Information on Joining the Nationwide Golf Tour
By Jennifer Stow
The Nationwide Golf Tour is the official developmental tour for the P.G.A. Tour. It is designed to let professionals gain tour experience before joining the ranks of the best players in the world. That doesn't mean it is an easier tour. Some say it is harder to be successful on the Nationwide than the PGA simply because of the number of players and the determination in each one of them. So if you are looking to join the Nationwide, you need to make sure you are ready.
Instructions
Difficulty: Challenging
One of the ways to get on the Nationwide Tour is to try out for the PGA Tour, or Q, school. This means paying your money and going through a number of qualifying tournaments across the country. A requirement for signing up for the qualifier is professional status or being an amateur with an attested handicap of 2 or less. Q school consists of four stages. To proceed to the next stage, you need to score low enough to qualify. If you do not score low enough, you cannot advance. At the final stage, the top 30 and ties gain status on the PGA Tour, and the next 50 gain exempt status on the Nationwide Tour, which means they have top priority in all the tournaments. Conditional status means that after all the exempt people have entered, the conditional status people get to sign up. Of course, each tournament is open only to a certain number of players, so the players who have lower status will not get to play in some of the tournaments.
The other way to play on the Nationwide Tour is to go through open qualifying for each individual tournament. This means you have no status on the tour, but anyone can go through these open qualifying rounds. Whenever there is a tournament that does not get full, they will have what is called open qualifying. This means that the tour will hold a one-day-only qualifying round the day before the tournament starts for the number of spots available. Sometimes there can be several and sometimes there can be two spots, so the odds are small.
Of course, there is an option for women. The official development tour for the LPGA is the Duramed Futures Tour. To join that tour is much the same as the Nationwide Tour.
Tips & Warnings
To make it through all stages of Q school is very hard and emotionally and mentally draining. Make sure you are ready for this by preparing far in advance. Most professionals give themselves years to get ready for it.
About The Author
Based in Minnesota, Jennifer Stow has written golf related articles for Dick's Sporting Goods, Golf Galaxy and local golf media. She has been a professional golfer and a golf professional for over ten years and has experienced all sides of the business. She holds a Bachelor of Arts sociology from Rollins College.
