The final PGA Tour Q-school as we’ve known it over the last few decades will begin on Tuesday (Sept. 11), and there’s no shortage of Colorado-connected golfers ready to make a run at the most prestigious tour in the world.
Next year, there will still be a PGA Tour qualifying process, of course, but it will be through a series of four August/September tournaments — dubbed the Web.com Tour Finals — which are limited to the top 75 Web.com Tour players and the 75 PGA Tour competitors who finish 126-200 on the FedEx Cup points list. They’ll battle it out for 25 PGA Tour cards for the following season. Twenty-five more PGA Tour spots will be guaranteed to the top money winners in the Web.com Tour regular season.
No longer will there be a Q-school as a direct route to the PGA Tour. In other words, your basic mini-tour or non-tour player won’t be able to catch lightning in a bottle and make it immediately to the PGA Tour through one fall of Q-school. There will still be a Q-school next year, but Web.com Tour cards — not those for the PGA Tour — will be the highest prizes at stake.
For this year, the set-up for Tour qualifying is the same it’s been in recent years, with pre-qualifying followed by three more stages of Q-school. At the final stage — Nov. 28-Dec. 3 in La Quinta, Calif., the top 25 finishers and ties will earn 2013 PGA Tour cards, and the other competitors will gain some status on the Web.com Tour.
The first step, the 54-hole pre-qualifying, will be held at eight sites. The first of those tournaments starts on Tuesday (Sept. 11), though the Coloradans involved won’t compete until next week. The number of players from each site who will advance has yet to be announced, but typically more than 30 from each tournament gain berths into the “first” stage.
First-stage competitions will be held in mid-to-late October at 13 sites, with many of the players exempt from pre-qualifying beginning Q-school at that point. Then six second-stage tournaments are scheduled in mid-November, when the spots for the Q-school finals will be up for grabs.
Six players with strong Colorado ties have signed up to play in pre-qualifying, most in Nebraska City Sept. 19-21. Among those competing there is Jim Knous (pictured above), the former Colorado School of Mines golfer who finished second in the NCAA-Division II National Championships this year.
On those same dates in Dallas, 2011 CGA Player of the Year Zahkai Brown of Arvada will take his shot.
Here are all the players with strong Colorado ties competing in PGA Tour pre-qualifying this month:
Dallas, Sept. 19-21 — Former CSU golfer Zahkai Brown of Arvada.
Nebraska City, Neb., Sept. 19-21 — Tommy Carpenter of Greenwood Village, Nicholas Hodge of Littleton, Jim Knous of Lakewood, former CSU golfer Ryan Peterson, former CU golfer Luke Symons of Aurora.
As for the other major tours, the LPGA began its qualifying last week, with Kelly Jacques of Longmont and former CU golfer Emily Talley advancing to the second of three stages Oct. 9-12. Champions Tour Regional Qualifying will be held Oct. 16-19 and Oct. 30-Nov. 2. The European Tour begins its first stage of Q-school on Tuesday, while the first stage of Ladies European Tour qualifying is scheduled for Dec. 6-9.
