Hazard's Ascent, Explained ... Part 1
An attempt to answer some FAQs from our community of climbers ...
I was chatting with a good buddy of mine the other day who has been a big supporter of what I’m doing with Hazard’s Ascent. He was one of the first subscribers and reads every post religiously.
As we were chatting, he started asking some fairly basic questions about tournament golf at both my current level and on the professional tours. After giving him some sh*t for asking dumb questions (I’m a m@sshole, I show love via ball-busting), I realized that if he had these questions, I’m sure others do too. A lot of my readers are non-golfers … folks who are more interested in my journey to something (hopefully) great rather than the nitty gritty of how tournament golf works or the mechanics of my game. And it’s naive to assume everyone understands the difference between a qualifier and a tournament proper or how tournament payouts for professionals are different from those of amateurs.
This series of posts will take a FAQ-style approach to answering all of the questions I’ve gotten so far and future questions that come my way. They’ll be a mix of tournament mechanics and more specific golf-geek stuff so feel free to skip past anything you already know or don’t give a sh*t about!
Don’t hesitate to email me directly at colin@hazardsascent.com or DM on instagram @hazardsascent with anything not included here that you are interested in learning more about.
Where did the name Hazard’s Ascent come from?
I’ve gotten this one a handful of times now. I’ve actually had this name in my back pocket since 2017, the year I played Chambers Bay for the first (and only) time. Like many courses, Chambers Bay names all of their holes, with the fourth being named Hazard’s Ascent. It’s namesake is Hazard Stevens, one of the first people to summit nearby Mt. Rainier back in the late 1800’s. I fell in love with the course and that hole in particular when I played it five years ago, and the name stuck with me. When applied to the journey that I find myself on … a massive uphill climb to do something that has never really been done before … it just kind of fits. Add in the double meaning of the word “hazard” (an area of a golf course that presents some kind of difficult challenge) and the concept of emerging from it, and voila, we have a name.
What is the difference between professional and amateur events?
You’ve probably noticed that I’ve played in a few in events that have an “amateur” label to them. The Mass Amateur, the New England Amateur, etc. These events require you to identify yourself as an amateur (as opposed to a professional). Professionals are NOT allowed to play in these.
Professional events, on the other hand, allow both professionals and amateurs alike to participate and they will pay out cash to the top performers. An event like the Mass Open (a professional event technically) consisted of roughly 60% professionals and 40% amateurs by my rough estimate. Any amateur who was good enough to qualify was allowed to play. As you move up the ranks of professional golf, that ratio shifts dramatically to be more professional heavy.
I’m still an amateur by designation (longer explanation of the reasoning behind that can be found in my Whats the Plan for 2022 Post) so I can play in both professional and amateur events. HOWEVER, because I am still an amateur, I am NOT allowed to accept any monetary winnings (cash) from professional events, even if I place high enough to theoretically earn that money. By doing so, that would make me a professional and I’d lose my amateur status.
I’ve seen tournaments labeled as “qualifiers” and “propers” … what is the difference?
Most big state events, either amateur or professional, will have way more players interested in playing than what the tournament can support. A normal tournament will have somewhere between 140 and 155 players, but you may have close to a 1000 or more guys who have the requisite handicap and desire to play.
That means these bigger events need to have a round(s) before the true event (the “qualifier”) to cut down on the field size and identify the best players to fill out the final tournament (the “tournament proper”). Typically, these qualifiers will have about 80 to 100 guys playing for anywhere between 5 and 20 spots in the championship proper depending on how many qualifying sites there may be.
Let’s use the Mass Amateur as an example. The championship proper is being held in July at Concord Country Club, and it will consist of roughly 150 players. There are probably 50 or 60 guys who are automatically given a spot in that championship proper because they made the cut in the prior year or are past winners or have really good finishes in other state events (each championship has their own rules about who is “exempt” from qualifying). The rest of the tournament field is made up of players who advance through the different qualifying sites. In this case, there were 10 different sites all around Massachusetts, and most are going to take the top 7 players plus ties from each site which will amount to the other 90 to 100 folks in the championship proper.
So does your score carry over from the qualifier into the championship proper?
Nope, all the qualifier score does is get you into the proper or force you to try again next year. The scores reset completely to zero once you get into the final championship proper. Finishing first or finishing seventh (assuming it is top 7 and ties advancing) results in the exact same thing in this case.
Does it cost anything to play in these things?
Yup, sure does. Every tournament has an entry fee of some kind. Amateur events tend to be less money to enter (somewhere in the range of $125 to $200 usually) with professional events being more … although when you enter a professional event as an amateur, you will normally get a discount. Sometimes you’ll get charged again if you make it through the qualifier into the championship proper, but usually the initial charge covers both (which is more incentive to make it through the qualifier).
When you play a professional event, some percentage of the entry fee will go towards the “purse” that gets paid out to the guys who make the cut. Entry fees for amateur-only events are smaller because costs are lower (no cash purse, sometimes a minimal "pro shop credit” is given out) … BUT the tournament organizers still have to pay the course we play on to allow us to be there.
Are the courses you are playing any good?
I’ll have to give you the consultant answer on this one … it depends.
We are pretty blessed in the northeast to have numerous old-school, classic golf courses that are always highly ranked in golf publications (they are playing the US Open about an hour from where I’m writing this so there’s that).
Most of the championship propers I will play in are conducted on these really good courses. Places like Longmeadow Country Club (beautiful Donald Ross course in western Mass), Concord Country Club (another classic just outside of Boston), and Ridgewood Country Club (home of the US Am this year and a top 100 course in the USA) are extremely high quality courses that are not only good tests of golf, but are really fun to play. The USGA and local golf associations do a great job of course selection nearly 100% of the time when it comes to the big time events.
On the flipside, you rarely get GREAT courses for the qualifiers and the hit rate for even good courses tends to hover around 50%. Usually if a great qualifier site is available, it will fill up extremely fast because guys want to play there. If there are 10 qualifier sites, you might get 2 really solid courses, 5 average courses, and 3 stinkers. It’s not the golf association’s fault … they need to match up course availability with tournament timing while also rotating around to different courses every year so there are a lot of moving parts.
The nice thing is that most courses, regardless of how good they are, will do everything they can to get their course in the best possible shape come qualifier time. For some courses, a Mass Am qualifier is a really big deal because you’re getting a much higher caliber of player coming to your venue to play than you may normally get … and they want to “show off” so those guys spread the word and they get more business.
I was looking through the scores from one of your qualifiers and noticed that a few guys shot in the 90’s. Pretty sure I could have beat them … how were they allowed to play?
Time to learn an important lesson my friends … there are many many many players out there whose handicap is NOT reflective of their true abilities. In this case, where the tournament requires you to have a handicap under a certain number (usually 2.4 for USGA events and something around 4 for Mass Golf events), you’ll find a lot of guys with what we call “vanity” handicaps, meaning they put in their low scores but disregard their high scores and it artificially deflates their handicap, thus allowing them to play in these elite tournaments. These tend to be guys that go out on a Saturday with their buddies, take three or four mulligans, never actually make a putt inside of 5 feet, and treat their scorecard like a J.K Rowling novel.
For my finance folks out there, it would be like a Dow 30 company neglecting to mention the material impact of rising oil prices with the aim of avoiding a quarterly profit warning in order to maintain their standing within the Dow (yeah, yeah bad example because it would take a lot more than one profit warning to have a company in the Dow swapped out but give me a break, it’s been 7 years since my banking days).
So what happens is that those vanity handicap guys decide to play in these qualifiers on tougher courses than they are used to AND are forced to make every short putt, and it usually goes very poorly (often to the tune of shooting scores in the high 80’s and 90s). In fairness, sometimes it IS good players just having bad days OR the weather is really bad … but it is mostly the vanity handicap guys. Tournament golf can do some crazy things to people (myself included!).
You’re still playing amateur events … why and for how much longer?
I addressed this one in depth in that “Plan for 2022” article I alluded to earlier, so I’ll point you in that direction for the more thorough answer … but the short answer is that right now it gives me the most opportunities to play tournament golf and one of my primary goals this year is getting tournament reps in to increase my tournament comfort levels. The tentative plan at the moment is turn professional later this year.
How do you actually become a true “professional” golfer?
This may blow your mind, but really all you have to do is enter a tournament and check the “I’m playing as a professional” box on the entry form. And voila, you’ve given up your amateur status and they can pay you now. I think that is one of the coolest things about golf as a sport. At any given point, you can just decide that golf is the way you are going to make money and if you play well enough, they’ll give it to you. Now … actually playing well enough to earn that money is obviously a different story, but pretty cool none-the-less.
Once you check that box though, you have to keep playing as a professional. There are ways to regain your amateur status, but it is a bit of a process (in recent years, it’s become much easier actually) and doesn’t happen overnight. So it isn’t a totally irreversible decision, but it’s an important one because you’re giving up the right to play in some really high quality, prestigious amateur events.
I’ll pick up with a Part 2 next month that will focus on some more golf-specific items (compared to tournament mechanics) … please don’t hesitate to shoot over questions and I’ll include them!
I’ve got the New Hampshire Open starting on Thursday of this week so a preview post will be out on Wednesday night at some point … stay tuned!