Tag: Sam Saunders

Schupak: PGA Tour Q-School, where money took a backseat to childhood dreams being achieved

Heartache and jubilation both made an appearance on Monday at PGA Tour Q-School.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Heartache and jubilation both made an appearance Monday at PGA Tour Q-School.

For one week at host courses Dye’s Valley at TPC Sawgrass and Sawgrass Country Club the greed that has consumed professional golf gave way to job seekers desperate to improve their status for next season. Money took such a backseat that on the walk to scoring veteran pro Erik Compton asked his caddie after finishing T-38, “Did I make anything?”

“You made enough for extra guac and double barbacoa at Chipotle tonight,” he said.<

For the record, Compton banked $6,214.28 from a purse of $550,000, which should cover that Chipotle order but the purse equaled what Nick Taylor made for finishing 25th out of 30th at the Tour Championship in August. Here’s the rub: what Compton really cared about was hanging on to the top 40 and eight guaranteed Korn Ferry Tour starts to begin the 2024 season.

“If I get eight starts at the beginning of the year and don’t have to stress about it, I can get a (full) card back,” said Compton, breaking into a smile and with renewed hope of a clear path back to the PGA Tour for 2025.

Julian Suri, who grew up in Jacksonville before going to Duke, needed a par at the last hole at Dye’s Valley to earn eight starts too. But he made triple bogey and is relegated to conditional status and uncertainty over how many starts are in his future on KFT.

More Monday meltdowns

Wesley Bryan was in the hunt for one of the five full Tour cards but shot 79 and will have to rely primarily on past champions status next season instead. Spencer Levin, 39, entered the final day T-3 and played in the last group, but he airmailed the ninth green and pitched 12 feet past the hole. There were 28 spectators ringing the green and as Levin’s par putt stopped short of the hole, one fan clapped. With that few fans, Levin heard it and he glared daggers at the spectator.

It was Levin’s fifth bogey of the day but he seemed more enraged about the clap. As one of his playing partner’s lined up his putt, Levin continued to express his disgust at the fan. He shot 73 and fell to T-10, which did him no good as he already had full status for next season on KFT.

There would be no one clapping for him at 18.

Q-School will mess with your head

It makes your palms sweaty and your stomach turn. Kevin Velo, who recorded just two top-25s on KFT this season and finished dead last at the Nationwide Championship to end his regular season, had to go back to First Stage but fought his way back to Final Stage and finished T-21. It wasn’t enough to earn a PGA Tour card but it beat the alternative.

“Losing your job is one of the worst things in the world that can happen to you,” said Velo.

Imagine having to wait an extra day for the final round after a storm washed out play Sunday. Velo tossed and turned at night and turned to YouTube around 3 a.m., scrolling videos of a guy who unclogs drains for a living and of others mowing lawns.

“They’re super-satisfying,” he said.

Whatever gets you through the night.

The five PGA Tour cards, which were offered to top finishers for the first time since 2012, were the carrots dangled to attract a field of 165, who were guaranteed at least conditional KFT status by making it this far. As Sam Saunders said, “We’d have been there if there was one PGA Tour card.”

Childhood dreams achieved

Each of the five players who earned cards fittingly played on a different tour last season:

  • Harrison Endycott gets to go back to the PGA Tour with full status
  • Trace Crowe finished 38th on Korn Ferry Tour
  • Hayden Springer topped the money list on PGA Tour Canada
  • Raul Pereda spent the season on PGA Tour Latinoamerica and showed he had game at the Mexico Open
  • Blaine Hale Jr. toiled on the mini tours

Each had an emotional story of their journey to the big leagues but none struck the chords like that of Springer, whose 3-year-old daughter Sage died on Nov. 13. How he kept it together to perform the way he did at Q-School, we’ll never know. His caddie, Michael Burns? Not so much. He burst into tears on 18.

“My heart has never beated faster in my entire life,” Burns said.

Springer’s story ranks with Erik van Rooyen winning in Cabo for his dying friend and Camilo Villegas’s win in Bermuda, his first since his young daughter died, as the feel-good story of the year in golf.

Ecstasy and agony, Cinderella stories and nightmare finishes. Q-School had it all — except for talk about money.

The return of five cards at PGA Tour Q-School has ‘everyone and his brother here to give it a try’

“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.”

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Sam Saunders has a pretty good idea how grandfather Arnold Palmer would feel about the state of the pro game

“I can’t imagine he wouldn’t be disappointed because I know I am.”

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Growing up as the grandson of Arnold Palmer, Sam Saunders brings a perspective on one of the all-time legends of the game. It was Palmer who was his guiding light in the game and whose words of wisdom still serve as the foundation he goes back to.

So, when asked to comment on how he thinks his grandfather, who died in 2016, would have felt about the friction in the game since the launch of LIV Golf, Saunders is quick to say he can’t speak for “The King,” but that doesn’t mean he can’t offer an educated guess.

“It’s not fair to ever assume what anyone would think, period,” he said. “I can’t tell you I think he would think this, but based on my relationship with him and how I feel about the game of golf and how important it is to keep it accessible and fun, I can’t imagine he wouldn’t be disappointed because I know I am.”

Saunders is 36 and after playing in 158 career events on the PGA Tour has dealt with a myriad of injuries the past few years – cyst on his wrist, broken collarbone, broken left leg, just to name a few – but is healthy again and spent the past season on the Korn Ferry Tour trying to work his way back to the Tour that his grandfather helped build. (The players broke away from the PGA of America in 1968.)

“I don’t judge anyone for decisions they make because I’m not walking in their shoes but no one can buy the game of golf, nobody owns the game of golf. It’s a game that should be available for anyone to play. It’s important that everyone remembers that it should be a game that brings people together, not push them apart,” Saunders said. “Personally, I’d love to see the PGA Tour go back to its roots and stick to a little bit more of the tradition of the game. I won’t candy-coat it at all, I’m not a fan of limited-field, no-cut events. That’s not what the game is about. What makes it unique is there is no guaranteed money, it’s a performance-based sport. I felt like we had it pretty solid for a lot of years. I know that the years I played out there I never could have imagined we were playing for that much money. Purses have gone up to a point that I personally don’t feel are sustainable nor necessary.

“How much money does an individual need to make playing a sport? I think it should be performance-based. I hope that all of this will end in a positive way. Right now, I’ll be honest with you, I’m concerned. I know that 90 percent of players and those involved in the game are quite concerned and it’s justified to feel a little confused as to what’s going on. All I can do is hope that something good will prevail.”

Arnold Palmer and Sam Saunders pose for a Golfweek print story. (Photo by Allan Henry)

Saunders said he wasn’t pleased last year when it was initially proposed that the Arnold Palmer Invitational would become a small-field, no-cut signature event. (Later, the Tour reversed the decision and API, the Genesis Invitational and Memorial will all have a small cut.) Saunders, who grew up at the host course, Bay Hill Club & Lodge, and has played in the tournament 10 times, said he met with PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan over lunch during the tournament in March and voiced his concerns, while noting, “I didn’t have anything to do in that decision.”

“That was something my grandfather would have been very passionate about, I think he would’ve always wanted to have a competitive event with a cut in it. Personally, I’m disappointed that it is as small a field as it is but I’m glad there is a cut,” Saunders said.

While he needs to take care of business this week at PGA Tour Q-School, which begins Thursday at TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley Course and Sawgrass Country Club with five Tour cards available, Saunders already is targeting getting back into the Arnold Palmer Invitational, which he last played in March 2020.

Sam Saunders tees off at the 2015 Arnold Palmer Invitational.

“I don’t want to play in it because it’s a limited field, I want to play in it because it’s a great event,” he said. “I don’t like that we are identifying events as good ones and bad ones. They should all be great events. Every single event on the PGA Tour should be recognized as the best players in the world competing. It really upsets me when they’re limiting fields and not having cuts because we’re no longer identifying the best player, we’re identifying the best player in a limited circumstance, basically.

“I want to get back and play in the API and I’m very pleased that we’re going to have a cut there this year. I’d love to see all of the non-majors on a more equal level. Whether it’s Tiger’s event at the Genesis or Mr. Nicklaus’s event at Muirfield or my granddad’s event or the Colonial, obviously those events hold certain value on Tour but in no way did I think the Arnold Palmer Invitational was better or more important than any other Tour event. It has a certain history to it, it has my granddad’s name to it, which holds value. I wanted our golf course to be as good as it could possibly be and have it be the best test of golf for the players. That’s the only competitive nature I felt with my involvement in the tournament.”

Spoken like the grandson of one of the all-time greats.

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Sam Saunders ditches hotels and takeout for life in nature while on Korn Ferry Tour

Sam Saunders is safely and happily enjoying the country with his family in an Airstream trailer while playing on the Korn Ferry Tour.

BERTHOUD, Colo. — Sam Saunders prepared for the start of the TPC Colorado Championship by going on a bike ride at Devil’s Backbone Open Space.

That came after a couple relaxing days in Granby, which was preceded by a visit to Blanca, Colorado, and exploring Great Sand Dunes National Park.

Saunders has effectively ditched the mundane lifestyle of second-tier pro golf for a chance to safely and happily enjoy the country with his family by buying and living in an Airstream trailer while playing on the Korn Ferry Tour.

Playing in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic kickstarted the idea. Now it’s a perfect fit.

“You just don’t know what you’re getting into with every town, you get different rules and regulations. I figured this way I can control where I go, when I go,” said Saunders, a former Fort Collins resident, after his first round of the 2020 TPC Colorado Championship at Heron Lakes.

“Every night I get to go back to my own bed, my own sheets.”

Saunders, the grandson of golf legend Arnold Palmer, smiles at the happiness the new lifestyle has brought him and his family (Saunders and his wife, Kelly, have two boys aged 11 and 6), joking that golf is getting in the way of his fun during his return to Colorado.

The Airstream has solar panels, two generators and a 59-gallon freshwater tank, so the Saunders crew can effectively drop off the grid for extended periods of time. Their camping spot during this week’s tournament is at Flatiron Reservoir and he happily says he has no cellphone service there.

After Wednesday’s first round he went back to camp, grabbed inflatable kayaks and headed to a nearby lake to relax. He’s spent evenings catching up with old friends from Fort Collins and even has his former neighbor on the bag.

No more will he live the life of most golfers on second-tier tours trying to earn their PGA Tour card.

“The lifestyle out here before was always just so mundane to me. I hate the routine of go to a hotel, go to the golf course, you go pick up dinner, you go sit in a hotel room and watch TV all night,” Saunders said. “That’s just not healthy. It’s not good for you. I just think life is meant to be spent outside and this is a great way for me to be outside as much as possible.”

The family cooks their own dinner every night, spends evenings around the campfire before finishing with a movie or book before bed.

“Golf is a job and I enjoy it, but it just gives me perspective on it all. If I play great I’m happy, but if I don’t play great, that’s OK, too,” said Saunders, who shot a 2-over 74 in the first round.

The Colorado reunion has been a blessing for Saunders, who moved to Florida four years ago.

The next stop? More adventure.

Even when the coronavirus pandemic ends and things return more to normal, the Airstream life is the life for the Saunders family.

“We’re having a great time. The challenges are tough, but the good times are so rewarding it’s all worth it,” Saunders said. “It’s the best. I don’t think I’ll ever go any other way again.”

Follow Kevin Lytle at twitter.com/Kevin_Lytle and at facebook.com/KevinSLytle. Coloradoan Sports can also be followed on Twitter. If you don’t already, please support local journalism at Coloradoan.com/subscribe. 

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