My quick glance at the field at PGA Tour Q school found only five players who competed for college teams in the spring:
Chris DeForest, Illinois
Harris English, Georgia
Paul Haley, Georgia Tech
Tom Hoge, TCU
Hudson Swafford, Georgia
Five seems like a small number to me (thus being "interesting" because of its paucity; there were at least seven last year.) Particularly too when you consider that in the last eight years, at least one player straight out of college have not only reached the final stage but actually earned PGA Tour cards (see below). With only the top 25 and ties making it out of a field of 173, the percentages suggest that having one of the five make it through could be difficult, let alone more than one.
2010 Joseph Bramlett, Stanford; Ben Martin, Clemson;
2009 Rickie Fowler, Okla. State; Billy Horschel, Florida; Cameron Tringale, Ga. Tech
2008 Derek Fathauer, Louisville; Webb Simpson, Wake Forest
2007 Dustin Johnson, Coastal Carolina
2006 Anthony Kim, Oklahoma; Kyle Reifers, Wake Forest
2005 J.B. Holmes, Kentucky; Nicholas Thompson, Ga. Tech
2004 Matt Davidson, Furman
2003 Hunter Mahan, Okla.State
* A quick aside: Before the PGA Tour decides to re-jigger Qualifying School by not offering ANY PGA Tour cards to participants and instead only providing access to the Nationwide Tour, look at the names above. Six of the 14 players who jumped straight from college to the pros eventually played on U.S. Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup teams. That's 42.8 percent, a pretty high success rate in my mind. Why again, then, is the tour going to cut off this direct route to the major leagues, forcing talented, exciting, fresh blood from making it to the PGA Tour—and succeeding—without first having a stint on the Nationwide Tour?
Conversely, at LPGA Q school, my count has 19 players in the field of 140 who were on college rosters in 2010-11 and two players who are currently seniors in college competing as amateurs this week in hopes of earning a card (LPGA or Futures Tour) that can be used after the end of the spring semester.
Anya Alvarez, Washington
Sandra Changkija, Nova Southeastern
Carlota Ciganda, Arizona State
Cydney Clanton, Auburn
Emma de Groot, Chattanooga
Brianna Do, UCLA*
Rebecca Durham, Stanford
Martina Gavier, Kent State
Numa Gulyanamitta, Purdue
Danielle Kang, Pepperdine
Mitsuki Katahira, Daytona Beach
Stephanie Kono, UCLA*
Maude-Aimee LeBlanc, Purdue
Rebecca Lee-Bentham, Texas
Camilla Lennarth, Alabama
Alejandra Llaneza, Arizona
Aimee Neff, Michigan State
Calle Nielson, Virginia
Lizette Salas, USC
Natalie Sheary, Wake Forest
Macarena Silva, Florida State
* current playing college golf
This number is interesting to me because it actually seems high, particularly too when you consider that of the 19, 17 were Division I players and of those 17 only three ever claimed first-team All-American honors. It hints at a greater depth of talent than perhaps in the past.
