Q-School

It's a Hard Knock Life

This past week golfers teed it up in Stage 2 PGA Tour qualifying with dreams of playing high level professional golf for a living. Players take their shot at tour status on the PGA Tour, Korn Ferry Tour or PGA Tour Americas. Some have had cards before. Others are attempting to earn a card for the first time. For some, the dream ended this week. For others, at least a portion of the dream was achieved.

The final stage of PGA Tour Q-school takes place this week. Five players will earn their PGA Tour cards while the rest of the field will earn various levels of Korn Ferry Tour and PGA Tour Americas status.

The process involves four separate stages: pre-qualifying, 1st Stage, 2nd Stage and Final Stage. There are numerous exemptions available to players to avoid various stages. A player may skip one or multiple stages based on exemptions available to them.

1st Stage guarantees medalists and ties a card for the PGA Tour Americas. 2nd Stage medalists and ties earn a Korn Ferry Tour card for the year. For these players, some of the pressure lessens as they already know they will be playing somewhere. Still, the pressure of trying to earn status with big show, the PGA Tour, remains immense.

The best example of the stress and pressure came from Matt Atkins. Atkins is a 34-year-old professional golfer who survived to make the Final Stage. Atkins held a PGA Tour card for the 2018 season. He has played in 28 PGA Tour events with 10 cuts made and no finishes inside the top 10. The majority of his playing career has been on the Korn Ferry Tour where he has had some success with 1 win, 2 runners-up, 5 top fives and 9 top tens in 198 starts. In other words, he understands the pressure of playing professional golf for a living.

Following his qualifying for Final Stage this week, Atkins gave an interview which started off with Atkins saying in his state of mind, he didn’t want to be in the car.

He was referring to the two-hour drive to the Final Stage site at TPC Sawgrass and Sawgrass CC. He continued by explaining what he meant.

He spoke how hard Q-school is. All he wanted was to relax and not think, to empty his mind and rest before getting refocused for the week ahead of him. He continued talking about how moving on to Final Stage is a strange place mentally. You can’t celebrate too much, but you want to appreciate what you’ve accomplished with all the hard work paying off to a degree.

Listening to him, he expressed how he took for granted when he earned his PGA Tour card. Older and more experienced, he says he understands professional golf is a grind, and you need to keep a balance of confidence and appreciation for playing on Tour because in an instant you can be back to the grind of playing mini-tours and eking out a living.

I can speak from personal experience that playing mini-tours is a grind. Entry fees are high. Purses are limited. Finishing in the money doesn’t guarantee making money and often doesn’t cover expenses. If you have a family, the stress becomes compounded. Many guys work jobs at night to cover expenses while spending their days playing tournaments or honing their games. There is nothing easy about it.

For players like Matt Atkins, making Final Stage of Q-school is an amazing accomplishment leaving them on the doorstep of earning a PGA Tour card. Five players will master their nerves and overcome the pressure to earn their spot on the PGA Tour for 2026. For those who succeed, they would be wise to listen to Matt Atkins and not take the accomplishment for granted.

This week, I finished up testing regarding the health issues I have been dealing with. I have still been training focusing primarily on strength training with some speed training mixed in. I am happy to say I have received a clean bill of health and can resume full training this week. Woo-hoo!

I want to extend a word of caution to anyone who is starting a training regimen. Don’t overtrain, especially if you have spent limited time in the gym. Take time and ease into it. If you’re older like me, this is even more important. I am ramping up because I have spent a lot of time in the gym over the last 4-5 years. I have prepared myself for more extensive training.

For me, I will be working out 4-5 days a week alternating days of weight and speed training. Each session will last at least an hour with a max of 1 1/2 hours for a session. Any adjustments I make will be based on how my body feels. Whether I spend more time on strength or speed will depend on which needs more improvement based on my progress.

As always, be grateful when you play. Be thankful for the privilege and opportunity to play this amazing game. Now, go golf!