The Break: In praise of Q-School

In partnership with

5 PGA Tour cards are up for grabs

PGA Tour Q-School starts on Thursday down in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., with 176 players taking on the two-course rotation of Dye’s Valley at TPC Sawgrass and Sawgrass Country Club.

It’s a 72-hole tournament that determines five PGA Tour cards (exactly five, that’s new) for 2026, as well as varying levels of Korn Ferry Tour status for players who finish in the next 40 and ties. It’s the pot of gold at the end of a long, long rainbow, including, potentially, for five players who have made it through every stage of Q-School so far: pre-qualifying, first stage and second stage.

Every player in the field is looking to get one of those five cards, of course, but 171 of them are going to walk away without that ticket. The Korn Ferry Tour awaits for a good chunk of them. Some have other PGA Tour status that they’ll hope to somehow parlay into full PGA Tour access in 2027. A good many of them will be left to figure out a path to regular Korn Ferry Tour starts that probably include stops through PGA Tour Americas and/or mini tours in the Sunshine State and elsewhere.

Q-School is a decidedly dramatic week. So many players rest their hopes of playing golf — or continuing to play golf — for a living on these four days. Access matters not only to give players a place to play and a clear path forward, but it also matters for many in getting them the financial backing they need to take advantage of that access. Not every player is a country-club kid whose parents have Mariana Trench-deep pockets to bankroll their kids’ careers. They turn to friends, family, playing partners, corporate sponsors and whoever can get behind them to help their dreams become a reality.

None of this happens in vacuum, and no player achieves success on their own. They need a lot of help, from support systems among friends and family, to coaches, to financial backers, to people who can get them a place to play and practice every day. All of those people — and that extended network is huge in golf — have a lot on the line and a deeply vested interest in what happens this week.

Someone is almost certainly going to do something on Sunday that they’ve never achieved in their life, and those are the kinds of moments that get me excited. Coverage is on Golf Channel on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, and I hope you’ll watch.

Advertisement

TP5 and TP5x, Now Only $44.99

If you know golf, you know the ball matters.

TP5 and TP5x are the balls top players switch to when they want tour-level speed, control, and feel. And this holiday season, TaylorMade has dropped the price to just $44.99.

It’s the perfect gift for the golfer who’s always chasing more consistency or the friend who keeps “borrowing” your balls on the course. Stock up now, for less, and make every round feel a lot more dialed in

Shop TP5/TP5x Now

The Links

Hideki Matsuyama won the Hero World Challenge on Sunday with a birdie on the first playoff hole against Alex Noren, winning the bookend tournaments of his year.

Rasmus Neegaarrd-Petersen won the Crown Australian Open with a gutsy up-and-down at Royal Melbourne to avoid a playoff against Cam Smith, whose time in LIV and beyond has not gone how he hoped.

Kristoffer Reitan, who someone on Twitter said has the perfect Bond villain facial hair, won the Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa for his second win of the year and to jump into the top 35 in the world. He started the year in the mid-400s!

This week, we have the Grant Thornton Invitational in Florida, with 16 teams of PGA Tour and LPGA duos at Tiburon Golf Club. We also have the Alfred Dunhill Championship in South Africa, which unfortunately isn’t at the Leopard Creek nature preserve, but it’s still a good event.

If you would, please add Golf News Net as a trusted source on Google? All you have to do is click this link and confirm your choice. This tells Google that you want to see our content appear in your feed, and they’ll happily oblige!

Also, check out our series, Golfing In Indiana, on our website or on our YouTube channel. Brendan Sweeney and I went to nearly 20 public golf courses in the Hoosier State and had an absolute blast playing these courses all over Indiana.

From the GNN Clubhouse

The thrill of draining bombs, and the agony of short misses

Rich Beem trusts Shot Scope like he trusted his caddie on the PGA Tour

If you’d like your news included here and futher shared with our audience, I invite you to check out and join GNN Clubhouse.

In praise of a round in a monsoon

I’m a terrible rain player. I hate playing in the stuff. The grips get slippery. Being wet, outside of a pool, hot tub or ocean, isn’t a good time. If I’m at home, and I know a deluge is coming, I typically bag whatever golf plans I might have.

I couldn’t do that — not without feeling guilty, at least — this past Friday. I was on a golf trip with some friends, and we had set up a tee time to play through what was definitely going to be a lot of rain. I had been looking at the weather forecast for almost two weeks, and the rain chance only went up each day until it finally got to 100 percent. Worse was that the amount of expected rain also seemed to climb daily.

For some reason, though, I didn’t want to back out on this round. I wanted to embrace the bad weather and enjoy whatever form of golf we were going to play.

In two separate four-hole stretches — one on the front nine and one on the back nine — the weather got so bad that the greens went from mild puddling to full-blown streams of breaking water. Without a clear lane, putting was impossible. We played automatic two-putts and just kept it moving.

The staff came out to us multiple times, gently letting us know that we could stop anytime we wanted. No one would think any less of us was, more or less, the implication. But, and it was made clear, we definitely didn’t have to stop.

Golf tends to reveal a person’s character, and rainy golf reveals more of it. If you can smile through what would otherwise be a miserable time that no one would sign up to do, then you’re someone I want to be around when the clouds dissipate.

The round didn’t end with a rainbow or anything, but the downpour stopped on the 16th hole, and we just kept on yucking and yukking it up to the clubhouse. Yeah, we were wet, but the jackets and hats held up well. Rain gloves are a godsend.

We wrapped up on the 18th green, handshaking and hugging like we’d just all gone through a (very mildly) traumatic event. It brought us closer together in a way that 18 played under sunny skies couldn’t.