PGA Tour Q School: What is it?

Opportunity Lane--All the tell tale signs have fallen upon us.

The NFL dominates our Sundays. The weather cooperates some days. Kiefer Sutherland and 24 return to our lives on Mondays.

Oh yes. It’s time for the PGA Tour’s annual fall qualifying school.

While most people have an entire calendar year to position themselves for a promotion, professional golfers have but one chance. Even then, they pay $4,500 just to be considered.

How arduous and complex is their journey?

Imagine this:

You are a respected and upcoming accountant. To be considered for employment with the best firms in the world, you have to take a comprehensive exam, along with roughly 2,000 other hopefuls, all of whom have resumes just as impressive as yours.

The applicant pool is divided into 14 different test sections, each with about 80 people. Only the top 20 and ties from each section advance to the next test stage, where you, along with everyone else who advanced through first stage, will compete against recently laid off accountants from firms you have dreamed of working for ever since you learned that archaic accounting formula: Assets = Liabilities + Owner’s Equity.

The second stage has the same criteria as the first, except there are only six test sections. The top 20 and ties from each section advance to the final stage, where you, along with everyone else who advanced through second stage, will compete against recently laid off accountants from firms you will probably never have the opportunity to work in.

At finals, only the top 30 and ties, from a field of 170, will be hired to work for the best firm in the world, with no guarantees that you‘ll make a dime. The top finishers below them will receive either a full-time position at a lower-level firm where they will likely earn in one year what an accountant at the best firm makes in one week, or you will be hired to work part-time at a lower-level firm, with no guarantee you will work more than 15 weeks a year.

Three-time Connecticut Open champion Kyle Gallo, of Kensington, Conn., knows the agony of The Fall Classic all to well.

Last fall, during his run to finals, he played 994 shots and 252 holes over fourteen rounds in 14-under. He traveled from Kensington, Connecticut to Bogart, Georgia, to Mckinney, Texas to La Quinta, California. He had to sleep on the bathroom floor of his hotel room the night before the fifth and six rounds of finals because his caddy, Mike Sirois, snored so loudly.

After all that, he still fell short of earning his PGA Tour card.

By a single shot.

To make matters worse, he has had to watch as fellow New England Tour alum Sean O’Hair, who was paired with Gallo during the last round of finals, amassed more than $2 million in earnings during a standout rookie year.

Gallo’s consolation prize: status on the Nationwide Tour, which was limited to seven events due to an amalgamation of injuries that have plagued him throughout his professional career.

But do not look at Gallo for even the slightest sign of anguish or heartache.

Look in the eyes of his father, Al.

For years, Al and his wife, Lorraine, have traveled up and down the east coast watching his son.

They have seen the victories. And they’ve seen the recurring injuries. And the painful irony that comes along with watching your son’s golf game improve as his body continues to fail him.

The bad back from years of pounding balls. The weak wrist stemming from a wedge hit too steeply during a Nationwide Tour event in January.

Gallo’s journey from the periphery of professional golf to the front gates of Fame and Fortune, only to be denied, is just one footnote in The Chronicles of the Annual Fall Classic.

Thirty luck souls will earn their PGA Tour cards this December, but many more will suffer the same fate as Gallo.

That is PGA Tour Qualifying School.