With the approach of the last major of the season, the PGA Championship, I am reminded of how difficult it is to make a living as a professional golfer and the challenging journey it can be to obtain that ultimate access – becoming an exempt player on the PGA Tour.
Golf is an individual sport where pros have to go out week-after week and make cuts to make paychecks. There are no sponsor-laden, multi-million-dollar, LeBron-James-type contracts. No team to carry your load if you become sidelined with an injury.
Getting your PGA Tour card is one part of the quest – keeping it and playing at the highest level is another. Just ask Tiger. Since his fall from grace earlier this year, Tiger has struggled to get his once untouchable A-game back on track. A year that has cost him millions in sponsorships, who could have imagined the #1 player in the world going the entire 2010 season without a corporate giant’s logo emblazoned on his bag?
The PGA Championship has a unique qualifying process. PGA professionals from across the country compete in a series of year-long qualifiers that advance them to the final test, the Professional National Championship.
The 43rd PNC was held June 26-30th at French Lick (Ind) Resort. The Championship featured a $555,000 purse and a 312- player field representing 43 states and 41 sections. The top 20 finishers qualified for the 156-member field competing in this week’s PGA Championship at Whistling Straits Golf club in Kohler, Wisconsin.
Mike Small, head coach for the University of Illinois, posted an 8-under par (278) victory on the Pete Dye Course winning by 3 three strokes and claiming his third record-setting PNC.
A one hour special “The Road to the PGA Championship,” by CBS Sports featured behind-the-scenes stories of Small’s victory as well as some of his fellow competitors.
The coverage included tournament highlights and several heart-warming player profiles such as Bruce Smith, 43, the PGA director of instruction at Brookhaven Country Club in Dallas, Texas.
Smith makes an emotional return to Whistling Straits this week, where in 2004, the site of the 86th PGA Championship, he was coordinating a fundraising project for medical expenses to aid his daughter, Kennedy, who has undergone 10 lifetime surgeries for a rare birth defect – lymphatic malformation of the face. (The campaign blossomed into the Kisses Fore Kennedy Foundation, benefiting families of children born with similar birth defects.)
No qualifier has ever gone on to win the PGA Championship.
I haven’t checked with the odds makers to see what Small’s chances are of winning this week, but he’ll probably be happy to make the cut.
As for Tiger, he’s hoping the golfing gods shine brightly on him and grant him some redemption. After all, this was supposed to be the year that spelled GRAND SLAM for Tiger with the four Majors being played at some of his favorite and most successful venues.
Nevertheless, the PGA Championship is known for producing its share of fairy tale endings.
In 1991, an unknown Arkansas pro named John Daly drove all night from Memphis to make his tee time as the 9th alternate and became the Cinderella story when he won the Wannamaker Trophy at Crooked Stick in Indiana. In 1997, Davis Love III sank the final putt on the 18th at Crooked Stick (Ind), with a dramatic rainbow appearing just over his shoulder, to win his first major championship. And underdog Y. E. Yang stunned the golf world by beating Tiger Woods in the final round of the 2009 PGA Championship at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minn.
Yes, sports fans… anything’s possible at this week’s PGA Championship. Anything’s possible in the world of professional golf.
