Tag: TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley

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.

Hayden Springer playing with heavy heart, Boomer Sooner, and a cortado and flat white guy among 5 things to know from PGA Tour Q-School

Here’s what you need to know with PGA Tour cards on the line.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Hayden Springer reached into his black Chrysler Voyager minivan and grabbed his 1-year-old daughter Annie. He smiled the smile of a father who missed holding his child all day and gave her a good squeeze.

But just over a month ago, on Nov. 13, his oldest daughter Sage died at age 3. She was prenatally diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a developmental disorder stemming from an extra chromosome.

“She’s a very special girl, and we miss her a lot,” Springer said. “She brought an immense amount of joy to our family and the people around her.”

In the midst of what has to be an incredibly difficult grieving process, Springer has managed to play some impressive golf this week at PGA Tour Q-School despite hardly playing for the last month. On Saturday, he shot 2-under 68 at Sawgrass Country Club to improve to 7-under 203, which has him T-5 and right on the cutline for one of the Tour cards being given for the top five and ties this week.

Springer entered the week with full Korn Ferry Tour status after topping the 2023 PGA Tour Canada’s season-long Fortinet Cup, but he’s well aware of what is at stake on Sunday.

“It’s life-changing,” said Springer, who began playing U.S. Kids events at age 8. “I’ve spent most of my life dreaming of playing on the PGA Tour. It’s a special opportunity to be here and have a chance.”

Here are four more things to know after the third round of the 2023 Q-School.

PGA Tour Q-School likely to be affected by severe front, could have a Monday finish

A long week for the competitors in the PGA Tour Q-School might get even longer.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — A long week for the competitors in the PGA Tour Q-School presented by Korn Ferry — physically and psychologically — might get even longer thanks to severe weather predicted to hit the First Coast Saturday night and into Sunday.

Heavy rain and high wind are due to sweep through the First Coast from a front out of the Gulf of Mexico, bringing wind that may gust as high as 50 mph and between 2-4 inches of rain before it clears out on Sunday.

That brings about the possibility of a Monday finish. The qualifier has recent history of having to go an extra day. The 2021 qualifier in Savannah lost an entire tournament day before ending on Monday.

The tournament was played under its best weather conditions of the week on Friday with the sun peeking through high clouds and lighter wind than the day before as 162 players chase five PGA Tour cards for the 2024 season, plus full Korn Ferry Tour status for the next 40.

Tee times moved up, Monday finish is looming

But it will get nasty again on Saturday afternoon and the PGA Tour is moving the third-round tee times from 8:20 a.m. at the TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley Course and the Sawgrass Country Club to 7:30 a.m., with the hopes of finishing before the weather takes a turn for the worse.

Tour officials said that if necessary, the tournament will be finished on Monday. The 72-hole event calls for each competitor to play two rounds at the Valley and two rounds at Sawgrass, and with the latter course playing decidedly more difficult — the scoring average was more than two strokes higher than the Valley in Thursday’s first round — it would a competitive disadvantage to shorten the tournament to 54 holes but have half the field play two rounds at Sawgrass and one at the Valley.

Tournament infrastructure is minimal

Volunteer chairman Lee Nimnicht said the good news is that there were no large corporate tents and other areas of infrastructure for the tournament since public attendance has been light at the Valley Course. Rounds at Sawgrass, a private course, have not been open to the public.

Ninmicht, who is also the 2024 volunteer chairman for The Players, has a volunteer force of around 300 people (The Players has 2,200 volunteers) and most of them also volunteer at The Players.

He said they are ready to deal with whatever Mother Nature throws at the course and is confident he’ll have enough volunteers should a Monday finish be required.

“We’ll batten down whatever small tents there are and hope the weather isn’t as bad as they think it’s going to be,” he said. “We’re here to support the tournament and the players for as long as they’re playing golf.”

PGA Tour Q-School to be hosted in 2023 at TPC Sawgrass and neighboring Sawgrass CC

Golfweek has learned the site of the tournament PGA Tour pros will be doing everything in their power to avoid.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Florida – Much of the PGA Tour’s schedule for next season, including the fall portion of the schedule, are still in flux, but Golfweek has learned the site of the tournament PGA Tour pros will be doing everything in their power to avoid.

The Tour’s Q-School, which will offer five cards to the big leagues for the first time in more than a decade, will be held in mid-December and be hosted at Dye’s Valley Course at TPC Sawgrass and nearby Sawgrass Country Club.

The latter was the home of the Players Championship from 1977-1981 until TPC Sawgrass, sister course to Dye’s Valley, became the long-term home of the Tour’s signature event in 1982. Sawgrass Country Club is a 27-hole layout designed by Ed Seay and regularly hosts a collegiate event, The Hayt, and also will be familiar to former contestants of the AJGA’s Junior Players, which hosted the popular junior invitational while TPC Sawgrass conducted a renovation in 2016.

Last year, Korn Ferry Tour Q-School was held at The Landings in Savannah, Georgia. For several years, the venue alternated between PGA West in Palm Desert, California, and Orange County National in Winter Garden, Florida. The latter recently was announced as the site of a LIV Golf event ahead of the Masters.

The PGA Tour hasn’t made an official announcement, but Golfweek obtained a letter from Sawgrass club president Dan Cavey, dated Jan. 30, to the membership that detailed how it will serve as one of the two courses to be used.

It noted that, “The PGA Tour approached the Club to be a partner in hosting the PGA Tour Qualifying School or ‘Q School.’”

TPC Sawgrass Dye's Valley
The 18th hole at TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley during the final round of the 2015 Web.com Tour Championship in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Photo by Chris Condon/PGA Tour

It continued: “The PGA (Tour) is elevating Q-School to be a featured televised event and is very interested in holding it in Ponte Vedra Beach near their headquarters. They want to structure it as a split field with 85 players daily at our course and 85 at the Valley Course.”

In recent years, the top 40 and ties at Q-School earned full status for the first eight events on the Korn Ferry Tour, the development circuit for the PGA Tour. But beginning this year, the top five finishers and ties will earn PGA Tour status for the following season, creating a pathway for collegiate stars to go straight to the big leagues and bypass spending a year on the Korn Ferry Tour. This marks the first time since 2012 that Q-School will provide a direct path to the PGA Tour.

“I think it’s a good opportunity for guys. I think it’s something that you deserve. I mean, it’s pretty grueling to go through Q-School, especially if you start at first stage like I did,” said reigning Masters champ and PGA Tour Player of the Year Scottie Scheffler earlier this month. “It’s a long few months.”

“I think more opportunities for guys to get out here is better,” he said. “Because you want to reward good golf wherever it is. If it’s at Q-School or on the Korn Ferry or PGA Tour Canada, Latin America, wherever it is, you want to reward good golf.”

[listicle id=778116331]

[mm-video type=playlist id=01es6rjnsp3c84zkm6 player_id=01evcfxp4q8949fs1e image=]

Korn Ferry Challenge field adds three more PGA Tour winners

There are now 16 PGA Tour winners who have combined for 36 titles who will tee it up in this week’s Korn Ferry Tour re-start event.

There have been five withdrawals from the Korn Ferry Challenge at TPC Sawgrass, which resulted in three more past PGA Tour winners added to the field, including one Gator and one Bulldog.

Camilo Villegas, who has won four PGA Tour titles, Hudson Swafford, who has one, and D.A. Points, who has three, will be among the 156 players who will start at Dye’s Valley on Thursday.

That brings the list to 16 past Tour winners who have combined for 36 titles in the field. The group is led by 2003 Masters champion Mike Weir (eight victories) and Robert Allenby and Sean O’Hair (four each).

Villegas, who played on the University of Florida’s 2001 national championship team, won the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship in 2008. His last victory was in 2014 at the Wyndham Championship.

Betting odds | Fantasy | By the rankings | Tee times, TV info

Swafford, a St. Simons Island, Georgia, resident, left Georgia after the 2011 season and won the PGA Tour’s event in Palm Springs, California, in 2017.

The highlight for Points in his career was winning in 2011 at Pebble Beach.

A total of five players have withdrawn since the field was finalized late last week: Joshua Creel, Bo Hoag, James Hahn, Derek Lamely and John Oda. The players are not required to make a reason for their withdrawal public.

For medical privacy reasons, the PGA Tour has said it will not release the names of any player on any of its tours who are forced to withdraw because of a positive coronavirus test.

[vertical-gallery id=778047654]

[lawrence-related id=778047907,778047567,778047562]