Opinion & Analysis
The harsh realities of golf’s mini tours

A casual golf fan who occasionally enjoys watching final round coverage of a PGA Tour event must have a skewed opinion about the lives of professional golfers, namely, that anyone with an oversized staff bag is living the dream. But for every Ian Poulter who owns a fleet of Ferraris and struts around like a movie star, there are plenty of golfers who practically live out of their Ford Fiestas and dream about getting their big break.
Golf outside the highest professional level is a proverbial cutting room floor. For every golfer who eventually plays his way to the big stage, there are thousands who don’t. It’s a harsh reality predetermined by the sheer fact that it takes a high degree of skill, stubbornness and certainly not least of all – luck – to earn a place on the PGA Tour.
The qualification process has remained largely unchanged since the PGA Tour was formalized in the 1960s. The most direct route, Q-School, allowed any golfer, amateur or professional with a handicap index of two or lower, to test their mettle in golf’s version of the Hunger Games. Anyone who didn’t survive Q-School could attempt to play his way onto the Tour by way of Monday qualifiers or sponsor exemptions, both of which are low percentage gambles that very few ever cash in on.
What has changed in the last couple of decades is the ever-expanding number of developmental tours that have raised their banners across the country. Although Ben Hogan isn’t officially credited with starting the first mini tour, the 30-city Hogan Tour, which began in 1990, is probably the most famous. The tour was set up to allow aspiring pros (many of whom were cash-strapped) to drive around from tour stop to tour stop in successive weeks, much like Hogan’s contemporaries had in golf’s yesteryears. Over the years the Hogan Tour (now the Web.com Tour) expanded geographically, upped its prize money and became to the PGA Tour what off-broadway is to aspiring actors.
The NGA Pro Golf Tour, more commonly referred to as the Hooters Tour, predates the Hogan Tour. It was started in 1988 by Rick (T.C.) Jordan who inherited some money from his family’s business in pharmaceuticals and made a lot more of it through real estate and restaurant opportunities. Jordan invested $6 million from his own pocket and ran the tour independently until ceding title sponsorship rights to Hooters of America, Inc. in 1994.
Over the years the Hooters Tour has graduated some notable alumni including major championship winners Bubba Watson, Keegan Bradley, John Daly and Zach Johnson.

Keegan Bradley, a graduate of the NGA Hooters Tour, won the 2011 PGA Championship and is one of the Tour’s best success stories.
And now that the Q-School has been revised to replenish the roster of the Web.com Tour, expect more players to take up a path of apprenticeship that could meander through the Pepsi Tour, over to the Peach State Professional Golf Tour, and everything in-between. With more than 60 tours in operation world-wide, the prevailing wisdom ought to be play hard and pack light.
So You Want To Run A Mini Tour?
Jeff Flees used to manage a mortgage firm in Worthington, Ohio. But his wife’s protracted health concerns led him to reevaluate his career prospects. Nowadays, he’s the president of a three-person operation that runs the nascent Flagship Golf Tour.
“I had a successful career in the mortgage banking industry for 16 years, however in 2011 my wife had two major surgeries, one of which was brain surgery to clip aneurysms she had been living with,” says Flees. “My wife is one of the most incredible, inspirational people you will ever meet or know. I felt it was important to take time off to be with her while she recovered. When the time was right, my passion for golf and experience with people in the industry led my to analyze the developmental tour business and start the Flagship Golf Tour.”
The first scheduled event will be played this summer at The Journey at Pechanga in Temecula, Calif. The single day, 18-hole stroke play championship will feature a $5,000 purse and will benefit a number of charities including the Brain Aneurysm Foundation. The entry fee for professionals is $300 ($200 for amateurs) and unlike many higher profile tours, there is no annual membership fee.
For those of us who have never played golf for a living, taking up membership on a mini tour is a significant expense when combined with standard tournament fees and general travel expenses. Existing tours with deep fields and decent purses can charge $1,000 or more for membership. That will help you get a bona fide member packet, a tour hat and access to practice facilities at host courses. To actually play in a tournament event, you’ll likely drop close to another $1,000. A single season on the NGA Hooters’ 2013 Carolina Series will run a pro golfer a little over $10,000 in fees (depending on whether or not they have pre-existing status on the tour). Sounds almost reasonable until you start factoring things like groceries and gas money, or taking a date out to a dinner and a movie.
By contrast, there’s next to no risk to play a Flagship Golf Tour event and the tour awards prize money to the top 33 percent of the field, which is consistent with the policy maintained by more established entities. The tour does differ significantly from many competitors in that tournament events are spread out nationally and a champion is crowned after 18 holes.
“We decided on the one-day 18-hole tournaments because they make more logistical and financial sense,” says Flees. “The benefit of a one-day, 18-hole event is that we can keep the expenses down and reduce the time commitment for everyone involved in the tournament. We respect what the more established tours are doing. We are not trying to directly compete with them.”
Whether the Flagship Golf Tour finds its niche and succeeds beyond the first couple of seasons is difficult to predict. The term “boom and bust” is often used to describe mini tours that have disappeared after some initial success. Not surprisingly, the pressure to succeed falls squarely on a busy owner’s shoulders. You’re expected to be equally adept at playing the role of savvy business manager and gregarious promoter. Some days call for negotiating contracts with vendors and sponsors. Other days you’ll be rubbing elbows with potential investors or stumping on behalf of your tour around the clock on Twitter.
For many business executives, running a mini tour is a labor of love (not to mention an expensive hobby).
Alex Spanos had a brief run lending his name to one of the preeminent developmental tours on the West Coast before scuttling the business after three years. Spanos was a scratch golfer in his youth and made his fortune in the construction services industry. He is better known for owning a majority stake in the San Diego Chargers football team.
Full field events on the Spanos California Tour featured sizable purses including a $250,000 cash grab called the A.G. Spanos California Open. Local boys Jason Gore, John Merrick and Peter Tomasulo had stints on the tour before moving on to play much bigger venues.
“I have always wanted to be part of a golf tour,” Spanos was quoted as saying. “My goal with this tour is to have it become the biggest and best in this state, if not the country, where young professionals and amateurs get the opportunity to show their talent and ability.”
Even in its final year of operation, the California Tour was arguably still growing. The tour signed Ameriquest Mortgage Company as a presenting sponsor, hired a San Diego area public relations firm to raise brand awareness, increased the number of events to 16 and set aside $2.5 million in available winnings. But they shut the tour down anyway. Perhaps that was the intention all along.
According to executives associated with Spanos, running the tour had become prohibitively expensive. It also didn’t help that a far more expansive developmental tour made a glitzy splash in 2006, promising tournament winnings to rival the PGA Tour.
Backed by the now defunct Greens Worldwide Inc., the U.S. Pro Golf Tour was expected to offer $300,000 for a standard event and as much as $5 million for one of its majors that would be played on a Donald Trump-owed course and broadcast on television by ESPN. There were rumblings about impending doom from the start and the tour folded after the initial season. In the process, the U.S. Pro Golf Tour defrauded hundreds of golfers who forked over thousands of dollars to participate in events that were never going to be staged.
As any professional golfer who has scrambled on the mini tours can tell you, there are plenty of similar misadventures that players have fallen victim to. Most of them are simply too obscure to grab the public’s attention, even within golfing circles. And in some ways, it’s a perverse right of passage.
The (Not So) Charmed Life Of A Professional Golfer
More than likely, you haven’t heard of Andrew Jensen. He’s just another golfer playing on the PGA Tour of Canada who’s had scrapes with success, failure, injuries and heartbreak. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
We pick up his story in March. Jensen has driven down to Florida, as far south from frigid Ottawa as his Pontiac G6 will take him. He intends to spend a month living in the Sarasota area getting into shape for a season that will play out primarily back in Canada. Except that the weather in Florida, in fact for much of the southern United States, isn’t living up to expectations.
Too many mornings in the Sunshine State start off borderline freezing; as for Jensen’s game, it’s not a whole lot better. In his first competitive event of the season, he shoots 2-over and misses the cut. Over the next several weeks his game starts trending in the right direction. He records his best finish on the Florida swing at TPC Prestancia in Sarasota. It’s a limited-field event of 28 participants playing for a purse that barely covers rent for a single-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Jensen has an opportunity to finish 2-under on the first day, but rinses two balls on the last hole for an ugly double. He plays marginally worse the next day, making three straight bogies on the front nine, carding a 75 and finishing three strokes outside of earning a paycheck.
Three events come and go and all Jensen has to show for it some middling scores. It’s a good blow to one’s wallet (and psyche), but Jensen has developed some thick skin over the years. He’s been playing professionally off and on since 2008. He’s taken time off to heal from injuries and to recover from periodic episodes of depression. And while it may be difficult to spin positives from his Florida swing based on scoring alone, Jensen is grateful to be playing golf regularly again.
“When I was playing injured in 2010 and playing bad . . . the debt was increasing fast,” says Jensen. “Golf was no longer fun, it was work, it was gambling to break even. My passion for the game left me very quickly but I tried to tough it out and keep playing regardless. That mentality bled into two awful seasons on tour and my eventual hanging up the clubs in 2011 to enter into the real world and start working and getting above water financially. Luckily, over time the passion came back.”
Jensen played competitively for the University of Ottawa and qualified to play for the Canadian Tour the year following his graduation in 2007. Although some golfers would have journeyed south to play in more seasonably warm conditions year-round, Jensen preferred to stay closer to home, not all that surprising for a person who habitually found comfort in maintaining rigorous routine.
Unfortunately, there was very little in the way of predictability to his first three seasons on tour. Jensen made the cut just twice in 14 events in 2008, making $870. He earned another $3,100 on the tour in 2010-11 and watched his confidence fade as debts rose.
“When you can solely focus on the routine and the process, good play takes care of itself,” says Jensen. “When you have to figure out a way to pay the bills, it takes away from your routine. Over the years, my play has struggled and consequently my funds have depleted, forcing me into off-season work in Canada over the winters. The routine has to switch to fitness, indoor practice, mental work, and above all a ‘real job.’”
His outlook rapidly declined in 2011. A family physician prescribed an anti-depressant medication that had an unintended side-effect of actually increasing suicidal urgings. Standing over a bathroom sink with a mouth full of anti-depressant pills, Jensen nearly took his life that September. Fortunately he spat the medication out and was weened off the anti-depressant a few weeks later. Through therapy, Jensen came to regard golf as a trigger for his mental issues.
“Every time I played poorly, it just kept getting worse and worse emotionally,” Jensen told the Ottawa Citizen in 2012.
Jensen isn’t the only golfer who has struggled with depression. The LPGA Tour’s Christina Kim was openly forthcoming about her own personal struggles in an interview with Golf Digest. Still, there aren’t many golfers, let alone athletes in general, that are willing to go public. It is habitually accepted that athletes need to maintain an edge over their competition. And nothing blows an athlete’s cover faster than revealing they have fears and doubts.
“The numbers on depression are staggering, it affects far more people than many believe,” says Jensen. “The pressure, isolation and competition in professional golf are massive triggers to get players down on themselves both on and off the course. From my experiences with mental illness it’s a hard road to play golf and keep things silent. The minute I came out with my struggles, the support and solidarity that came from fellow players was great. No one knows the struggles of a mini tour player better than a fellow mini tour player.”
Historically, the various developmental tours have left players to their own devices. Some tours offer discounts on sponsor-provided apparel and equipment, but rarely is sports psychology factored into any of the few membership perks enjoyed on tour. By offering player coaching from the outset, the Flagship Golf Tour is looking to differentiate itself even further from its more established competitors.
“We are working with excellent professionals who can offer our players guidance in these areas,” says Flees. “The players will get initial information and coaching made available to them free of charge, however if they wish to retain these professionals for additional assistance there would be a charge.”
The Flagship Golf Tour has developed a relationship with David Donatucci, a Titelist Performance Institute certified trainer a member of the PGA of America, as well as PGA member Rick Sessinghaus, a proven sports psychologist. It will be interesting to see how many players actually seek out coaching and if it spurs other developmental tours to consider similar service offerings in the future.
As Jensen can tell you from experience, playing on the mini tours is a grind. Reflecting on the past five years as a golf pro, Jensen says, “[The mini tours haven’t] taught me too much about golf itself, apart from the reality that making putts is everything. It’s taught me that I am very determined and driven, easily discouraged at times, but still very motivated. Hard work for five years really hasn’t gotten me too far in this game so I’ve learned I need to work smarter now.”
A Long And Winding Road
Imagine you’re 16 years old, living by yourself in California. Your preternatural golfing abilities land you a future spot on the University of Oklahoma golf team. Your stellar college play gets noticed and you make the Walker Cup team. After three years you leave school early and declare your intentions to turn pro. You receive a sponsor’s exemption into your first PGA Tour event and you finish runner up. A year later you earn tour card in your first go-around at Q-School and ultimately become a multimillionaire before the age of 22.
It’s almost a lock that most golfing careers will not pan out like Anthony Kim’s supercharged ascent to stardom. With any luck, you might be fortunate enough mimic James Hahn, who clawed his way onto the PGA Tour after spending nine years playing on the mini tours and supplementing his income selling ladies shoes at Nordstrom’s.
So if you are a talented golfer, what exactly are your chances?
In an unrelated sport, the NCAA has compiled statistics on the number of high school basketball players who continue to play professionally after graduating from college. Of the roughly 156,000 high school seniors who play basketball, 44 will be drafted into the NBA. Even at less than 1 percent, a basketball player has a better chance of filling one of the 350 or so roster spots in the NBA than a golfer has of sharing a fairway with Phil Mickelson.
Andrew Jensen doesn’t believe that a talent gap is keeping most mini tour players from propelling themselves to the next level.
“I think it has more to do with the off course hurdles than the competition,” says Jensen. “I’ve seen many great players pack it in because of their financial situation, the travel, or the time away from family, just to name a few reasons. I don’t believe players stop because they don’t think they have what it takes.”
There are thousands of golfers playing on the mini tours every year. What happens to the ones that don’t make it?
Perhaps some of them get a taste of success at the higher reaches of golf and regress. Others washout after only a few seasons on the road. Some quit playing and take up teaching while others quit the game entirely.
In spite of what is easily construed as abject failure, any player who has made it as far as the mini tours has an experience with the game that few golfers rarely come in contact with. It may not be the sort of ending that a Hollywood producer would dream up. But as golf announcer Gary Koch famously quipped, it’s better than most.
Opinion & Analysis
The 2 primary challenges golf equipment companies face

As the editor-in-chief of this website and an observer of the GolfWRX forums and other online golf equipment discourse for over a decade, I’m pretty well attuned to the grunts and grumbles of a significant portion of the golf equipment purchasing spectrum. And before you accuse me of lording above all in some digital ivory tower, I’d like to offer that I worked at golf courses (public and private) for years prior to picking up my pen, so I’m well-versed in the non-degenerate golf equipment consumers out there. I touched (green)grass (retail)!
Complaints about the ills of and related to the OEMs usually follow some version of: Product cycles are too short for real innovation, tour equipment isn’t the same as retail (which is largely not true, by the way), too much is invested in marketing and not enough in R&D, top staffer X hasn’t even put the new driver in play, so it’s obviously not superior to the previous generation, prices are too high, and on and on.
Without digging into the merits of any of these claims, which I believe are mostly red herrings, I’d like to bring into view of our rangefinder what I believe to be the two primary difficulties golf equipment companies face.
One: As Terry Koehler, back when he was the CEO of Ben Hogan, told me at the time of the Ft Worth irons launch, if you can’t regularly hit the golf ball in a coin-sized area in the middle of the face, there’s not a ton that iron technology can do for you. Now, this is less true now with respect to irons than when he said it, and is less and less true by degrees as the clubs get larger (utilities, fairways, hybrids, drivers), but there remains a great deal of golf equipment truth in that statement. Think about it — which is to say, in TL;DR fashion, get lessons from a qualified instructor who will teach you about the fundamentals of repeatable impact and how the golf swing works, not just offer band-aid fixes. If you can’t repeatably deliver the golf club to the golf ball in something resembling the manner it was designed for, how can you expect to be getting the most out of the club — put another way, the maximum value from your investment?
Similarly, game improvement equipment can only improve your game if you game it. In other words, get fit for the clubs you ought to be playing rather than filling the bag with the ones you wish you could hit or used to be able to hit. Of course, don’t do this if you don’t care about performance and just want to hit a forged blade while playing off an 18 handicap. That’s absolutely fine. There were plenty of members in clubs back in the day playing Hogan Apex or Mizuno MP-32 irons who had no business doing so from a ballstriking standpoint, but they enjoyed their look, feel, and complementary qualities to their Gatsby hats and cashmere sweaters. Do what brings you a measure of joy in this maddening game.
Now, the second issue. This is not a plea for non-conforming equipment; rather, it is a statement of fact. USGA/R&A limits on every facet of golf equipment are detrimental to golf equipment manufacturers. Sure, you know this, but do you think about it as it applies to almost every element of equipment? A 500cc driver would be inherently more forgiving than a 460cc, as one with a COR measurement in excess of 0.83. 50-inch shafts. Box grooves. And on and on.
Would fewer regulations be objectively bad for the game? Would this erode its soul? Fortunately, that’s beside the point of this exercise, which is merely to point out the facts. The fact, in this case, is that equipment restrictions and regulations are the slaughterbench of an abundance of innovation in the golf equipment space. Is this for the best? Well, now I’ve asked the question twice and might as well give a partial response, I guess my answer to that would be, “It depends on what type of golf you’re playing and who you’re playing it with.”
For my part, I don’t mind embarrassing myself with vintage blades and persimmons chasing after the quasi-spiritual elevation of a well-struck shot, but that’s just me. Plenty of folks don’t give a damn if their grooves are conforming. Plenty of folks think the folks in Liberty Corner ought to add a prison to the museum for such offences. And those are just a few of the considerations for the amateur game — which doesn’t get inside the gallery ropes of the pro game…
Different strokes in the game of golf, in my humble opinion.
Anyway, I believe equipment company engineers are genuinely trying to build better equipment year over year. The marketing departments are trying to find ways to make this equipment appeal to the broadest segment of the golf market possible. All of this against (1) the backdrop of — at least for now — firm product cycles. And golfers who, with their ~15 average handicap (men), for the most part, are not striping the golf ball like Tiger in his prime and seem to have less and less time year over year to practice and improve. (2) Regulations that massively restrict what they’re able to do…
That’s the landscape as I see it and the real headwinds for golf equipment companies. No doubt, there’s more I haven’t considered, but I think the previous is a better — and better faith — point of departure when formulating any serious commentary on the golf equipment world than some of the more cynical and conspiratorial takes I hear.
Agree? Disagree? Think I’m worthy of an Adam Hadwin-esque security guard tackle? Let me know in the comments.
@golfoncbs The infamous Adam Hadwin tackle ? #golf #fyp #canada #pgatour #adamhadwin ? Ghibli-style nostalgic waltz – MaSssuguMusic
Podcasts
Fore Love of Golf: Introducing a new club concept

Episode #16 brings us Cliff McKinney. Cliff is the founder of Old Charlie Golf Club, a new club, and concept, to be built in the Florida panhandle. The model is quite interesting and aims to make great, private golf more affordable. We hope you enjoy the show!
Opinion & Analysis
On Scottie Scheffler wondering ‘What’s the point of winning?’

Last week, I came across a reel from BBC Sport on Instagram featuring Scottie Scheffler speaking to the media ahead of The Open at Royal Portrush. In it, he shared that he often wonders what the point is of wanting to win tournaments so badly — especially when he knows, deep down, that it doesn’t lead to a truly fulfilling life.
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“Is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf? Yeah, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about it because I’ve literally worked my entire life to be good at this sport,” Scheffler said. “To have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think, is a pretty cool feeling. To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world, because what’s the point?”
Ironically — or perhaps perfectly — he went on to win the claret jug.
That question — what’s the point of winning? — cuts straight to the heart of the human journey.
As someone who’s spent over two decades in the trenches of professional golf, and in deep study of the mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the game, I see Scottie’s inner conflict as a sign of soul evolution in motion.
I came to golf late. I wasn’t a junior standout or college All-American. At 27, I left a steady corporate job to see if I could be on the PGA Tour starting as a 14-handicap, average-length hitter. Over the years, my journey has been defined less by trophies and more by the relentless effort to navigate the deeply inequitable and gated system of professional golf — an effort that ultimately turned inward and helped me evolve as both a golfer and a person.
One perspective that helped me make sense of this inner dissonance around competition and our culture’s tendency to overvalue winning is the idea of soul evolution.
The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has done extensive research on reincarnation, and Netflix’s Surviving Death (Episode 6) explores the topic, too. Whether you take it literally or metaphorically, the idea that we’re on a long arc of growth — from beginner to sage elder — offers a profound perspective.
If you accept the premise literally, then terms like “young soul” and “old soul” start to hold meaning. However, even if we set the word “soul” aside, it’s easy to see that different levels of life experience produce different worldviews.
Newer souls — or people in earlier stages of their development — may be curious and kind but still lack discernment or depth. There is a naivety, and they don’t yet question as deeply, tending to see things in black and white, partly because certainty feels safer than confronting the unknown.
As we gain more experience, we begin to experiment. We test limits. We chase extreme external goals — sometimes at the expense of health, relationships, or inner peace — still operating from hunger, ambition, and the fragility of the ego.
It’s a necessary stage, but often a turbulent and unfulfilling one.
David Duval fell off the map after reaching World No. 1. Bubba Watson had his own “Is this it?” moment with his caddie, Ted Scott, after winning the Masters.
In Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, reflecting on his 2011 Super Bowl win, Rodgers said:
“Now I’ve accomplished the only thing that I really, really wanted to do in my life. Now what? I was like, ‘Did I aim at the wrong thing? Did I spend too much time thinking about stuff that ultimately doesn’t give you true happiness?’”
Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
Eventually, though, something shifts.
We begin to see in shades of gray. Winning, dominating, accumulating—these pursuits lose their shine. The rewards feel more fleeting. Living in a constant state of fight-or-flight makes us feel alive, yes, but not happy and joyful.
Compassion begins to replace ambition. Love, presence, and gratitude become more fulfilling than status, profits, or trophies. We crave balance over burnout. Collaboration over competition. Meaning over metrics.
Interestingly, if we zoom out, we can apply this same model to nations and cultures. Countries, like people, have a collective “soul stage” made up of the individuals within them.
Take the United States, for example. I’d place it as a mid-level soul: highly competitive and deeply driven, but still learning emotional maturity. Still uncomfortable with nuance. Still believing that more is always better. Despite its global wins, the U.S. currently ranks just 23rd in happiness (as of 2025). You might liken it to a gifted teenager—bold, eager, and ambitious, but angsty and still figuring out how to live well and in balance. As much as a parent wants to protect their child, sometimes the child has to make their own mistakes to truly grow.
So when Scottie Scheffler wonders what the point of winning is, I don’t see someone losing strength.
I see someone evolving.
He’s beginning to look beyond the leaderboard. Beyond metrics of success that carry a lower vibration. And yet, in a poetic twist, Scheffler did go on to win The Open. But that only reinforces the point: even at the pinnacle, the question remains. And if more of us in the golf and sports world — and in U.S. culture at large — started asking similar questions, we might discover that the more meaningful trophy isn’t about accumulating or beating others at all costs.
It’s about awakening and evolving to something more than winning could ever promise.
Mike Boatright
Jan 23, 2017 at 4:31 pm
Iv’e researched heavily these mini tours and have found the leaders to have a scoring average of say 65.66 etc.. The pga tour needs to get off it’s elitists ass and give these good players a legitimate chance! Any time you set up a format that requires you to either have a sponsor exemption or play great for 6 days straight just to make it on the minor leagues is kinda making it far fetched for the majority of good players who aren’t rich. They do have some monday qualifying events which is just a blood fest first you need to pre qualify to make it into the qualifier which is you vs 4 guys usually a 65 loses and a 64 wins,then you qualify for the monday and it’s the same story you shoot 67 on a windy day the other guy shoots 66. By then the winner is so tired and nervous from his start that he shoots 75 70 and misses the cut by one stroke how is this fair?
adam
Jul 25, 2014 at 9:01 pm
Listen, if you’re good enough you will sail through Web.com Q School and be on that AAA tour. If you’re good enough there, you’ll be on the PGA tour. Much easier today. Web.com Q school doesn’t care if you went to Stanford or Truckee Meadows Community College.
jess robinson
Jun 7, 2013 at 12:31 pm
“Golf is happiness for
Happiness is achievement.
The father of achievement is motivation
The mother is encouragement.
The fine golf swing is truly achievement
Man may lie, cheat, and steal for gain.
But, these will never gain the golf swing
To gain the golf swing man must work.
Yet it is work without toil
It is exercise without the boredom.
It is intoxication without the hangover
It is stimulation without the pills.
It is failure yet its successes shine even more brightly
It is frustration yet it nourishes patience.
It irritates yet its soothing is far greater
It is futility yet it nurtures hope.
It is defeating yet it generates courage
It is humbling yet it ennobles the human spirit.
It is dignity yet it rejects arrogance
Its price is high yet its rewards are richer
Some say it’s a boy’s pastime yet it builds men
It is a buffer for the stresses of today’s living.
It cleanses the mind and rejuvenates the body
It is these things and many more.
For those of us who know it and love it
Golf is truly happiness.”
— Paul Bertholy
Frank Dolan
May 19, 2013 at 6:48 pm
Most authors make mistakes, specifically for those readers who look for mistakes. If you look past the mistakes, you will really enjoy the article. Another home run for you Mr. Cage. Keep those articles coming – I enjoy them tremendously.
P. S. – Did I make any grammatical errors?
youstink
May 11, 2013 at 7:43 pm
I never want to chase a dream. I just want to go to my 9-5 job and sit in my cubical all day and grind my teeth over the fact my wife is probably banging the pool guy that I pay with the money I saved from my boring conservative life…
When the day ends I want to put myself to sleep by correcting Blog articles on a golf website full of folks that can’t appreciate truthful information because they think they know everything…
Sean
May 10, 2013 at 4:36 pm
I enjoyed the article. There are a few segments I can relate to as well.
Steve Pratt
May 10, 2013 at 1:53 am
I thought this was a terrific article. It brought back good and bad memories of my experiences on various mini tours.
In my opinion, the author nicely captures the essence of life and struggles on the mini tours.
Danny
May 9, 2013 at 7:54 pm
Ian poulter will be broke and infamous in 10 years. They guy never wins except for the Ryder Cup which doesn’t pay. Normally the guys that got it dont flaunt it, and the ones that flaunt it don’t have it. Look at Warren Buffet compared to Donlad Trump. Trump has been bankrupt several times and sues publications that post his real worth which is about 1/10th what he says it is.
Curt
May 10, 2013 at 12:22 am
Donald Trump just inquired about your physical address, so he coulde serve you!!! Dont answer the door!!!
Shawn
May 10, 2013 at 11:20 am
I think you’ll find that a lot of successful people have had bankruptcies in their past. That line of reasoning doesn’t make a lot of sense. Trump’s liquid worth is far less than his worth on paper, but that’s a pretty common thing for people who own a lot of stuff, rather than have a lot of money.
I’m no Poulter fan, but he seems to have an awful lot of cash for a guy that never wins.
sdgfhjkhgjkdfsfg
May 9, 2013 at 7:15 pm
the best line in the article:
“But for every Ian Poulter who owns a fleet of Ferraris and struts around like a movie star, ”
Ian is a new money brat. It’s amazing how much that guy brags.
Dave
May 10, 2013 at 10:12 am
If there was one player I could punch in the face it would no doubt be IJP. By the way, the logo for his clothing line is ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE… what designers is this guy hiring!?
Tool Status
May 9, 2013 at 4:09 pm
id probably tear up one of these mini tours, but id rather just spend my time with the ladies
gorgor
May 11, 2013 at 10:17 pm
+! internet
danny
May 9, 2013 at 3:51 pm
I blame these guy’s parents. There comes a time in everyone’s life when you can’t chase your dreams any longer. Sometimes we can’t see it ourselves and the worst thing you can have is parents and loved ones feeding in to that dream. I had a sister who wanted to be a doctor in the worst way but couldn’t get in to med school. I also had a roommate who longed to be a fighter pilot, yet didn’t have great eye sight. Both of these people were told by loved ones that it’s time to grow up and move on, and both are living happy lives because of it now. It takes a real man to admit when enough is enough and it’s time to move on.
Nick
May 9, 2013 at 9:12 pm
Why Should anyone give up on their dreams ever? You only get one shot at life, do what makes you happy and forget the “realists”. They will be the ones wondering what if and saying I should have when they are too old to live thier dreams. At least you spent your life working 9-5, for whatever that is worth…
Danny
May 9, 2013 at 10:55 pm
It’s selfish. These dreamers will end up with debt and families to pass it on to.
tsunamijohn
May 9, 2013 at 3:35 pm
Question nothing, just drink the Kool-Aid.
Minitourplayer
May 9, 2013 at 2:56 pm
So did the Flagship Tour pay for this article?
Zak Kozuchowski
May 9, 2013 at 3:27 pm
Minitourplayer,
Rusty is a wonderful writer with strong journalism instincts and morals. For you to suggest otherwise shows that you haven’t paid much attention to his previous work, or the GolfWRX Featured Writers program as a whole.
– Zak
t120
May 9, 2013 at 8:34 pm
That…is your opinion, Zak.
I think it goes beyond sounding like an ad, but well-written? I wouldn’t go that far. It’s a few different “HARO” respondents he aggregated into an ambling, unclear rough draft of article. A good journalist doesn’t just take notes and format, he tells a captivating story.
What did he do instead?
1.) He spent a large portion of the article covering a mini-tour that hasn’t yet played a game.
2.) Profiled a Canadian golfer that briefly played in Canada, not U.S. Mini tours.
3.) Dropped a few names of past mini-tour players, yet didn’t expand on them.
4.) Threw in some generalizations about past tour players that may or may not have existed, been scratch golfers, and/or quit for up to 5 various reasons unrelated to their game. Not a single name, or proof backing up that theory.
All of that and I still have no idea what the Hooters, Pepsi or any other mini tour is really like. Maybe interview someone that’s actually been on one or more of the major tours and get a first hand account.
As it stands, if you read this article the only thing you’ll get out of it is “Guys. Even if you’re very, very good, if you can’t afford a nice round number like $10,000/yr – you will be forced to sell shoes at Nordstrom.”
tim roncone
May 10, 2013 at 1:13 am
when you choose to find a negative in something you will always fail to see the good or in this case understand whats he’s trying to portray. i really hope you have better things to do with your life than bash other peoples work. have a nice day tool.
t120
May 10, 2013 at 11:46 pm
So…your response is somehow vindicated because I didn’t write an article? Who’s really the tool here? You didn’t bring anything to the table but a comment about a comment and in total frustration with your inability to make a point – a condescending remark.
Minitourplayer
May 10, 2013 at 9:55 am
Its basically a commercial for a brand new tour that no one has heard of
Dave
May 10, 2013 at 10:09 am
I disagree… I clicked on the article thinking it would in fact be a story about life as a mini-tour player and instead it was disjointed and unrelatable. It’s a shame.
On another note, I find it hard to believe that there are only 156,000 HS seniors playing basketball each year, but who knows.
Shawn
May 10, 2013 at 11:18 am
I completely agree with you. Between the headline that feels kind of misleading, a lot of Typos (“There’s” as was mentioned above and a few other awkward choices) I don’t think this is a very good article at all.
x-15a2
May 9, 2013 at 2:13 pm
The word “there’s” is a contraction for “there is”. That being the case, you’d never write “there is plenty of golfers…”, “there is thousands who don’t.” or “There is thousands of golfers playing on the mini tours every year.” In these cases, you would say “there are” instead of “there is”. For the record, “…there’s next to no risk to play a Flagship Golf Tour event” is the correct use of “there’s”.
The contraction that you are looking for “there are” is “there’re” but besides being difficult to pronounce, “there’re” looks peculiar (and is incorrectly rejected by many spell-checkers). You are probably better off ditching a contraction for “there are”.
Joey5Picks
May 15, 2013 at 3:47 pm
That was a fun post to read. Thanks for the puncuation lesson.