THERE was a time when debate was conducted face to face.

You know, between people with mouths and jabbing fingers and bare fists that would become increasingly clenched with opinionated, quaking fury.

These days, of course, you can just safely sit in your semmit and baffies, anchor yourself to the computer and argue away with him, her and everyone about this, that and the other until your heart's content, without the worry of suffering some kind of cranial trauma caused by a flying bar stool. Twitter, Facebook: they're all the raging rage in these tappety-tap technological times, unless you're from a more tranquil, slower-paced era when the creation of the stovepipe hat was hailed as a significant stride forward in innovation.

An online trawl, particularly in the increasingly uneventful depths of winter when golf columns become an exercise in laborious chiselling on a par with hewing out an elaborate gargoyle on a limestone cornice, can be gratefully enlightening.

One particular subject that has sparked a bit of comment recently has been the European Tour's qualifying school process. Some say it's worth it, others say it's worthless. A couple of years ago, the powers that be in the United States opted, essentially, to bin the three-stage q-school, a series which had offered a direct path to the PGA Tour since 1965. The developmental Web.com Tour became the primary route to the top, while a lesser qualifying school continues to be held, but only offering cards for the second-tier circuit.

Back on this side of the pond, there have often been calls to give the European Challenge Tour, the highly competitive breeding ground, a similar status and relegate the role of the qualifying school. At present, 15 players earn promotion from the Challenge Tour and 25 (and ties) graduate from the school. Some argue that the qualifying route doesn't prepare you for the rigours of tour life. Players, from a variety of golfing backgrounds, can have one good week (or three if you come through all the stages) and jump directly to the furious cut-and-thrust of the main tour. But, then, that is one of the alluring, romantic aspects of the whole process: the rags to potential riches element where a zero becomes a hero; a nobody becomes a somebody. It's one of the greatest democratic processes in sport. You pay your entry fee ' some £1300 ' and try to achieve the ultimate dream through the kind of arduous trek that would have had Hannibal halting his legions and saying 'sod this, lads, we'll just head back'.

Admittedly, the vast majority of entrants have about as much chance of earning a tour card as Craig Whyte has of featuring in The Pictorial Guide of Rangers Greats but take away hope and opportunity and you take away much of what keeps driving on players. It's a gamble but it may just be worth it in this fickle pursuit where you're constantly gambling on a week-to-week basis.

The naysayers suggest that those coming through q-school only get modest offerings. The qualifiers are down the pecking order when it comes to entry into events and are playing for a fraction of the overall prize fund available on the tour as a whole.

That may be true to an extent but, in the ruthless, dog-eat-dog world of professional sport where there is no divine right to success, those who are good enough will seize the chance. A 24-event programme of events, for instance, is surely a decent enough crack at the whip. It's a hard old business and in this game of fine margins, every opportunity has to be grasped with both hands.

Renato Paratore, a talented 17-year-old from Italy, breezed through q-school at the first attempt recently and fast-tracked himself to the top table. Will he find his feet or find himself floundering? Only time will tell, of course, but, instead of forking out thousands bouncing around the third-tier tours in an effort to gain promotion to the second-tier, where even more thousands will be coughed up in a bid to gain another step up to the main tour, Paratore's £1300 gamble has reaped an instant reward. The hard work is only just beginning for him but, who knows, he may just hit the ground running.

On the other side of the coin, Matt Ford, a 30-something, journeyman PGA pro, seemed to be going the other way after a decade of battering away at a variety of levels in an ambitious and hitherto fruitless effort to make the promised land. It got to the point where he was going to take seasonal work with the Royal Mail to make ends meet but, after a season of competitive toil, he found redemption at the qualifying school and earned a place on the circuit for the first time.

'From a financial point of view, I wasn't in a great place and I had to pay the entry on a credit card,' he said. 'But I decided to take a gamble.'

Golf is awash with tales of last-chance saloons and final tosses of the dice. The qualifying school keeps that door of wide-eyed opportunity enticingly ajar for those countless golfing dreamers who dare to dream.