The unseen and lonely life at golf’s Euro Tour Qualifying School

The final stage of the European Tour Q-School tees off at PGA Catalunya on Saturday. Around 25 players will emerge smiling at the end of the six-round ordeal but, for the rest, it’s a picture perfect autumn postcard that hides no end of pain and suffering, writes Brian Keogh.

A reporter at the Q-School, aka the annual European Tour Qualifying School final stage, can be made to feel about as comfortable as a doctor called from a fancy dress party to the emergency ward. The atmosphere is grim and faces are longer than a Bubba Watson drive for all bar those lucky card winners — or those who achieve their goal of a Challenge Tour ticket. The young and innocent wander among grizzled veterans grimly battling to hang on to their livelihoods.

It’s a golfing zombie movie where the wide-eyed and innocent amble along side-by-side with the walking dead, players battling the problems that have brought them to this golfing purgatory in the first place.