PGA Tour: Say Goodbye to Q-School

The PGA Tour is a business, and as we all know, business are more concerned with their bottom line than anything else.

Tradition? Eh, no big deal, it’s money that they're after.

What’s best for the long-term success of the game? Not interested, as long as it means money in the pocket.

When Nationwide Insurance decided not to renew their umbrella sponsorship of the Nationwide Tour after the 2012 season, the PGA Tour for some unbenounced reason felt as if they needed to completely restructure the Nationwide Tour in order to entice a new sponsor.

So, as is often the case in business, money was put at the forefront of everything and tradition was simply kicked to the curb.

Earlier this week, the PGA Tour’s Policy Board officially announced a change that will all but end the PGA Tour’s Qualifying School as we know it.  

Beginning in 2013, players will no longer be able to earn PGA Tour cards through Q-school. Instead, getting through Q-School will merely earn them a spot on the Nationwide Tour.

Players then have to finish within the top-75 on the Nationwide Tour’s money list in order to advance into a three-tournament playoff series against numbers 126-200 on the PGA Tour’s money list.

The top-50 finishers from this three-tournament series will earn PGA Tour cards for the 2014 season.

The days of players such as Rickie Fowler leaving college and earning a PGA Tour card by way of Q-School are over.

If Fowler would have been a few years younger, he would have been bouncing around the Nationwide Tour during his rookie season rather than sinking putts to win Ryder Cup matches in Wales.

International players?

As a New Yorker might say, fawgetta ‘boutit.

Good luck trying to come over to America to play your way through Q-School only to earn a spot on what equates to golf’s minor league circuit, after which you MAY finally get a spot on the PGA Tour if you happen to play well during a three-week stretch at the end of the year.

Why not just play the Asian or European professional tours where you can earn far more World Golf Ranking points, which could get you into the WGCs and major championships?

Would international players such as South Korea’s Sang-Moon Bae, who made it through Q-School last year and is currently ranked 18th on the PAG Tour’s money list, have even attempted to go through Q-School this past year if it only meant a spot on the Nationwide Tour?

How about Y.E. Yang?

We may have never even heard of Yang if it weren’t for Q-School.

Yang made his way through Q-School in 2008. Four months later he won his first PGA Tour event at the Honda Classic. Five months after that he took down Tiger Woods at the PGA Championship to become the first Asian-born player to win a major.

One of the more romantic aspects of professional golf has always been that it’s open to anyone.

Joe the plumber could work on his game every afternoon and chase his dream of becoming a PGA Tour professional by playing his way through Q-School.

Jim the high school golf coach could grab his clubs and head off to Q-School with the hopes of achieving his life-long dream of becoming a tour professional.

The struggling mini-tour player who caddies in the morning and practices in the afternoon could catch lightening in a bottle by getting hot at precisely the right time and playing his way onto the PGA Tour.

Q-School offered every golfer on the face of the planet the opportunity to change their lives in a matter of six days.

Although the odds of, say, a high school teacher making it through Q-School have always been slim to none, that dream was still out there on the horizon, and some even managed to achieve it. Just ask Paul Goydos.

That is no longer the case.

The PGA Tour is now a closed shop.

The hopes and dreams of many as well as the romanticism that has always surrounding professional golf were all shattered earlier this week, and all because the PGA Tour thought that this would enable them to rake in a few more sponsorship dollars in 2013 and beyond.

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