When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
Steve Elling sets up the impending disaster that is the PGA Tour's plan to change Q-School and create a FedExCup-lite playoff between players from the PGA and Nationwide Tours.
But for a sport long hailed as one of the most democratic in all sports, Q-school, which dates to 1965 and used to be contested twice annually as the main boulevard to the tour ranks, is about to be sold down the river in an attempt to prop up the value of the satellite Nationwide, a tour property that needs a new title sponsor after the insurance company's contract expires later this year.
The latest details of the plan were pitched to players last night in San Diego and as expected, at least one player made clear it's not going over well. Stephanie Wei quotes a player who attended the mandatory meeting.
“Not to be stagnant and not forward thinking, but things are going really, really well right now, and you just got done saying this is the best season we’ve ever had, but we need to fix it, we need to change it like there’s something wrong? I just don’t understand it.
“Right now when I tee it up on the PGA Tour, I know what I have to do on the PGA Tour to keep my card. Well, there are all these different situations that can be presented (in the new proposed format) — are you going to work hard at the FedExCup or are you going to work hard at the Money List?
There are two or three transitional periods where things are going to overlap, and I just left (the meeting) shaking my head, and I’m sure a lot of other people did, too, to the point of why are we going to do this, instead of, ‘Hey, if I finish outside the top 125, I’ve got to go to Qschool and I get an opportunity to get my card back.’”
John Maginnes previews this week's PGA Tour player meeting and gives us an insider's take on what these PTA-gone-bad sessions are like.
Most of the time it seems the agenda and the inevitable hypotheticals concerning it become belabored and exhaustive. However, this meeting and the meetings the rest of the year will be as important as any since the inception of the PGA Tour playoffs. The playoffs were an easy sell - and easy to explain in the beginning. The players like it when you throw money at them. When they perceive, rightly or wrongly, that there job is going to be less secure next year than it is this year even those players who have never spoken in a player meeting will stand up and be heard.
The path to the PGA Tour is changing, that seems inevitable. This week will find out just how dramatic those changes will be.
Either way, there will be a lot of resistance.
Ryan Ballengee talks to Nationwide Tour president Bill Calfee, who says players showing up at a Torrey Pines player meeting will get to hear the latest concept for the PGA Tour/Nationwide Tour's three-event fall finish, which is designed to help lure a Nationwide title sponsor and replace PGA Tour Q-School as an annual avenue to the tour.
Check out this:
Beginning in 2013, a total of 50 PGA Tour cards will be awarded through a three-tournament series on the Nationwide Tour schedule. Q-School will only offer status on the Nationwide Tour.
The top 75 players from the Nationwide Tour money list and the first 75 players who fail to qualify for the PGA Tour playoffs will be a part of the series. In addition, Calfee said a number of top amateurs or collegiate players could be invited to take part in the series.
“It’s kind of like our form of the FedEx Cup, in some ways,” he said.
So now they are talking sponsor's invites for college players into the series?
What's next, spots for a few of the Commissioner's favorite players outside the top 125? Former Players Champions who no longer have status?
Steve Elling looks at the Nationwide success stories of Erik Compton, Billy Hurley and Ted Potter, including this new revelation from Compton about his heart:
For much of his life, the destination was hardly ordained. When Compton made it to PGA Tour Qualifying School finals last fall and struggled, guaranteeing him only limited status on the Nationwide in 2011, he not only wasn't sure where he would be playing, but how much he could play, period, because of his physical limitations.
He hit the wall after winning the Mexico Open last summer and his body began rejecting his heart. Doctors gave him doses of Prednisone, which sapped his strength for several weeks and left him so shaky he could not drive for parts of three weeks.
"My hands were too shaky," he said.
Pete Iacobelli reports on Erik Compton finishing 13th on the 2011 Nationwide Tour season money list, giving the two-time heart transplant recipient PGA Tour status in 2012.
The PGA Tour's desire to make the Nationwide Tour more attractive to a sponsor and to tie it into the regular tour's fall finish makes a little more sense when you see this noted in Sean Martin's Nationwide notes column:
The tour has 26 events this year, the fewest in its history, and a total purse of $16,075,000, the tour’s smallest since 2005. The tour peaked at 32 events in 2007. This year’s purse is $2.25 million less than last year’s and $2.9 million less than the tour’s peak of 2008, when $18,991,094 was up for grabs.
PGATour.com posts the shot from the Mylan Classic, the third par-4 double eagle in Nationwide Tour history.
Harris English, understandably confused for a character in a P.G. Wodehouse novel, did not win a Nationwide Tour event Sunday. Instead, it was Harris English from the University of Georgia, who outdueled another amateur, LSU's John Peterson. Throw in another impressive PGA Tour performance from UCLA's Patrick Cantlay at the Canadian Open, and you have to be impressed with the showing of college golf's finest.
Joe Chemycz with the lowdown on amateurs in the first two spots of the Nationwide Children's Hospital Invitational heading into Sunday and a third in the top ten.
LSU's John Peterson birdied three of his final five holes and maintained his lead after three rounds at Ohio State University's Scarlet Course. Peterson's 14-under 199 total is one shot better than college rival Harris English of Georgia, who carded a bogey-free 68.
"We had our college stuff on and it was just the two of us out there together. It really didn't feel like a professional tournament," said English, dressed in his red Bulldog shirt. "We were joking on the range that we thought our college coaches were going to show up at some point, and they still might."
You may recall amateur Russell Henley won earlier this year on his home collegiate course.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
