As the LIV Golf door finally slams shut in New Jersey bankruptcy court on Friday, another will open the same day in Spain.
But while LIV Golf financially rewarded its players beyond their wildest dreams — even when out of form — before its collapse, those featuring in Spain won’t make a cent.
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Welcome to Q School; where your chances of playing yourself into a job for the next year is less than 1.6 per cent, and it costs you thousands of dollars just to have a shot.
A total of 156 players feature in this weekend’s final stage of DP World Tour qualifying school at Infinitum.
Only 15 cards are on offer, awarded at the end of a staggering SIX round battle.
That’s 108 holes. Those who also featured in the second stage of Q School will have played 180 in total, while that number balloons to 252 holes for anyone whose campaign included all three stages.
The fifteen players to earn themselves a DP World Tour card for next year will have risen above a whopping 956 players to have taken part across the various Q School sites and stages.
To put that in perspective, Seek reports an average of about 180 people respond to a job ad in Australia.
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And to apply for this job doesn’t involve just sending in a resume. It comes at quite a cost.
“Going off previous years, you’re looking at a probably 10-12 grand week with a caddie, which is pretty expensive for a throw at the stumps,” recent WA Open winner James Marchesani told foxsports.com.au this week.
The costs include a reported £2,750 entry fee (A$5.4k) to any stage, with the nine Australians in the field this week incurring additional, hefty travel costs.
Eight of those nine are Jason Scrivener, Anthony Quayle, Cameron John, Will Florimo, Kevin Yuan, Austin Bautista and Jack Buchanan.
The ninth is former Australian PGA champion and one-time winner on LIV Golf, Elvis Smylie.
In a clear sign Smylie knew the LIV Golf writing was on the wall, he signed up for the final stage of Q School before news that funding for its 2.0 version had fallen through.
He’s not the only one from LIV Golf to pull the trigger as they seek to sure up their playing futures. So, too, has six-time winner on the DP World Tour, Thomas Pieters, and Byeong Hun An, with the trio able to enter as recent winners of a DP World Tour event.
Meanwhile, promising 23 year old and former Fireballs GC player, Josele Ballester, will compete, as will his former Spanish teammate Luis Masaveu.
Other former LIV stars, such as Michael La Sasso, tried but didn’t progress from the second stage, leaving them in the golfing wilderness.
Smylie, who won the Australian PGA Championship in 2024 over Cam Smith, and his debut event on LIV Golf, is going to Q School for a fourth occasion, this time as a much improved player and proven winner on the global stage.
Smylie joined LIV with an agreement to play a handful of DP World Tour events in 2026, but his year was hampered by injury and he ultimately lost his status.
He now tees it up in Spain alongside compatriots who are all winners on the Aussie Tour, with exception of Yuan.
What comes next is not for the faint hearted.
“I always found that Q School, you felt like you never could really take a deep breath,” David McKenzie, a 19-time winner as a professional who went to Q Schools at least 14 times, told foxsports.com.au.
“You didn’t feel like eating for six rounds. Well, actually, even more than that, because you’d have anywhere from two to four practice rounds, so pretty much for maybe 10 days, you felt like you were going to vomit for a lot of it.
“Then you never could really play freely, or I couldn’t, because you just feel like you just need to do the right thing enough times and you get through … But I’d love to do it again, though.”
Even unflappable world No.1 Scottie Scheffler credits Q School as having provided one of the most nerve-racking moments of his career.
When asked if he had a more pressure-packed par save in his life after he won on the PGA Tour for the second time, he said: “Actually, there’s one.
“I got up-and-down my last hole in Q-School … and I probably felt more pressure over that one than I did at Bay Hill, just because you’re kind of fighting for your career. It’s a little bit of a different environment.”
Meanwhile, Q School inspired American sportswriter John Feinstein to write a book about it, and call the competition ‘Golf’s Fifth Major’.
In that publication, Steve Pate told Feinstein: “When Tour players get together, they don’t tell stories about the majors … they tell stories about Q School.”
After this week, South Australian Buchanan will have some more of his own stories having needed 72 holes and a six-way playoff in the second stage to progress.
“It was a strange one, but I actually did (sleep) just because it was six people for four spots,” Buchanan told foxsports.com.au from the final stage in Spain. “I felt all right about it, but then once I got there I was a little more nervy once I actually was in it.”
The 24-year-old headed to Infinitum last year and ultimately fell short before earning a card via the PGA Tour of Australasia Order of Merit, which was then lost.
A two-time winner at home, he knows his strong play last week to get even a chance at winning his card back now means nothing.
“It’s a little tricky because I felt like you used a lot of energy last week. I mean, I’ve definitely been a little bit cautious these last couple days in my prep, not trying to do too much,” Buchanan said.
“I think the playoff was good just to give myself a little bit of confidence, like holed a putt when I needed to and hopefully it can go the same again this week.”
This week gets infinitely harder, with 20 DP World Tour winners back at Q School, with the field featuring former Ryder Cup players, and even nine-time Tour winner Pablo Larrazabal.
Shrinking from 20 cards last year, and 25 before that, the top 15 and ties will secure themselves a job for next year, which means things are tense, and far less jovial.
“I think everyone’s here to do a job and I think a lot of people probably don’t want to be here, but they kind of have to be here,” Buchanan said.
“I would say probably brings the worst out of everyone this week, unfortunately.”
Marchesani’s explanation of the differences between a regular Tour event and Q School backs up Buchanan’s assessment.
“It’s kind of different to a standard Tour event where some guys are a bit more friendlier and happy to have a chat whereas you get to a Q school week and everyone’s locked in,” Marchesani said.
“There’s not a lot of chat on the range because it is pretty cutthroat. I mean, the pressure is probably tenfold on what a normal week is.”
The pressure has to have an outlet, which McKenzie says is particularly felt after a failed Q School tilt.
He said it’s often while making the long journey back to Australia when the disappointment sinks in — as does the realisation that another attempt will likely be required.
“As a golf professional, you realise that the only way to get there is to go to Q School, and as expensive and bad are weeks are mentally, I think we’re all a bit sadist that we’re actually willing to put ourselves through it all,” McKenzie said.
“You play golf for a living, it’s hard enough, and then you go to Q School. But it’s the lure at the end, the 10, the 15, the 25, 30 spots, however many they are.
“It was a teary flights home (for me), one from Spain, and two from LA. But yes, what I tried to take from it was, I know that I’m playing well, and it shows that, I think I finished 26th once, and 30th, the other time, or something or other.
“It’s by one spot … you just got to take from it that, you know, you’re close, and you didn’t have your best, but you know that you’re close, because otherwise, you’d lose your mind.”
“Golf is really cool when you’re playing well, and it’s really bad when you’re playing bad.”
Buchanan has a simple game plan this week when trying to avoid a similarly crushing result.
“You need to be a little conservative, but also when it’s going all right, you really need to push and try get as many shots ahead as you can, so when you come down the stretch, you’re not pooing your pants, basically,” he said.
MARCHESANI’S SLIDING DOORS
James Marchesani made a decision earlier this year with the best intentions. Now, he finds himself watching from afar as his Aussie mates attempt their qualifying “throw at the stumps”.
Finishing third on the Order of Merit at home last season, Marchesani will have a card on the HotelPlanner Tour, the secondary circuit to the DP World, next year.
His consistent play over the 2025/2026 season also earnt him other benefits, which, when crunch time came, he felt were better explored than returning to Q School.
“There’s so many different things and I think hindsight now, it would have been great two months ago when I sort of had to make a decision, which was early August,” Marchesani said of his decision to forgo a trip to Spain.
“At that point, I didn’t have winner’s category here in Australia. I sort of earned my way into what would have been, I think, four weeks in a row of International Series events, including the big one in Saudi, which, obviously worked pretty hard for opportunity the past 18 months and pushed hard for the, for the DP cards.
“But sort of felt to my mind that opportunity to play in some pretty strong fields in the International Series stuff, outweighed going to Q school for a week where I could have a good week, finish 17th, which is still good golf, and then have the exact same as what I worked my butt off for 18 months and have the same status.”
Hindsight, and the twists and turns of professional golf, equal parts positive and hurtful.
Not long after Marchesani made his choice, the International Series was no longer as the Asian Tour, which held those events, split from its alliance with LIV Golf.
Losing the chance to play against top players for US$2 million each event, Marchesani still wanted to sure up his status at home given his strong previous season did not include a win. It meant if he headed to Europe poorly placed on the rankings, he could very well lose status at home.
That issue took care of itself at the WA Open when the son of AFL footballer Frank Marchesani broke his duck and won on the PGA Tour of Australasia for the first time to guarantee a job for the next two seasons.
His choice to miss the final stage of Q School means his exemption from last season’s points list fell to Florimo.
“We actually caught up in Hong Kong and he was pretty happy that he was into finals because I think it was something that he personally was chasing,” Marchesani said of Florimo.
“I know it’s sort of came down to the last round at The National last year too, where I think it was between him and Baz (Barron).
“I think at the time he was pretty devastated knowing that it probably missed finals. But he seemed pretty happy last week when I saw him in Hong Kong that he’d been given the nod to go up and play.”
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NOT THE ONLY SHOW IN TOWN
As the nine Australians are attempting to secure a job in Europe this week, they are far from alone chasing a small number of rewards among a large group of golfers.
The first stage of the PGA Tour’s Q school in America is underway, while the LPGA Tour’s Q Series is ongoing.
Last month, the econd stage was postponed due to an unplayable course that was undergoing delayed renovations and was savaged by weather.
The decision left players, who had forgone other starts to tee it up, displaced and out of pocket, as reported by Beth Ann Nicholls for Golfweek.
“It was common for players to be out $3,000-plus on flights, prepaid rental cars and hotel rooms. Some lost as much as $9,000 travelling overseas with members of their team,” Nicholls wrote in part of her reporting that revealed the LPGA had refunded players $1,000.
Returning this week to contest the delayed second stage, players, including Australians Steph Kyriacou, Ella Scaysbrook, Maddison Hinson Tolchard and Hira Naveed, were greeted with a course still less than ideally prepared for the most important week of their year.
“Conditions at LPGA Q-school……are not great,” popular social media account Monday Q Info posted to X alongside pictures of a flooded venue where play is set to conclude Friday morning in the US.
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