The LPGA season really isn't over until Q-Series has come and gone. To me, it is the "ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny" (with apologies to Neil Cicierega) in tour golf Q-schools. Or at least it was last year, when the ordeal went down across eight rounds over two weeks and as many courses. This year, it's down to six rounds at one site with a cut after four rounds (number making it TBA): the Magnolia Golf Club on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail near Mobile, Alabama. If that place rings a bell for readers of the Devilish Rake, it's because the site this year hosted First Stage action for the PGA Tour Q-School.
At any rate, the event is still a gruelling affair. The only mainstream Q-school that is remotely this torturous in its final round besides Q-Series is the DP World Tour Q-School, which assures some DPWT status to all who make its 72-hole cut. By contrast, Q-Series offers no such assurances, instead insisting on a top-45 finish (plus ties, of course) to have any LPGA Tour status--and that's for ladies who've made the cut. In any case, it makes the PGA Tour Q-School look like child's play, as its finals are only four rounds in length with no cut, and all who make Final Stage are assured of some decent exemptions on developmental tours like the PGA Tour Americas and have a chance at something bigger--not to mention they get exemptions into Monday qualifiers for PGA Tour events and Korn Ferry Tour events.
Two Umcees are among the 104 players who've made it to Q-Series--namely, Kim Kaufman and Kate Smith. Kaufman, who hails from Clark, South Dakota and went to college at Texas Tech, becoming an All-American, had LPGA Tour status for much of last decade. Unfortunately, she never won on tour and suffered some health problems along the way. She ended back up on the Epson Tour, and this is her second straight trip to Q-Series, having failed to improve her status last year. Can she do it this time, improving on a barely top-70 showing from a year ago?
Smith, by contrast, is a newcomer to Q-Series, having previously failed to advance last year from Stage II. The Detroit Lakes, Minnesota native went to Nebraska for college and has been by far the more impressive of the two Umcees at Q-Series this season, finishing #19 on the Epson Tour's Race for the Card to Kaufman's #68 finish. This sufficed to exempt Smith directly to Q-Series, making this her first action since the Epson Tour Championship in early October. One question: Will there be rust from the layoff? Or will Smith live up to the hype stemming from a good-to-great Epson Tour season and earn her LPGA Tour card the second-easiest way?
Since my Upper Midwest Connection of the Week drops on Wednesdays, and Q-Series concludes next Tuesday (5 December), I will be able to consider Kaufman and Smith for the weekly honour awarded 6 December. Good luck to both at Q-Series!!!
Edward the Scop
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