Columnist Dean Juipe: Golf fans robbed by TV oversight

Dean Juipe

Monday, Dec. 3, 2001 | 9:10 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

The most important golf tournament of the year concludes today in West Palm Beach, Fla., but unless you have a satellite you won't be watching it in Las Vegas.

Cox Cable doesn't carry the Golf Channel, which is a mistake in itself.

Yet the greater error can be laid at the feet of the many mainstream networks that take turns televising pro golf, as all are shortsighted not to recognize the significance of the PGA Tour Qualifying School tournament, which is easily the most pressure-packed event of the year and one hardcore fans would truly appreciate.

Forget the Masters, the U.S. Open and the like -- the guys playing in those high-profile events are already rich and sassy. Granted, the pressure in the majors as well as the weekly tournaments that dot the schedule is formidable, but it's nothing like the white-knuckle, stomach-churning, sleepless marathon that comprises the final stage of Q School.

If you want to play on the PGA Tour, in most cases you have to come through the rigors of Q School.

And if you've played on the tour and had a bad year, you're back in Q School and, in effect, reduced to fledgling status.

There is nothing like it in all of sports.

Q School is actually held in stages, with the goal of advancing to the 166-man tournament that closes today in Florida. But only 35 -- out of the thousands of would-be Tiger hunters who begin the process in regional qualifiers -- get their tour cards for the following year.

That tour card is actually an invitation to step into the gold mine that is the PGA Tour, and without it no one is welcome. Possess one and you may become wealthy and famous as you follow a tour that last year offered $180 million in prize money; finish 36th this afternoon and you're apt to be counting your pennies in 2002.

And yet the networks treat Q School as if it were rubbish or some throwaway event with no greater pull than the Quad Cities Open.

Look what golf fans had to choose from Sunday in Las Vegas: something called the Nedbank Challenge from Sun City, South Africa, which had a huge purse but means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things; and the Father-Sun backslap fest in the Bahamas that could have led an impartial observer to wretch.

Meanwhile, the Q School event -- with 15 former tour winners and with three of the four Las Vegans entered in it playing well -- was available only to the satellite sect on an obscure channel that Cox deems less viable than HGTV, which specializes in lawn care and household maintenance.

But I digress.

What's truly of interest is that Gorman grad Tommy Armour III is in third place going into today's final round ... that Clark grad and two-time tour winner Robert Gamez is 14th ... and that Las Vegas newcomer John Riegger is tied for 37th with 18 holes to play. Imagine the pressure on each, to say nothing of another local newcomer, Dean Wilson, who's well down the leader board, with everything riding on finishing in the top 35.

Q School has an intrigue and suspense that is unrivaled in golf.

Too bad the TV brass sees it as disposable.