Gove's last stand

After a disappointing 2012 season on the Web.com Tour, Jeff Gove showed why golf is one of the craziest entities on the planet with a shocking run through the last edition of PGA Tour Q-school. The Pepperdine grad played four solid rounds in second stage to advance to the finals, and then put together six consecutive under-par rounds to finish T-10 and earn a PGA Tour card for 2013, at age 41.

Alas, Gove's 2012 Web.com struggles continued forward to the big leagues. When that's the case, good results cannot be expected, and Gove's tournament log for the season thereby provides no surprises. In 15 events, Gove has missed 12 cuts and had failed to crack the top 45 in an event until this past week in Toronto, where an impressive Saturday back-nine comeback ultimately resulted in a T-40 finish and a check for $22,400. Before that, his biggest payday of the year was $16,580.57. Fine, but not too good when you're flying back and forth across the country most weeks.

In past years, the PGA Tour season was set up to allow the previous year's Q-School grads a chance to play throughout the entire calendar year, with tournaments throughout the fall and into November. With this year's removal of Q-School and radical altering of the PGA Tour qualifying process, everything has changed. The traditional December Q-School will now simply provide Web.com Tour cards, meaning newcomers have no direct access to the PGA Tour.

Replacing Q-School is the Web.com Tour Finals, a four-tournament series that brings together Nos. 1-75 on the Web.com money list with Nos. 126-200 on the PGA Tour's FedEx Cup points list (Web.com Nos. 1-25 will have already received PGA Tour cards, but can play to improve their position for next season). 25 remaining Tour cards will be given to the top cumulative money earners in the four-event series, with the new PGA Tour season (2013-14) commencing on October 10 at the Frys.com Open.

So how does Jeff Gove factor into this, and how is this week his last stand? After his merciful T-40 at the Canadian Open, he has moved from No. 219 to No. 203 in the FedEx Cup standings. Pretty much on the bubble. The problem for Gove, however, is that the season is slipping away and his time is running out. Because of his poor play, he has moved down the reshuffle and is no lock for entry into the Wyndham Championship, the final full-field PGA Tour event of the season to be played the week after the PGA (and obviously, he is not in the PGA). Therefore, this week's Reno-Tahoe Open is likely his final opportunity to move into the top 200 and enter the Web.com Finals series. Many variables are in play, but this would possibly require another top-40 finish. At the very least, of course, he has to make the cut.

And if he doesn't make it, it's an even longer road back to the PGA Tour.

Uresti's dream of making cut falls short

Everyone knows that golf is a cruel game, even for the professionals, where a promising season can fall to pieces over a few bad rounds on Thursdays and Fridays. When the bogey train sustains itself for weeks and into months, it can affect a whole career.

As is the case for Omar Uresti, longtime touring pro who saw his game fall into disarray near the end of the season on the Web.com Tour. A T-12 at April's Soboba Golf Classic was his last top-25 of 2012, and a myriad of missed cuts and early Sunday starting times filled the remainder of Uresti's season, where he finished No. 109 on the money list and lost his status. Without a place to play for 2013, it was a sudden and profound fall.

This week's Sanderson farms Championship on the PGA Tour provides a respite for some of these woebegone veterans who have lost their games in recent years, thanks to its slot opposite the British Open. With many of the PGA Tour's leading talents overseas at Muirfield, the Sanderson Farms field in Jackson, MS traditionally opens up to those in the depths of the PGA Tour's priority ranking system, such as veteran members and past champions. Although Uresti never secured a victory on Tour (his high finish was 3rd), he qualifies as a veteran member by making at least 150 career PGA Tour cuts, a figure he reached at the 2008 Reno-Tahoe Open. This week, his number was called.

So Uresti embarked on an opportunity to make some PGA Tour money this week, ironic considering his lack of status on the Web.com Tour. After a first-round 73 in benign conditions at Annandale CC (derailed by a bogey-double bogey-bogey stretch midway through his round), and with a projected cut of 3-under par, it looked like Uresti would go gently into golf's good night - waiting until maybe next year in Mississippi, where his name will likely be called again.

After finishing nine holes in even-par in a second round that started Friday night and lasted into Saturday morning, there was no reason to think otherwise. But somewhere along the way, as Uresti prepared to begin his second nine a distant four strokes outside the cut line (at 1-over for the event), something clicked. The proud Texan rolled in a 14-footer for birdie on the par-5 11th, then made a string of solid pars on holes 12 thru 15, one of the rare semi-tough stretches at Annandale.

Knowing he needed three birdies in his last three holes to make the cut, Uresti then gave it all he had. He knocked his approach on 16 to six feet for a birdie, then stiffed one over water to inside two feet on 17. Another birdie. Three under on the round and two under for the week, Uresti had a simple task ahead if he wished to play the weekend: birdie the 532-yard, par-5 18th.

Uresti knocked a solid drive up the fairway, then laid up to inside 70 yards. For a seasoned veteran, a 69-yard shot in Annandale's soft conditions is nothing to be afraid of. It wasn't. He knocked it inside four feet - three feet, eight inches, to be exact.

But the man's career has been derailed by the flatstick, and Saturday morning proved no different. Uresti missed the putt, and he missed the cut by a sole stroke.

For a player with no tournament-level seasoning this year, missing the cut by a shot is nothing to be ashamed of. And besides, even if he had made the cut, he would've needed a top-10 finish if he wished to continue playing into next week's RBC Canadian Open at Glen Abbey GC outside Toronto, a venue where he finished T-22 in 2008 propelled by a Sunday 68.

However, making the cut could have been a shot in the arm for the 44-year-old, a chance to play two more rounds of tournament golf in a career that appears to be on its last legs. With a direct path to the PGA Tour for non-exempt players no longer in existence, Uresti's best hopes of playing full-time next year involve making it through this December's Web.com Tour qualifying tournament. From there, he would have to earn his way into the big leagues for the 2014-15 season.

Walking up to the 18th green as he finished his second round, the chance was there. It's too bad his putter did what it always did, time and again, throughout a 20-plus year career.

Johnson gets another chance in Utah

After Kevin Johnson made a late bogey on Friday to miss the cut by a stroke at June's Rex Hospital Open, it appeared questionable whether he would get another chance to play in 2013. The stumble marked the six-time Web.com Tour winner's fourth consecutive missed cut, after he opened the season with a T-37 showing in Brazil. As of Sunday afternoon, he was slotted as fourth alternate for this week's event in Utah.

But sure enough, a string of withdrawals ensued - like is usually the case on the Web.com circuit, as a trickle-down effect comes from withdrawals on the PGA Tour that move players up into those fields - and Johnson entered the field for the Utah Championship on Monday afternoon. With the omnipresent chance of playing one's way into next week with a top-25 showing, the Clemson grad again has an opportunity to put together a string of good weeks that can move him into the top 75 on the money list by mid-August. That would give him a chance to play the inaugural 'Web.com playoffs' series that combines No. 126-200 on the PGA Tour tour money list with Nos. 1-75 on the Web.com list, where the top 25 cumulative money winners over the four weeks will receive PGA Tour cards for the 2013-14 season. (Note: Nos. 1-25 on the Web.com Tour will already have earned status, and some of them may play to improve their position. They will not count toward the 25 cards earned during the playoff series.)

So here comes Kevin Johnson, running out of chances, with one more chance - a chance that may be his last. He missed the cut last year in Utah with rounds of 68-74, and turned in seven missed cuts and a withdrawal in his eight previous starts there.

Judging by those numbers, it would seem that the par-71, 7,104-yard Willow Creek CC track in Sandy, UT would not suit his eye. We'll see if desperation proves the antidote come the weekend.