looking at the possibility of winning his PGA Tour card

Now, sitting at a table waiting for parents Russ and Joan to call, Caron was looking at the possibility of winning his PGA Tour card.

"You think it's good enough?" Caron said of his 8-under score. "Right now it's looking like the PGA Tour, but you never know, because. ..."

A few hundred yards from the magic in Caron's eyes was the loss in Phillipa Laubscher's tears. She broke down on the 18th green. It was understandable.

Just an hour earlier, her fiance, Tjaart Van Der Walt, appeared to be on his way to earning his PGA Tour card. Then disaster. His second shot on 14 hit the cart path and pinballed out of bounds. A bogey on 16, another on 18, and Van Der Walt's dream was shot.

Tears streaked Laubscher's face.

"She carried me the whole week," Van Der Walt said. "It was difficult for both of us to keep [emotions] in."

There was magic and loss Monday all over these fairways and greens. There always is on the last day of the PGA's Qualifying Tournament.

It is on this day, said PGA veteran Bob Friend, who qualified for next year's Tour, "that one shot can change your whole year."

"God, I hope I never have to come back here again," qualifier Bob Burns said.

But they come. Like Jaxon Brigman from Abilene, Texas. Trying to qualify for the sixth time, Brigman shot a final-round 65 to seemingly make the cut. But Brigman signed an incorrect scorecard, which credited him with a 66. He missed the cut by a shot, a shot he never took.

"I went from being the happiest man to just being killed," he said.

And Jason Caron waited.

He was charging the cell phone, watching the results leak across the television screen on the Golf Channel as he sat on the bubble.

"I'm not really nervous," said Caron, 26, a three-time winner this year on the Hooters Tour. "You know, I didn't shoot a round over par in Q-School. Now all I can do is sit ... and wait for my parents. It's funny, they just got the Golf Channel where they live about two weeks ago. They're just watching and ...