Tales From Q School

The good, bad, and mostly the ugly from golf's Fall Classic

By John Strege

The most reviled tournament on the PGA Tour schedule soon will be history, its 47-year run as the principal means by which players qualify for the PGA Tour ending with one last playing, beginning Wednesday on the Stadium and Nicklaus Tournament courses at PGA West in La Quinta, Calif.

It is the same 108-hole marathon/torture chamber it always was, with 172 players competing for 25 or so spots on the PGA Tour. In 2013, the Web.com Tour will be the principal route to the PGA Tour, replacing Q School, as it is better known. So, in honor of the final Q School we bring you some of the more memorable moments -- the good, the bad and the ugly, though it's a competition that fosters more of the latter than the former and is represented as such here.

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The cruelest of bad bounces

In 2004, Joe Daley casually holed a four-foot putt, the ball tumbling into the hole dead center, at which point it mysteriously bounced back out. The metal cup had been inserted into the hole crooked and his ball hit the edge of it, propelling it back out. Naturally, it proved the difference. He missed qualifying for the tour by a single shot and never made it back to the tour, though his story has a happy ending. Now a Champions Tour player, Daley won the Constellation Senior Players Championship this year.

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