Top 125 means full exemption
The Rabbits didn't have courtesy cars, free range balls and all-you-can-eat buffets at every PGA Tour stop. All they were given was a chance, and they had to make the most of it.
If they succeeded, they got to play that week. If not, they were down the road to try again in another town.
There will be no Rabbits this week at the Chrysler Championship, the last full-field event of the 2004 PGA Tour season. Other than four sponsor's exemptions and a handful of players who made it through qualifying last year and had to wait and see if their priority ranking would be high enough, most of the 132-man field knew they would be teeing it up come Thursday.
And that is the beauty of today's all-exempt tour, which gives a spot each week in official PGA Tour events to those who finish among the top 125 on the prior year's money list. The tour has now operated this way for 21 years, and those hovering around the 125 number have plenty at stake this week.
But what if only the top 60 were assured of a spot next year?
That's how it used to be on the PGA Tour. In fact, if you were not among the top 60, you were faced with having to qualify on Mondays just to get into that week's tournament.
"I was part of Monday qualifying. You'll have a hard time finding many guys like me," said Loren Roberts, 49, a 23-year PGA Tour veteran who has eight victories. "It was a tough deal. Back in Monday qualifying days, you didn't hear any guys say, 'I've played three weeks in a row. I'm tired. I'm going home.' If you kept making the cuts, you played 15 weeks straight because you didn't want to have to go through Monday qualifying."
The system was set up so that the top 60 money winners and those who were exempt by winning tournaments were guaranteed a spot in the field. The rest played in a qualifier on Monday to earn a spot. If a player made the 36-hole cut, he didn't have to qualify the next week. If he finished among the top 25, he got to play in the same tournament the following year.
So week to week, the number of qualifying spots in a field varied dramatically. One thing was certain, however: You didn't want to have to play on Mondays.
"You learned how to qualify and you didn't really learn how to play," said Gary McCord, the CBS analyst, Champions Tour player and former Rabbit. "You were so scared on Thursday and Friday not to make a mistake. It was insanity, really. You felt like you were going to break."
In those days, earning your card at the annual PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament simply gave a player the right to qualify on Monday. Since Class A PGA professionals (club pros) also had the right to qualify, there might be a couple of hundred hopefuls vying for just a few spots, depending on the weekly carryovers and those who made it into the field from the year before.
McCord remembers a Monday in Miami at the Doral Open in 1981. He looked around on the driving range and saw well-known players, former tournament winners, who had to qualify. Among them were Miller Barber and Frank Beard. McCord thought there had to be a better way.
"It was the start of sports salaries going berserk in football and basketball," McCord said. "And I thought, 'What an archaic system, 60 guys are exempt and the rest are trying to qualify on Monday to get in a tournament, to try to make some money so they can exist.' I thought it was an inferior situation for golf. If we were going to get this going and create a sport where people wanted to play it and put their kids in it, we had to do something. There were a few guys making money and the rest of us were dead broke going Monday to Monday."
So McCord, a nine-year tour veteran at the time who had finished among the top 60 just once, sought to come up with a plan. Along with another tour player, Joe Porter, McCord began sifting through the numbers. He had an ally in then-PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman, who also was looking for a way to revamp the system.
Several weeks later, at the Tallahassee Open, McCord pitched his plan to a large group of players who, for the most part, sided with him. He then took his idea to the PGA Tour administration, and the policy board soon adopted the plan after coming up with the 125 number. The all-exempt, top 125 tour was adopted and put into place for the 1983 season.
Not everybody was happy. "We've taken the fear out of the game," Lee Trevino said at the time. Others referred to it as a "welfare tour," where only a few solid weeks assured keeping a tour card.
And that is undoubtedly the case today, where there are numerous examples of players having one or two good weeks and keeping their card for the following season.
"It was definitely a different mindset," said Jay Haas, 50, who played under the old system, winning his first tournament in 1978. " 'Let's not go nuts here and at least try to make the cut.' Now, if you miss the cut, forget it. 'I'll just tee it up next week and go for it again.' I think there's more of a go-for-broke attitude out here now."
But Haas doesn't see a problem with that, nor does he think the 125 number will change. To finish in the top 125 this year, a player will need to earn around $600,000.
"I think the depth of the tour is better now," he said. "There are more good players now than there were 25 years ago, just like in any field of athletics, any business basically. There are more players who can really play."
Bob Harig covers golf for the St. Petersburg Times and is a frequent contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at harig@sptimes.com.
