I was looking over various lists of leading money winners and one name atop a mini-tour money list caught my eye. I know of this one professional in an offbeat sort of way. I could put up all sorts of biographical info and yet even the most knowledgeable of golf fans would have next to no idea who I am writing about.
Our mini-tour professional has the type of golfing resume that many exempt members of the PGA Tour might have. He began playing golf at a young age in the Los Angeles area. The game seemed to come quite naturally for him. At the age of 11, he set his first course record, shooting an 11-under-par 43 at the par-54 Verdugo Hills Golf Course. Since then, he has notched three other competitive course records, a 63 at Wood Ranch, a 61 at Sunset Hills, and a 63 at Camarillo Springs that included a hole-in-one on a 327-yard par-4.
He attended Westlake High School and as a 15-year-old he made it all the way to the quarterfinals of the California State Amateur at Pebble Beach. He won the Oxnard City Championship as a 17-year-old and played on the UCLA golf team from 1999-2002, leaving school at the end of his junior year to turn professional. He probably felt at that time he was ready to put his game on the line and join the likes of Tiger, Phil and Ernie on golf”s center stage.
He knocked around on the Players Tour and the Pepsi Tour. He made several attempts at getting onto the PGA Tour via the Nationwide Tour”s qualifying process, but he always came up short at the pressure cooker that is Q School. Because of his Los Angeles connections, he got actress Janet Jones, the wife of hockey great Wayne Gretzky, to put up the $50,000 entry fee for him to play in 2007 in the $1 million Ultimate Game in Las Vegas, a high-stakes organized gambling tournament for mini-tour types. He came up short in that event too.
He moved from Simi Valley to Stockton last year and continued to play anywhere and everywhere he could. He spent a lot of time playing the Pepsi Tour in 2009 and sits atop its money list with $18,115 in earnings. As a 29-year-old, he”s still living the dream and even went so far as to get into the Greater Milwaukee Open this past July, a longtime PGA Tour event that plays on the same weekend as the British Open. He shot 72-71 at Brown Deer for a 3-over-par total and missed the cut after tying for 97th. Of course, his fate in Milwaukee was probably better than that of the GMO, which has been sponsored by US Bank and will not return to the 2010 PGA Tour calendar.
Our Pepsi Tour leading money winner is J.T. Kohut, who I first saw play as a teenager in the Lompoc High School Invitational in La Purisma. He had one of those “can”t-miss” golf swings and pedigrees, and yet in the seven years he has played professional golf, playing in the occasional PGA Tour event as well as dominating the local mini-tours, he has missed.
A couple of weeks ago Kohut journeyed to Spring, Texas to play in Stage One of PGA Tour Q School at the 7,222-yard par-72 Cypress Golf Club. The top 23 would advance out of Cypress to Stage Two. Kohut did what he had to do, shooting 75-68-69-75 for a 287 total and a tie for 18th. From Nov. 18-21, he”ll be at a Stage Two site, hoping to once again advance, this time to Stage Three. Getting to Stage Three means you have a chance to come in the top 25 and win a PGA Tour card. The next 50 will receive Nationwide Tour cards. Even those golfers who come in the bottom half receive conditional status on the Nationwide Tour.
Of course, the ultimate quest is to get that PGA Tour card. That”s where the big money is. Yet there”s that old-time business adage that it takes money to make money and such is the case with professional golfers. Stage One cost Kohut $4,500 in entry fees. Stage Two will hit him in the pocketbook for another $4,500. Should he come through and advance to Stage Three, that”s another $4,000. I”m not exactly sure why Stage Two is $500 cheaper, especially since Stage Three expands to six rounds and 108 holes. There”s also caddie fees, hotels, meals and travel expenses. I don”t believe the $18,115 he”s made on the Pepsi Tour will come close to making his bank account balance.
And Kohut is not alone in this quest. He”ll be joined at Stage Two by John Douma of Scottsdale, Ariz., the No. 2 money winner on the Pepsi Tour. Douma, a 35-year-old who has $17,565 in Pepsi winnings and came in 10th at Stage One at Carlton Oaks in Santee. A college golfer at the University of Colorado, Douma has a resume eerily similar to Kohut”s. He”s a past Colorado Open champ, won $14,000 at a Gateway Tour event when he shot 67-61-65, an amazing 23-under-par for 54 holes, and he missed the cut at the 2004 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills.
Kohut and Douma are the faceless thousand who started a journey this autumn to be a part of the PGA Tour for 2010. Other unrecognizable contestants who will join them at a Stage Two site include S.M. Hong of South Korea, Brynn Parry of Canada, Matt Richardson of England, and Sergio Acevedo of Argentina.
All of the aforementioned have game. They have played college golf, set course records, won amateur tournaments, turned professional, won mini-tour events, and on occasion teed it up against the big boys on the PGA Tour. They are auditioning for an exempt spot on the PGA Tour. Sad to say, but the great majority will come up short. A handful will get through all three stages of Q School and earn a tour card, but the odds are greatly against the rest.
Instead, they will be spending December searching for places and tours to play on next year and putting together their 2010 schedule, one that won”t include Pebble Beach and Los Angeles and Palm Desert. Instead, they”ll be making their alternate plans for 2010 and dreaming of what could be in 2011.
