Gary McCord Solves Monday Q Problem
Explore how the all-exempt tour began in 1983
The PGA TOUR is off for the week, so the Tour Backspin journey through the past goes back to 1974 when Gary McCord had the genesis of an idea that would eventually become the all-exempt tour. Scroll down to learn more.
Happy Thanksgiving! We are so grateful for our subscribers who support the work we do. Enjoy the time spent with family and friends, the football games, the parade, and all the wonderful food. If you’re really lucky, you can hit the links sometime during this long weekend.
The PGA TOUR was at St. Simons Island in Georgia for The RSM Classic last week and it featured not only an exciting, tight finish, but also all the drama of the players on the bubble around the 125th spot on the FedEx Cup standings. Inside the 125 and you are exempt into the events of 2025, outside the 125, you have conditional status at best. Scroll down as I provide a few of my thoughts on the tournament as well as the Clips You Might Have Missed.
We’ve got a question for you to weigh in on with the Tour Backspin Poll. This week’s Music Clip has Jackson Browne doing “Late For The Sky” live in 1974. Tour Backspin Goes to The Movies, has the 1974 theatrical trailer for “The Godfather Part 2” starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Scroll down to listen and watch.
The Swing Like a Pro features the silky smooth swing of Gary McCord. The WHAT HOLE IS IT? this week should be pretty easy. Submit your answer and you may just win a golf swag prize pack which includes our new 19th Hole Hot Sauce (now available online in the Tour Backspin Golf Shop). We’ve got some links for you in the Check it Out section and an ad from 1983 that features the beautiful clubs from Titleist in this week’s Vintage Ad. Scroll down to view.
The Tour Backspin Poll
Last week we asked you in the Tour Backspin Poll if you used video when working on your golf swing. There were 44% of respondents who use video as it is the only way to know what you are doing with your swing, while 56% don’t use video because they hate what they see.
The TGL league has released some of the holes that will be played in the team competition that is played on simulators. There’s a hole by Nicklaus Design and another that is designed by Beau Welling. You can see the holes HERE and we have a couple of samples below. What do you think? Let us know in this week’s Tour Backspin Poll.
We’re playing 1983 PGA TOUR Trivia in this week’s Tour Backspin Quiz. Scroll down to play.
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Okay, we're on the tee, let's get going.
Enjoy!
Larry Baush
Gary McCord Has a Better Idea For The Tour
It is the afternoon of Monday, February 11th, 1974, and Gary McCord has made the long drive from Los Angeles to Los Serranos Country Club, about 50 miles inland, in Chino Hills, CA. He was attempting to Monday qualify into the Glen Campbell-Los Angeles Open.
McCord had earned his PGA TOUR card at Q-school in 1973, a lengthy 144-hole process that didn’t even include the three 72-hole regional qualifiers just to get into the final qualifying. McCord, the 1970 NCAA Division II national champion, finished tied for third with Richard Mast at 574, 16 strokes behind the winner, Ben Crenshaw.
The top 60 players on the 1973 money list were exempted into the 1974 events and there were other exemptions available such as the ones earned at the prior event by making the cut, or a sponsor’s exemption. The remaining spots in the field would be allocated to the top finishers in Monday qualifying events.
McCord was ready to start his tour career and make his mark in 1974. He arrived at the Glen Cambell-Los Angeles Open and went about registering at the tournament site, Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades. It was then that McCord learned that he was scheduled to Monday qualify at Los Serranos Country Club requiring a long drive on Monday.
“I played nine holes, and I was even or maybe one-under. I got in the car and went home. Welcome to the Tour. Think this is going to be fun?”
“I asked why there was no qualifier in L.A., and I was told there was a qualifier there, too,” McCord told Mike Purkey for the October 7, 2019, edition of Sports Illustrated.
McCord was flabbergasted and asked, “Too?”
Yes, there were two Monday qualifiers held that week, both with 180 players in the field. The worst part? Each site had only one spot for the tournament proper up for grabs. 360 players fighting for just two spots—one from each qualifier.
McCord made the drive to Chino Hills for his afternoon tee time and when he arrived, he learned that somebody had already shot a 63 in the morning wave.
“I played nine holes, and I was even or maybe one-under,” McCord recalled. “I got in the car and went home. Welcome to the Tour. Think this is going to be fun?”
The California events on the schedule were outliers when it came to the size of the Monday qualifiers. The large fields included Class A PGA of America members, in other words, club pros, who came west to try to qualify for the winter events once their home clubs closed for the season. Once those pros returned to their clubs, a routine Monday qualifier would have about 120 players competing for 20 to 25 spots. Large qualifying fields with so few spots available posed a huge problem for players with newly earned PGA TOUR cards.
“There were 56 Tour wins total among the guys qualifying that week.”
Players were required to pay the entry fee into the qualifier, pay a caddie, and pay the travel expenses to get to the site. If they don’t earn one of the rare and coveted spots into the field, it’s on the road to the site of the next Monday qualifier to do it all over again. Earn a spot into the field and you then had the opportunity to make the cut that would make you exempt for the next week’s tournament. It was almost impossible to set a schedule or to make ends meet financially.
McCord ruminated about the daunting challenges that Monday qualifying presented. In 1982 he entered the Monday qualifying for the Doral-Eastern Open. When he looked over the list of players that were attempting to qualify, he saw players like Miller Barber and Don January, legends from the PGA TOUR.
“I looked and I did my homework,” McCord said to Purkey. “There were 56 Tour wins total among the guys qualifying that week.”
McCord immediately saw the folly in the qualifying system and felt that it was way behind the times in comparison to other major sports. Other major sports, such as Major League Baseball and the NFL, were dealing with the effects of free agency, but the mean salaries of the mid-tier players were increasing. Not so for the mid-level players on the PGA TOUR.
“This is a major sport,” McCord said. “It was basically a bunch of Bedouins going from oasis to oasis, from Monday to Monday. All you’re doing is spending money to chase dreams.”
McCord discovered that there were 68 percent of players who were Monday qualifiers in 1982. A quarter of the players on tour were exempt while the remaining 75 percent of players battled it out just to make it into the field where prize money was heavily weighted towards the top of the leaderboard.
McCord thought this system was crazy and he began to think about ways to fix it. What he came up with was a plan to have more players exempted into fields. After a bit of study, McCord landed, somewhat arbitrarily, on 135 spots from the previous year’s money list being fully exempted into the next year’s events.
McCord’s plan would make it easier for players to formulate their schedules and it would relieve the pressure of missing a cut. Under McCord’s plan, an exempt player who missed the cut could still play in the next event without the pressure of Monday qualifying. His plan would benefit the middle tier players making the tour a place where they would not only survive, but flourish.
“There was an elite group of players, and the rest of us were getting the shit kicked out of us.”
With his plan in hand, McCord headed for the Pensacola Open in October. Most of the players in the field that week were staying at the Holiday Inn and McCord got the manager of the motel to donate the ballroom so that he could have a player’s meeting.
There were about 100 players from the 144-player field who showed up for the meeting and listened while McCord laid out his plans for an all-exempt tour.
“I outlined the plan.” McCord recalled to Purkey. “I asked for a show of hands, and a pretty good majority indicated that they were in favor of it. I wanted this to be a labor movement. I wanted a groundswell and have this plan come from the laborers. There was an elite group of players, and the rest of us were getting the shit kicked out of us. The other sports were doing much better, and we were four to a room and 150 of us playing for four spots. For most of us, it gave us a solid platform on which we could figure out how to perform, how to run our business, and how to run our golf games.”
“You’re just the guy I need to get this done.”
Word of the meeting eventually made its way to the commissioner of the PGA TOUR, Deane Beman who summoned McCord to tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL. McCord was sure he was about to face the wrath of the commissioner, but surprisingly, his reception was far from that.
“You’re just the guy I need to get this done,” Beman said to McCord. “We’ve been talking about an expansion of the Tour forever, but this groundswell is the catalyst we need.”
Beman had explored many options to revamp the tour including splitting the tour in two so that it would resemble baseball’s National and American leagues. Players would be required to switch leagues every year so that fans and sponsors would be assured of seeing the stars every other year. The biggest stars rejected this idea as they feared missing events in their hometowns, or in towns they had some sort of attachment with, or tournaments with sponsors who helped pay their bills.
After rejecting the commissioner’s two league plan, the players overwhelmingly supported McCord’s plan. The Tour’s board passed the plan and it was put in place for the 1983 tour. Instead of 135 spots exempted into fields, the Tour landed on 125 spots, the same number used today and through the 2025 season.
The all-exempt tour put the squeeze on Monday qualifying, but did not eliminate it from the schedule because being a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt designated non-profit corporation required open access. There would still be Monday qualifying, but for only four spots per tournament.
To alleviate the squeeze on up-and-coming players, the PGA TOUR, in association with the PGA of America, established the Tournament Players Series in 1983. This provided tournaments for the players that were outside of the top 125 money earners, as well as players aged 45 to 49 years old, who were preparing to play the new Senior PGA Tour (now known as the PGA TOUR Champions). The PGA of America was also guaranteed 25 spots for club pros who wanted to try their hand at the TPS. There were 10 events on the 1983 schedule and the program was the precursor to the Hogan Tour which debuted in 1990 and is now known as the Korn Ferry Tour.
Deane Beman addressed the changes to the PGA TOUR in his A Message From Deane R. Beman in the Official PGA TOUR Book 1983, the annual media guide published by the tour.
We are especially excited about the Tournament Players Series, a project we have undertaken in concert with our friends at the PGA of America. Designed to open competitive opportunities to a much larger group of players than our regular TOUR can accommodate, the Tournament Players Series is a 10-event tour that will approach the $2 million mark in total purses in 1983. In addition to providing competition for more players, the Series will introduce professional golf competition to a number of areas not presently served by our game, which can only help broaden interest in golf everywhere.
Perhaps the most satisfying addition to the PGA TOUR in 1983, however, is actually a deletion, and one that meets with almost universal appeal, I might add. The rigors of Monday Qualifying are thankfully a thing of the past, due to the new structure and format of competition under the All-Exempt TOUR.
No longer must a struggling, young player travel long distances, while incurring costly expenses, trying to qualify on Monday for a spot in that week's tournament, only to find he has failed. Since every player on the TOUR is now exempt from qualifying, travel schedules can be confirmed earlier, often at less expense, and wasted trips will no longer be made.
The PGA TOUR will undergo changes in 2026, especially when it comes to field sizes. Exempt status will now go to the top 100 players in the FedEx Cup, down from the current 125. Players ranked in the 101st to 125th spots will only hold conditional status. Furthermore, players ranked 101 to 110 through the FedEx Fall will be in their own exemption category, along with players with major medical extensions, that will put them in a category above players ranked 111th to 125th. There will be another exemption category for players ranked 126th to 150th.
These changes will result in smaller field sizes and fewer membership opportunities. Maximum field sizes will be reduced to 144 instead of the current 156. Fields will be reduced further, down to 120 players, for tournaments played before daylight savings time. Three tournaments played after daylight savings, but before the Masters will have fields of 132 players. There will also be a reduction in the number of tour cards available to the Korn Ferry Tour graduates from 30 to 20.
Left to be seen will be how up and coming players will attain opportunities to play and move up the ranks in the new tour structure. How would a young Gary McCord view these changes and how they would affect his playing opportunities?
Next Week: The first Skins Game in 1983.
BONUS STORY
The relationship between the PGA TOUR and the PGA of America has sometimes been quite contentious. A marketing dispute in the early eighties between the two organizations resulted in the tour changing its name to the Tournament Players Association. The marketing dispute was over the use of the PGA trademark for equipment that was in the marketplace under the PGA brand.
The announced name change was the third in the span of a few years. The new name of the tour was the Tournament Players Association (TPA). A player rebellion led to the formation of the American Professional Golfers, Inc., a rival tour in 1968. A compromise was reached later in 1968 resulting in the tour being known as the PGA Tournament Players Division. It was then changed in 1981 to the new Tournament Players Association Tour (TPA Tour).
The new name for the tour was announced by Beman before the final round of the World Series of Golf on August 31, 1981. The tour announced that it would develop new sources of revenue with licensing deals and endorsement of commercial products and services but would not offer golf equipment so as not to compete with the PGA of America.
The TPA Tour unveiled a new logo and operated under the new name from August of 1981 to March of 1982 when the dispute was resolved and the tour returned to branding itself the PGA TOUR. Beman made the announcement before the second round of the Tournament Players Championship.
WHAT HOLE IS IT?
I’ve got some house cleaning to do with the WHAT HOLE IS IT? contest and the leaderboard. Two weeks ago, I neglected to tally the correct answer for Doug Posten on the 7th hole at El Cardonal at Diamante in Los Cabos, Mexico. The image of the leaderboard for that week showed Bruce Effisimo, who is trying to repeat as champion, in sole possession of the lead. I’ve corrected the leaderboard with the current standings and I apologize to Bruce and Doug for the confusion.
Congratulations to Glenn Blue for winning last week’s WHAT HOLE IS IT? by correctly identifying the 10th hole at Green Island Country Club in Columbus, SC. Glenn beat out one other correct answer (submitted by Doug Posten) in the drawing and we’ve got a prize pack of golf swag on the way to Glenn.
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We told you about getting our hands on a treasure trove of film that we are cleaning up and digitizing for the Tony Lema documentary. Some great footage of Tony in action and even home movies. The work is paying off with good results. Check it out (clicking on link will open this post on the web, scroll down to video player).
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PGA TOUR Wrap-Up | The RSM Classic
The final event of the PGA TOUR, and the FedEx Cup Fall, provided many compelling story lines. Maverick McNealy winning his first PGA TOUR event in his 142nd start. Luke Clanton, a standout collegiate player at Florida State, playing in his ninth PGA TOUR start, attempting to win and become the second amateur to win a tour event in the same year, a feat not done since 1945. Joel Dahmen needing to shoot lights out on Sunday to keep his card. It may have flown under the radar, but it was a very interesting finish to a strange year on the PGA TOUR.
McNealy emerged from a group of four players who came to the final hole with a chance to win. Clanton and Nico Echavarria of Colombia played the final hole first and both pulled their approach shots and failed to get up-and-down for their pars.
Then came Daniel Berger, on the comeback trail from injuries the last two years, and McNealy. McNealy hit a beautiful six-iron to within five feet. Berger hit the green, but missed his birdie putt before McNealy ran his birdie putt into the cup for the win.
"Playing professional golf and trying to win a golf tournament late on Sunday is designed to make you as uncomfortable as you possibly can," McNealy said. "Holes are challenging, the golf course plays about as hard as it does all week. In those conditions, you're hitting golf shots that potentially could change your life. And that's the amazing thing about this tour is you have the potential to change your life every given week."
Dahmen had a late double-bogey on Saturday to shoot a 70 and was projected to finish in the 128th spot on the FedEx Cup rankings. He would have to shoot a really low number on Sunday to finish inside the 125th spot and secure his playing card for 2025. He came out on Sunday and did just that shooting a final round 64. He ignited his round with a hole-out eagle at the par-4, 13th hole, his fourth hole of the day.
“When you’re behind the 8-ball like this, it almost gives you a little bit of freedom that you have to go do something great, you can’t just hang on out there,” Dahmen said. “It’s almost harder sometimes to hang on. Like it’s harder to hold a lead, a big lead, a huge lead than it is to kind of be a chaser. I think that somehow worked in my favor.”
Too bad you couldn’t see more of Dahmen’s round, including the eagle, on the television broadcast.
Read more from Cameron Morfit at PGA TOUR HERE.
The winning putt:
Clips You Might Have Missed
That’s getting out of trouble.
Dahmen seals the deal.
There is no way he is meeting his food minimums.
Some are discounting this because it was played under preferred lies. Just a reminder, Al Geiberger was the first player to shoot a 59 in a tour event playing under, wait for it, preferred lies.
Congrats to the Justin and Jillian Thomas.
Charlie Hull can be ruthless, but this would work.
Tour Backspin Quiz | 1983 PGA TOUR Trivia
Who finished 1983 in the 125th spot on the money list, the first player at that position to earn an exemption under the new all-exempt tour? Who finished at 126?
Scroll down for answer
Swing Like a Pro
The unique silky smooth swing of Gary McCord.
Blind Shot
Click for something fun. 👀
Sean Zak of golf.com has details on six notable players who lost their PGA cards on Sunday.
Tour Backspin Music Clip
Jackson Browne and David Lindley.
Tour Backspin Quiz Answer:
Jim Boros finished in the 125th spot on the money in 1983. He become the first player to earn an exemption at that spot due to the new all-exempt tour that gave exemptions to the top 125. That was an increase from the previous format that awarded exemptions to the top 60 money earners. Lou Graham became the first “bubble boy” of the new era finishing in the 126th spot.
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Final Thoughts
I love that the tour goofball, Gary McCord, came up with the all-exempt tour idea and that it endured for so long.
Man, those Titleist clubs from 1983 are so sweet.
David Lindley’s guitar is something fine.
What a week we had last week in Seattle with a “bomb cyclone” knocking out power for 43 hours and cable/internet for another 46 hours.
Enjoyed this post - liked the Jackson Browne link. Saw him at the Garden State Art Center (NJ) the night he recorded "You Love the Thunder" for his "Running on Empty" album. David Lindley was a wonderful talent!
Nice picture of the top of our street, Larry. :)