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

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 38^th 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.