Mention the words ‘Qualifying School’ to a golfer and there’s a good chance you’ll be greeted by the kind of horrified, startled gaze usually reserved for an open leg wound. This weekend at PGA Catalunya in north east Spain, nerves will be jangling, nails will be nibbled, profanities will be hissed through clenched teeth and dreams will be shattered as the six-round process known as ‘golf’s torture chamber’ gets underway.
With only the leading 25 players and ties after 108 holes reaching the promised land of the main European Tour, there will be the usual triumphs, tears, heartbreaks and hissy fits. In fact, it will be just like a normal week on The Herald’s sports desk.
For all its raw, stripped back, anguish-laden, dog-eat-dog characteristics, the Q-School, which is now in its 40th year, remains one of the great democratic processes in sport.
Thousands of starry-eyed hopefuls fork out the £1350 entry fee each year and embark on the kind of arduous, perilous trek that would have had Hannibal halting his legions and bawling ‘sod this boys, we’ll just turn back’. Some of the competitors teeing-off this weekend have already negotiated eight rounds of stage one and two in recent weeks while others, who have dropped off the main circuit, will be parachuted into the mad house.
For we ghoulish profiteerers in the golf writing business, meanwhile, the Qualifying School panders to our sense of the macabre. Ross Biddiscombe has spent almost a decade chronicling the various twists, turns, ins, outs, highs and lows of this gruelling golfing guddle. His initial book, ‘Golf On The Edge’ focused in on seven ‘journeymen’ professionals – Scotsman, Euan Little was among them – as they battled to gain a foothold on the European Tour. To mark the Q-School’s 40th anniversary, he is set to release the follow up, ‘Cruel School’. And who said your school days were the best days of your life? Not a golfer anyway.
“I started this whole thing in 2006 when I went along to a stage one qualifier at The Oxfordshire,” recalled Biddiscombe. “It was just odd. This was the gateway to the tour and it was the lowest key event you could wish to see. I looked at the entry list and saw the name ‘Ballesteros’. It was Raul, Seve’s nephew. Then I saw the name ‘Conteh’, not John the boxer but his son, James, and his mum was pulling his trolley for the day. Here was a kid, the son of a former world champion boxer who is trying to make it in his own sport, on his own terms. This is his road to glory but he has to have his mum pulling the trolley and nobody is watching and nobody cares. But it was his life. His whole self-esteem, his whole personality was wrapped up in the chance to get through Q-School to make something of his career and emulate his father in a sense. From that moment I was captivated and the books were not really about golf, they were more about the struggle. Everybody has a sob story. There are countless tales of players re-mortgaging their house to cover this or borrowing this amount from their dad to do that. There was a guy from Australia who had borrowed $13,000 from his in-laws to come over for a month long trip and he failed to get through stage one.” He’s probably still in hiding to this day.
Despite the financial rigours and the eye-watering tension of it all, it is that rags-to-riches element that keeps many coming back for more. A zero could become a hero, a nobody may just become a somebody, a new star could be born or a stuttering stalwart could get a new start. Take away hope and opportunity and you take away much of what keeps driving players on.
The final itself, meanwhile, can be a baffling, yet compelling spectacle. No grandstands, hardly any spectators; just the bare essentials and 156 golfers alone with their thoughts. Come the final round, the pressure gets so great you just about need a bathysphere to keep things in check. The tranquillity is almost eerie but the the nervous silence can be punctuated by small bursts of whoops and shrieks from loved ones on the sidelines who have just watched their husband, brother or son trundle in a 30-footer for birdie on the very last hole to sneak into the qualifying zone with nothing to spare.
For every fairytale finish, though, there’s a forlorn finale. “I remember watching Euan Little hit an eight foot putt on the last green to qualify and it lipped out,” added Biddiscombe. “He nearly collapsed with the despair. He was a broken man. The Qualifying School can be car crash golf, particularly on the final day. You just can’t look away. For writers, though, it makes for great copy.”
Yes, we are a ghoulish old lot.
‘Cruel School: The 40-Year history of Golf’s European Tour Q-School’ by Ross Biddiscombe is published by Constant Sports Publishing.
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