Canada's Mike Weir reacts after his approach shot onto the sixth green during the second round of the British Open Golf Championship on the Old Course at St. Andrews, Scotland, Friday, July 16, 2010. (AP Photo/Tim Hales)Tim Hales/The Associated Press
Down here in the U.S. there's a popular National Public Radio (NPR) news quiz called Wait, Wait…Don't Tell Me. I thought of the show's title when news came that the PGA Tour is considering doing away with qualifying school as an immediate gateway there. This would start in 2013.
Wait, wait, don't tell me that the PGA Tour would do this. Don't tell me that the PGA Tour would eliminate the conditions of the one tournament that serious golf folks find a must-watch because it provides a direct, albeit, highly chancy route to the big show. It's a compelling tournament, right up there with the majors and usually more dramatic because of what's at stake.
Golfers fight for the right to play the next year's PGA Tour. Now, if the idea comes to pass - and the PGA Tour Policy Board has already given it a green light - then getting through Q-school will gain a player access only to the Nationwide Tour - if it even exists after next year.
Nationwide has said it won't sponsor the circuit after 2012.
Meanwhile, the PGA Tour's idea is to pit top Nationwide Tour players against PGA Tour players who don't qualify for the FedEx Cup in a series of season-ending tournaments. Golfers who succeed in those tournaments - the number yet to be determined - would win their PGA Tour cards.
Wait, wait, don't do that. Mike Weir went to Q-school six times before he made it to the PGA Tour. He was in tears when he finally made it, and then had to return to Q-school after finishing outside the top 125 money-winners his first year on the PGA Tour. He won Q-school that time and has gone on to win eight PGA Tour events, including the 2003 Masters.
Then there's Mac O'Grady, one of golf's truly astounding characters.
He went to Q-school 17 times before winning his PGA Tour card, and then won twice. Seventeen times at Q-school. Now there's a dreamer.
But he reached the biggest golfing show on earth.
So come on, don't tell me that the PGA Tour will purge itself of Q- school in its current, frenetic form and thereby deprive planet golf of the game's most thrilling, nail-biting, agonizing tournament. Q-school has generated two terrific books, because it always provides high, wrenching drama: John Feinstein's Tales from Q-School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major, and David Gould's Q-School Confidential: Inside Golf's Cruelest Tournament.
Wait, wait. Please tell me Q-school is forever, just the way it is.
Please, please, tell me this. Don't tell me otherwise.
ALSO FROM LORNE RUBENSTEIN:
Gary Who? notches first PGA victory
Getting a handle on the long ball
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Lorne Rubenstein has written a golf column for The Globe and Mail since 1980. He has played golf since the early 1960s and was the Royal Canadian Golf Association's first curator of its museum and library at the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario and the first editor of Score, Canada's Golf Magazine, where he continues to write a column and features. He has won four first-place awards from the Golf Writers Association of America, one National Magazine Award in Canada, and, most recently, he won the award for the best feature in 2009 from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada. Lorne has written 11 books, including The Natural Golf Swing, with George Knudson (1988); Links: An Insider's Tour Through the World of Golf (1990); The Swing, with Nick Price (1997); The Fundamentals of Hogan, with David Leadbetter (2000); A Season in Dornoch: Golf and Life in the Scottish Highlands (2001); Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters (2003); A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, with Jeff Neuman (2006); and his latest, This Round's on Me (2009). He is a member of the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. Lorne can be reached at rube@sympatico.ca . You can now follow him on Twitter @lornerubenstein