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.