“If you screw up it’s like, oh my gosh, I’ve got to wait a whole ‘nother year.”
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Ever since his grandfather Arnold Palmer died in 2016, Sam Saunders hasn’t found a replacement to be his swing coach. But anytime his game does go a bit haywire, his first call is to his pal Eric Cole, who had a breakthrough season on the PGA Tour in 2022-23 and has climbed to No. 41 in the Official World Golf Ranking.
“He still likes me to reach out to him and I do,” Saunders said. “He gets me back on track.”
Saunders had Cole as a caddie on the PGA Tour when he played in the big leagues previously and Cole was still battling to find his game on the mini-tours. It’s a role that Cole likely would have reprised this week as Saunders attempts to earn a promotion to the promised land via PGA Tour Qualifying School.
“If he wasn’t on his honeymoon he would’ve done it,” Saunders said. “I was like, ‘Dude, you can’t get divorced two days after you get married.’ He told me at his wedding, ‘Go get one of the five cards this week. My life will be so much better if you are out there with me. Just get it done.’ And, yeah, it would be a dream come true for the two of us to play on the PGA Tour together.”
After a decade of solely awarding varying levels of Korn Ferry Tour membership, final stage of PGA Tour Q-School marks the first time since 2012 that there are PGA Tour cards on the line. Upon conclusion of the 72-hole tournament, which begins on Thursday and will see the field play two 18-hole rounds – at both Dye’s Valley Course at TPC Sawgrass and Sawgrass Country Club – the top five finishers and ties will earn PGA Tour membership for 2024. Once again, the opportunity exists for a player in the field of 165 to go from obscurity to passing “Go” and collecting way more than $200 on the PGA Tour.
“Everyone and his brother are here to give it a try,” said veteran pro Rob Oppenheim, who first played in Q-School in 2001.
“Even if there was one card you’d come because it’s such a cool opportunity,” said Saunders.
Heartache and jubilation will both make an appearance on Sunday. Paul Azinger, the 1984 medalist, once described Q-School as “climbing up a cactus backwards, naked.” Erik Compton, who is in the field this week, said, “It was no place for women or children,” and retired pro Joe Ogilvie may have said it best when he mused, “Shakespeare would have written one hell of a tragedy here.”
It’s a competitive field with 19 Tour winners, veterans trying to improve or regain status and newbies who need directions to the locker room and are excited to have some status for next season and trying to better it.
The next 40 finishers and ties are exempt for multiple reshuffles of the 2024 Korn Ferry Tour season, guaranteeing them between eight to 12 starts depending on their finish. The next 20 finishers and ties earn exempt status for the Latin America Swing of the 2024 PGA Tour Americas season in addition to conditional Korn Ferry Tour status. All remaining finishers outside the aforementioned categories earn conditional Korn Ferry Tour and PGA Tour Americas membership for 2024.
For Saunders, he already has secured full status on the Korn Ferry Tour for next season so he has nothing to lose.
“I’m playing with house money,” he said. “Finishing sixth place does nothing for me in terms of positioning. I can fire at pins, I can play more aggressively than some other guys.”
It’s been a long time since Patton Kizzire has needed to play Q-School. After the stark reality hit him at the RSM Classic last month that he had failed to finish in the top 125, he shed tears at the realization that he would no longer be fully exempt. At No. 129, he’ll still have conditional status playing out of the Nos. 126-150 category, but the chance to secure full status is too compelling to pass up.
“All it is is an opportunity for me to move up,” he said.
The purse this week is a modest $510,000, with $50,000 going to the medalist, but Saunders said a paycheck is the farthest thing from anyone’s mind.
“That’s what makes it so pure. You’re playing for your entire career or an entire year,” he said.
“It’s kind of like the Olympics. People work their tails off for four years and then they have their one event and if you screw up it’s like, oh my gosh, I’ve got to wait four more years. Obviously the wait in golf isn’t that long, but if you screw up at Q-School and leave with limited status you feel like, oh my gosh, I’ve got to wait a whole ‘nother year – if I can make it back to this point – so it’s incredibly difficult.”
The weather could be dicey: cold, wind and rain are in the forecast. If such conditions prevail, there will be no faking it.
“It’s about embracing the suck sometimes,” said Ryan Gerard, “because it’s going to suck for a few days out here.”
Sunday is bound to be life changing for one PGA Tour player.
None of the top four players on the leaderboard at the 2023 Barracuda Championship at Tahoe Mountain Club in Truckee, California, have won on Tour before. Two of them, Ryan Gerard and Akshay Bhatia, weren’t even PGA Tour members when the season began.
After Sunday’s final round, it’s likely someone hoists a trophy for the first time.
Patrick Rodgers birdied the 18th hole and earned two points in the Modified Stableford format to take a one-point lead over Gerard going into the final round. Rodgers tallied eight points in the third round and sits at 34 for the tournament. Gerard, who led after the 36 holes, struggled to garner any momentum on moving day, earning only three points and has 33 points.
“I was really super proud of the way that I was resilient and turned the round around and knew there was still a lot of points to be had,” Rodgers said. “The eagle on 12 was huge, and birdieing two of the last three was great to be in a good position going into tomorrow.”
Bhatia made a major move up the leaderboard, sitting in solo third with 31 points, courtesy of his 17-point outing. He shot 8-under 63 with six birdies and an eagle.
“I know I’m close to winning,” Bhatia said. “It’s a good feeling. Obviously finishing top 10 and gaining points and everything is important out here. But it’s just amazing the perspective you have when you just kind of wish you did certain things a little different, and I would have been pretty close to hosting that trophy last week.”
Beau Hossler, who is also searching for his first Tour victory, is in solo fourth with 30 points. Joel Dahmen is in fifth with 29.
The opposite-field event gives plenty of opportunities for someone to have a career-changing victory. The leaderboard is set up for exactly that come Sunday.
“I feel like any time that you’re in contention coming down the last round, last however many holes, you’ve got to play well to get into that situation,” Gerard said. “So just going to take that in stride and really just trust that we’re going to have some good stuff happen tomorrow and just really do my best and everything else is just an added bonus. So we’re excited to just go out there and see what happens.”
The name of the game in a Modified Stableford scoring event is big numbers and Ryan Gerard is putting up a lot of them so far this week.
Through two rounds at Tahoe Mountain Club’s Old Greenwood in Truckee, California, Gerard has 16 birdies, each worth two points in the unique scoring format. Two late bogeys in Thursday’s first round cost him one point each but through 36 holes, Gerard has 30 points to lead the 2023 Barracuda Championship.
Gerard’s best finish this season is a solo fourth at the Honda Classic in February. He has made nine cuts in 14 events.
Patrick Rodgers made a late move with birdies on three of his last four holes to get to 26 points, good for second.
Vincent Norrman, a first-time Tour winner a week ago at the Barbasol Championship, like the Barracuda an opposite-field event, is playing well again this week. He has 23 points.
S.Y. Noh led after the first round with 23 points thanks to three eagles (each worth five points) to become the fourth player this season to have three eagles in one round. Friday, though, was a disastrous day at Old Greenwood for Noh, as he posted a minus-5 score after two double bogeys, a bogey and just one birdie. His Friday 75 dropped him into a tie for 10th.
The cut came in at 10 points and among those to miss out on a weekend tee time: S.H. Kim, Keith Mitchell, Harry Higgs, Greyson Sigg and Taylor Pendrith.
This partnership speaks to his longevity in the game while confirming his teaching techniques are still relevant.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Carl Lohren sat in a folding chair behind Ryan Gerard before Friday’s second round of the 2023 Wells Fargo Championship and studied his warmup. He didn’t say a word because he didn’t have to. He had already imparted enough wisdom to his pupil that Gerard, a 23-year-old who earned Special Temporary membership on the PGA Tour last month, didn’t need any handholding.
“This kid is exceptional,” Lohren crowed. “His swing reminds me of Jon Rahm in that it’s fast and he doesn’t take it way back. He’s got the lower body going forward before the club gets to the top which I think is symbolic of a great swing.”
It had been 40 years since Lohren, 85, has worked with a pro at a PGA Tour stop – in 1983 he spent time with Gary Hallberg at Pebble Beach and later that same year at Butler National near Chicago during the Western Open with Marty Fleckman. Lohren’s heyday as an instructor to PGA Tour pros took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the likes of Deane Beman, Babe Hiskey and Dave Hill. (Among his disciples was club pro, Gene Borek, who, in addition to passing on his methods to students such as yours truly, dominated the Met PGA section for years and once shot a course-record 65 at Oakmont in the second round of the 1973 U.S. Open that stood for 48 hours until Johnny Miller went two better.) In 1970, Beman was mired in a slump and called Lohren from a Jacksonville, Florida motel and said, “Are you ready to do some weaving because I’m a basket case.” Lohren straightened him out — less than two months later, Beman won the Texas Open, his first of five official Tour wins.
For Lohren to be back inside the ropes with a player support badge for an up-and-coming pro more than 50 years later, well, it’s not unheard of – the best comparison may be Bob Toski, who worked with the likes of Tom Kite, Bruce Crampton, Judy Rankin and Pat Bradley during their primes and had a second act late in life with Birdie Kim, who won the 2005 U.S. Women’s Open, and Ken Duke, who won the 2013 Travelers – but it’s almost as rare as spotting Halley’s Comet and speaks to his incredible longevity in the game while confirming his teaching techniques are as relevant as ever.
Swing coach Carl Lohren returned to a PGA Tour driving range with one of his pupils on May 5, 2023, for the first time in four decades. Here he watches Ryan Gerard before his second round tee time at the Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte. (Jim Dedmon-USA TODAY Sports)
Lohren credits Ben Hogan’s swing to leading him to “the move,” and a better way to strike the golf ball. Lohren was an assistant pro at the time in Jackson, Michigan, and watched Hogan play three rounds at Oakland Hills in the 1964 Carling Open. To play a 150-yard shot, Hogan selected an 8-iron and took an abbreviated swing. Lohren could not imagine Hogan reaching the green, but to his surprise, Hogan’s ball exploded off the clubface and wound up ten feet from the pin.
“His hands were only halfway back and those hips started moving left. I said to myself, he doesn’t have a top to his swing,” Lohren recalled.
After that seminal moment, Lohren continued to study Hogan and hit thousands of balls trying to replicate Hogan’s swing. Those observations set him on the right path to developing his swing philosophy to start the swing with the left shoulder.
Lohren played college golf at the University of Maryland, finishing second individually in the 1958 NCAA National Championship and qualified for three U.S. Opens and six U.S. Senior Opens (finishing a career-best T-14 in 1992) and played on the PGA Tour Champions in 1990. But he made his mark in the game as a teacher.
Lohren came along before a cottage industry formed of swing instructors such as David Leadbetter, Butch Harmon and more recently Sean Foley and Cameron McCormick became celebrities in their own right for teaching the top touring pros – Golf Channel loves to show them on the range at majors – and endorsing all sorts of training aids and self-help products. Lohren recalls the time in 1970 when Dave Hill came to his club for a lesson and asked him to fly to Colorado and spend the weekend working with him on his game. But Lohren declined because it was Fourth of July weekend at his club and he had three children and a devoted wife counting on him to be at home for what little time he could get away. Hill flew in noted Australian instructor Norman Von Nida instead and that was that.
Ryan Gerard holding “One Move to Better Golf,” the instruction book by his teacher, Carl Lohren, which he received as a Christmas present in 2017. (Courtesy Gerard family)
Lohren served as head professional at North Shore Country Club on Long Island, New York, for 30 years, and those in the know knew he was one of the best at his craft.
Gerard’s father, Bob, grew up nearby and fell in love with the game. As an eighth grader, he began working at Pine Hollow Country Club for Larry Laoretti, a club pro turned Champions tour star in the 1990s whose trademark was chomping on a lit cigar while he played. Bob worked the range for practice privileges and joked that he picked up more of his own balls than those of the members. Laoretti sent him to Lohren for instruction, and Bob became good enough to play at Florida Atlantic University and kick around on some mini tours before giving up the pro dream.
In 1999, Ryan was born and he received his first set of clubs at age 2. His parents say he tried to sneak out of the house whenever he could to hit balls in the yard. Growing up at Wildwood Green GC in Raleigh, North Carolina, he and his friends, which included former U.S. Amateur champ and fellow Tour pro Doc Redman, took part in impossible chipping contests, where they intentionally gave each other the worst lies possible and then would see who could get the ball closest to the hole.
In 2007, his father took him to Quail Hollow for his first PGA Tour event, where Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh duked it out. Ryan sat at the range with a notebook watching these players he’d seen only on TV and scribbled down his thoughts on their various swings. Years later, when his parents were packing up to move, Bob found that notebook. On one page, it said, “Phil Mickelson swing good.” On the next page, it said, “Tiger Woods swing great.”
That experience cemented in Ryan’s mind that he wanted to be a tour pro just like the players he had watched and for the next several years he carried a golf ball in his pocket to school and elsewhere every day.
Carl Lohren chats with Ryan Gerard ahead of the second round of the Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte on May 5, 2023. Thirty years after Lohren taught Gerard’s father, he began teaching Ryan, who would drive nine hours roundtrip for a lesson. (Photo: Jim Dedmon-USA TODAY Sports)
In those early years, Bob was his primary teacher, feeding him information from Lohren’s instruction book, “One Move to Better Golf,” which was published in 1975 and gained a cult following. When Ryan developed into one of the better players in his age group, his father realized he had taken his son as far as he could and sought someone more qualified to help take him to the next level. But every pro who worked with Ryan wanted to change his unorthodox swing. Bob knew one swing instructor who would shape Ryan with what he had.
“You’ve got to have faith and I had no doubt in my mind that Carl would see how good Ryan could be,” Bob said.
So, they embarked on driving more than four hours each way to Knoxville, Tennessee, where Lohren had retired to be near his daughter, Tammy, who at the time was teaching at Patriot Hills Golf Club, and where Lohren still would give lessons. He took one look at Ryan’s swing and was reminded of Hogan’s swing – Ryan didn’t have a top too. What others failed to recognize in Ryan’s swing was that even though it looks unconventional to the naked eye, it still conforms to the fundamentals. Bob and Ryan made the drive every few months for Lohren’s sage advice.
“I went and saw him wherever he might be working at a given time, and we were having a blast,” said Ryan, who also took lessons from Lohren at Belfair GC in South Carolina and occasionally in South Florida.
His ranking blasted off too as he won five junior titles, including the 2015 AJGA Polo Golf Junior Classic, one of the biggest AJGA events, and became an AJGA first-team All-American and earned a scholarship at University of North Carolina.
As Ryan climbed the junior and amateur rankings, some of the parents asked Bob what pro his son worked with and some of their ears perked when Bob described him as “a quiet legend.”
The unassuming Lohren never chased celebrity; he doesn’t post on social media, he never hosted his own TV show on Golf Channel, so his name never became ubiquitous among golf fans like that of Leadbetter.
But as Beman once said, “Carl knows more about the golf swing than anybody I know.”
Gerard concurs.
“I think he is one of the best coaches to ever coach golf,” he said. “I kind of know what I like. He knows where he wants me to be, and it’s a partnership of how I can get there, and how he can get me there in the most comfortable way possible for me.”
Ryan Gerard on signing day with North Carolina. He became a second-team All-American in 2021-22 before turning pro. (Courtesy Gerard family)
As a freshman, Ryan struggled to make the traveling squad. UNC’s coach Andrew DiBitetto relied heavily on Trackman numbers and wanted to make several changes to Ryan’s swing based primarily on the numbers the machine spit out, including suggesting he ditch the pre-shot routine he’d learned from Lohren. When Ryan shared this news with Lohren at their next lesson, Lohren grew indignant and dug into his archives to show one of golf’s greatest players doing virtually the same moves.
“I said, ‘Next time he wants to change you, show him these pictures of Hogan.’ He left him alone after that,” Lohren said with a smile.
After that lesson, Ryan made the traveling team and posted the low score at his first tournament. He went on to earn second-team All-American honors in 2021-22.
“I do like that he keeps it old school,” Ryan said. “No tech, no Trackman, no anything – just a couple of rulers, some alignment sticks, and hitting shots.”
The 23-year-old missed locking up guaranteed starts on the Korn Ferry Tour by one stroke at Q-School in December but he said it only proved to light a fire underneath him. He prevailed in a 5-for-3 playoff to Monday qualify for the Honda Classic in late February — his first non-major PGA Tour start – and shot a sizzling second-round 63 en route to finishing fourth.
Ryan Gerard and his caddie discuss their options at the 10th hole at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte while his Coach Carl Lohren and fellow pro and disciple Wallace Hamerton watch from the side ropes during the second round of the 2023 Wells Fargo Championship. Gerard attended his first tournament as a kid here in 2007. (Photo: Jim Dedmon-USA TODAY Sports)
“I didn’t have anything that was guaranteed or given to me, so I knew that I had to take advantage of the tournaments that I was going to get in, and I did that,” he said.
Just as impressively, he bounced back from a 5-over start at the Valero Texas Open to make five birdies on the second nine last month. He made the cut and earned special temporary membership. (Lohren does make an exception for one bit of tech: he often follows Ryan’s round on PGA TourCast.) Despite shooting a second-round 77 to miss the cut at the Wells Fargo Championship, Ryan’s hometown event where the dream of playing on the Tour first took shape, he’s made five cuts in eight starts and banked more than $500,000 to date.
“I have the game that translates out here if I play well,” Ryan said. “Maybe not every week, maybe not every course right now, but one day I believe that I can play and win out on the PGA Tour.”
And there’s no doubt whom he will continue to trust in his quest to reach the winner’s circle: Lohren, his Yoda with hearing aids, who he now flies to from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Nashville, Tennessee, and then drives another three hours to Knoxville to where Lohren hangs his hat these days at Holsten Hills Country Club.
“I want to work with who I think is the best,” Ryan said, “and he’s the best for me, for sure.”
Ryan Gerard is in the midst of a two-week stretch of golf that could change his life.
Ryan Gerard is in the midst of a two-week stretch of golf that could change his life.
Last week, the 23-year-old Monday qualified into the Honda Classic. He took home $411,600 after placing solo fourth. His finish also got him into this week’s alternate-field event, the Puerto Rico Open, where he sits T-4 at 8-under 136 heading into the weekend.
If Gerard finishes in a three-way tie for ninth or better, he’ll earn special temporary membership on the PGA Tour for the remainder of the season. That makes the next 36 holes at Grand Reserve Golf Club in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, pressure-packed.
“I think when you really care about something, you sometimes make it harder on yourself than it needs to be,” Gerard said. “Sometimes I just have to take a step back and kind of try and see a bigger picture, try and really enjoy the little things about it.
“I mean, I’m playing in a PGA Tour event this week, I’m staying in a hotel on the beach, like there are a few things that are just really, really cool and the golf is just a bonus. It doesn’t define me. I want to be a great player, but the golf doesn’t define me as a person.
“I think since I’ve started to kind of realize that, it’s gotten a lot easier for me to just free up on the course. I still definitely want it really badly, so I’m putting in the effort and I’m really grinding out there. I think the combination of all those things have just put me in a good spot. When you’re hitting it well, good things happen.”
And if the North Carolina grad continues to hit it well this weekend, those good things will come.
Gerard and the pack are chasing Carson Young, who sits at 14 under after rounds of 63-67.
If Gerard wins, he would earn his way into the Players Championship next week. A top 10 would get him into the Valspar Championship in two weeks.
Nevertheless, he’s in the midst of a strong run that could spring him into more success.
“I feel like the last week and a half has been just a rollercoaster,” Gerard said. “I mean, just not really knowing what I’m getting into, playing well, quick turnaround, flying, it’s been really cool. I know I’m just lucky to be here and I know I’m playing well. I think I just take those two things in stride and just go have fun with it this weekend. I mean, if I keep playing well, I’ll be just fine.”
