Do You Have What It Takes to Qualify for the PGA Tour?

In order to earn the title of “professional” in most fields, there is a series of steps that one must complete. If you want to be a lawyer, you must first graduate with strong marks from an accredited law school and then pass the bar exam. If you expect someone to trust you with a scalpel in an operating room, I hope that you plan to take good notes in medical school, pass your board exams, and undergo the exhausting experience known as your residency. What if your dream is to make a living as a professional golf player? There are certainly worse ways out there to earn a buck! One way to earn the right to list “golf” as your primary source of income is to complete in the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament, also known as the “Q-School.”

The Q-School is divided into several stages that are held throughout the autumn months. The competitors who place in the top 25 at the end of the final stage earn PGA Tour cards for the following year. Thousands of men start this process every year, so those who make the final cut certainly have completed a very difficult task. And, before you request the paperwork for the 2009 edition of Q-School, make sure you have the $5000 entry fee ready for submission. No … it’s not refundable.

My first novel, Lifetime Loser, opens with J.W. Schroeder (known as J Dub) playing the last holes of Q-School that, if he plays like he is capable, will land him one of the coveted spots on the PGA Tour. When one ill-fated shot brings all of his dreams of professional golf crashing down around him, J Dub’s life takes a turn that he certainly never could have expected. Through the pages of Lifetime Loser, readers will follow J Dub through the next twenty-three years of his life and meet an unforgettable cast of characters, many of whom continue to have a presence in my subsequent novels.

I hope you will take some time to meet J Dub and his family in Lifetime Loser and then stick with him and his life on Prairie Winds Golf Course for my other two novels, Finish Line and Tuey’s Course.