PGA Tour Card: You Just Can’t Play Without It

When the four-day PGA sectional qualifying tournament ended Friday at Valencia Golf Course, it sent some careers north, others decidedly south.

The Valencia tournament was the first in a three-step process for hundreds of golfers hoping to qualify for one of 50 tour cards issued annually by the PGA. The cards grant a player exemption from qualifying at most U.S. tour events for one season. Cardholders must then finish among the tour’s top 125 in yearly earnings to maintain the exemption.

To aspiring tour players, the card is the PGA’s competitive version of American Express: You can’t leave home without it.

The assemblage of candidates included collegiate hotshots, club professionals, teaching assistants and fallen tour veterans all seeking to claim--or reclaim--what they perceive to be their rightful place in golf’s crowded pecking order.

“Out of this entire group, maybe two or three will make it all the way to the PGA Tour,” PGA official John McCarthy predicted. “These guys are all good, but there’s just no place, or no room, for them to play.”

Most of the participants did not take heed.

When Ron Commans of Westlake Village left USC in 1981, he was a tournament veteran at age 21. Knocking off opponents in school matches was routine.

His college career seemed to indicate that he would be a factor on the PGA Tour. The question was not if, but when he would succeed.

Five years later, the question is still unanswered.

An expatriate now competing on the European and Asian tours, Commans was back in Valencia trying to reclaim a tour card he has twice held and twice lost.

“Playing all over, in Europe or in Asia, hasn’t made my game any stronger, but it has given me the experience and composure I’ll need when I get back on the tour,” Commans said.

“In golf, you sometimes have to make more out of less.”

Commans, who easily made the Valencia cut, had a successful season abroad this year, making about $30,000 and earning an exemption on the European circuit. Still, there is no place like home.

“Playing golf and getting paid is great,” Commans said. “Playing and doing well here is a dream.”

The distinction between goals and dreams is somewhat hazier for other tournament entrants.

Ted Lehmann of Thousand Oaks is another former college player trying to qualify. Lehmann had a solid but unspectacular career at Brigham Young, but unlike Commans, he has never earned an exemption in his previous attempts to qualify. The last two years, Lehmann made it to the final qualifying event before being eliminated. He spent much of this season on the Australian tour.

To underscore the nature of qualification, Lehmann had plane tickets to return to Australia--just in case he failed to move on to the second qualification tournament.

But don’t call Lehmann the low man down under.

“I think sometimes you have to take a step backward to take two forward,” the 26-year-old said. “I get frustrated sometimes that I may have set higher goals than I have achieved, but the more experience I get, the more patient I think I become.”

Lehmann can trade in the tickets to Sidney for some to Bakersfield, where the next round of tour card competition is scheduled next month. He made the cut by seven shots.

While Lehmann and others have contingency plans in case their efforts to qualify fail, other entrants consider the Valencia tournament a mere formality.

Sam Randolph, according to many experts, could be the PGA Tour’s next Nicklaus. At 22, Randolph already has won the national and state amateur championships, and was twice the low amateur in the U.S. Open and Masters.

Valencia was Randolph’s first step toward earning a tour card. But where the others are vying for the mere chance to compete, Randolph almost expects to make it on the tour.

“I can see myself making $100,000 in my first year, and slowly improving from there,” he said. “And I’d maybe like to win a tourney. I’d be happy with that in my first year. There are new faces winning all the time--it could happen to me too.”

Randolph’s timetable will not be interrupted, at least not yet. He finished tied for second at Valencia.

But where Randolph and some of the younger players clearly have time on their side, the clock is running out on many others.

Cheryl Sieradzki couldn’t bear to watch. With her eyes closed, she asked “Did he make it?” after husband Henry had saved par with a six-foot putt. “Thank God--he’d bogeyed three holes in a row,” she said.

Six months pregnant and following her husband in an electric cart, Cheryl Sieradzki was quickly becoming reacquainted with the rigors of professional golf. This was Henry’s sixth attempt at securing a tour card.

“He is the hardest worker I have ever known,” she said.

Henry Sieradzki is betting his career that hard work and diligence will translate into a crack at the tour. Even at age 30, he believes his objective is still realistic.

“Most golfers don’t peak until they are 35,” he said. “Look at Nicklaus. He’s 46 and he’s still winning tournaments. Some guys don’t make the tour until their seventh or eighth try.”

Sieradzki isn’t intimidated by the young lions storming the tour each year after college graduation.

“The true test is when they get out there,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how successful they have been in college, or how many awards they have won. They still have to be a player underneath it all.”

Sieradzki did not qualify.

After verifying his score and chatting briefly with officials and players, he and his wife loaded his gear into their car and headed south on the freeway toward Los Angeles.

His golf fortunes may be headed the same direction.