables them to enter most full-field events on the PGA Tour.

The 163-player field represents a cross-section of golfers from different generations who have experienced varying degrees of success, but seek one common goal - an exempt status that allows them to play in as many full-field events as possible in 2009.

At 40 years of age, Bob May is remembered for finishing second at the 2000 PGA Championship. That's mainly because he lost to Tiger Woods in a playoff, but nonetheless, May is a well-known name. In 1991 May represented the United States in the Walker Cup and turned professional soon after. He joined the PGA tour in 1994, but has never won an event, finishing second three times. After the 2007 season he had lost his PGA Tour card and in 2008 he played mostly the Nationwide Tour as well as some PGA Tour events.

Now May is playing side-by-side the likes of Seung-Su Han, a 22-year-old who will bypass his senior season at UNLV to play the Q-School finals as a professional. Han holds the record for most American Junior Golf Association wins in a season; a mark previously held by Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

When Ricky Barnes turned professional following a 21^st place finish at the 2003 Masters and a made cut at the 2003 U.S. Open, he probably didn't picture himself fighting for a spot at Q-School five years later. While Barnes career has been somewhat of a disappointment after his defeat of Ryder Cup hero Hunter Mahan to win the 2002 U.S. Amateur, he did finish 25^th on the Nationwide Tour this season, earning himself a 2009 PGA Tour card by a slim margin - $3,582.

He has entered Q-School to increase his chances of gaining entry into full-field PGA Tour events; the lower you are on the Nationwide Tour money list or the lower you finish in Q-School, the less likely you are to get in tournaments with limited space available.

Four-time PGA Tour winner Notah Begay III is also making the trip to La Quinta. Begay has perhaps the best resume of any player in the field. He attended Stanford University, like Tiger Woods, where he was a three-time All-American. He had a pair of wins in each of his first two seasons on Tour. Begay is one of only a handful of professional golfers ever to shoot 59 in a tournament; he did so on the Nationwide Tour in 1998. He even cracked the top 20 of the Official World Golf Rankings at one time.

But Begay didn't exactly coast into the finals. He shot a 7-under-par round at Lantana Golf Club in Texas to earn a spot in this week's tournament. His journey from top 20 in the world to unranked is an example of how even a top-level golfer can rise and fall.

"There were times I truly wondered, how did I ever win four PGA Tour events?" Begay told the San Jose Mercury News last week.

A common refrain among professional golfers is that they're two or three good rounds from turning ‘it' around. In reality, they may never find what they're looking for, but if they do, it can be the start of a lucrative career. If not, they may endlessly roam the mini-tours for the duration of their golfing life.

J.B. Holmes won Q-School in 2005, and has never looked back. Frank Lickliter II shattered scoring records at Orange County National during last year's finals and is back again a year later.

Maybe the best example of a player catching fire and catapulting himself into golf stratosphere is Jason Gore, who will also be among the 163 players at PGA West this week.

In 2005, Gore was struggling on the Nationwide Tour, but managed to qualify for the U.S. Open at Pinehurst. He played beautifully for the first three days of the event, earning himself a spot in the final group alongside Retief Goosen. He wound up shooting an 84 that day, but returned to the Nationwide Tour and played as if that dreadful round never happened.

He won three consecutive Nationwide events, earning himself a battlefield promotion for winning three times in one year and was immediately promoted to the PGA Tour. That September, he won the 84 Lumber Classic and earned himself a two-year exemption on the PGA Tour.

In less than four months, he had gone from 668^th in the world to 89^th.

There will be stories of heartbreak and sorrow, but by the end of Q-School the likes of Jason Gore, J.B. Holmes and Kevin Streelman may have company.

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