The 20-year-old Fowler earned enough money in several late-season PGA Tour appearances - including a runner-up finish at the Frys.com Open - to be exempted into finals. Onetime world No. 1 Duval failed to earn enough money in 22 tournaments to avoid Q-School.
The odds of Fowler doing well this week are much better than the odds of Duval doing well. Duval finished second at the U.S. Open in June, but made only five other cuts - and finished no better than 55th in those five events.
The past two seasons, Duval has had special exemptions related to the career money list to use in order to maintain full playing privileges. Not so for 2010. But even if Duval fails to earn back his Tour card for 2010, he should get into 15-20 tournaments through combinations of partial status and sponsor exemptions. The biggest difference for Duval between doing well at Q-School this week, and not, will be full control over where and when he plays in 2010.
The Final Stage of Q-School takes place Dec. 2-7 (Wednesday-Monday) at Bear Lakes Country Club in West Palm Beach, Fla. That's six rounds, 108 holes.
Thirty-two golfers were exempt into the final stage. In addition to Duval and Fowler, those include such familiar names as Mathias Gronberg, Todd Hamilton, Tim Herron, Jeff Maggert, Joe Ogilvie, Jesper Parnevik and Chris Riley.
Another 132 golfers advanced through second-stage qualifiers, and included in that group are, among others, Arjun Atwal, Robert Damron, Marco Dawson, Glen Day, Ken Duke, Carlos Franco, Tommy "Two Gloves" Gainey, Jason Gore, Mark Hensby, Brandt Jobe, Colt Knost, Shaun Micheel, Justin Peters (the first Big Break winner) and Paul Stankowski.
The Golf Channel will televise the final three rounds. Scoring and news updates throughout the Q-School finals can be found on PGATour.com.
Also note that the final qualifying stage of European Tour Q-School is under way now and concludes on Thursday. The European Tour Q-School news and scores are available here.
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Comments
I wish David Duval luck at the dreaded Q-school marathon, but I have serious doubts that he will succeed. He just doesn’t seem to have the drive it takes(”drive” as in motivation, not necessarily his ability to drive off the tee, but that, too, has been a big problem for him). He keeps saying that he is close to competing on a regular basis, but it’s not showing up on his scorecard. He says that he is happy because of his great family life, which is great, but he needs to dedicate more time to his golf and re-learn how to hit fairways.