Tony Romo’s latest pro-golf quest ended with curious DQ. Here’s what happened

If you know only three things about Tony Romo, your list might look like this:

1. After a college career that led to enshrinement in the College Football Hall of Fame, Romo, 46, had a broadly successful, 13-year career as the quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys;

2. After a dazzling and electrifying start*, Romo had a nine-year career as CBS’s lead NFL color analyst, which came to an abrupt end on Friday, Oct. 2, when the network and Romo announced they were parting ways;

3. After decades as a devoted and skillful golfer, Romo, as an amateur, received a sponsor’s exemption to play in a second-tier PGA Tour event in the Dominican Republic in 2018, in which he shot a first-round 77 and second-round 82, missing the cut by 16 shots.

The details of his life and times could fill a book. Here are three snippets. 

As quarterback: Romo went 2-4 in his six playoff games, all with the Cowboys, the only pro team for which he played.

As broadcaster: Per Variety, among other reliable entertainment-news outlets, Romo, in 2020, signed a 10-year, $180 million contract extension with CBS and was reportedly still owed $74 million when the relationship ended Oct. 2, three months after Romo was arrested under suspicion of driving while intoxicated and after several years of live booth work that had been widely criticized for being unfocused and at times unintelligible.

As golfer: On that very same day — Friday, Oct. 2 — Romo played in the third and final round of a Korn Ferry pre-qualifier tournament, the first step (and one that Romo has taken on several occasions) in a series of tournaments for golfers without status seeking playing privileges on the Korn Ferry Tour. The 54-hole tournament ended for Romo not with a score, but with a disqualification.

There are odd elements to all of these events, and this most obscure and recent one, the golf one, might be the oddest.

The pre-qualifier Romo played in was held at a golf course called the Club at Forest Ridge in Broken Arrow, Okla. After rounds of 76 and 75, Romo was 13 strokes off the 36-hole leaders but well positioned to advance to the first (of three) stages of Korn Ferry Q-School. With a good third round, he’d be in the top 37 and ties, and would move on.

For that third round, Romo was paired with another amateur, a college golfer from Nebraska named Ethan Smith, and a pro from Louisiana named Brandon Rice. Smith and Rice were in the same position: a round of even or better would give them a good chance of advancing. A couple dozen fans followed the threesome.

Smith had a poor day and shot 80, which left him with no chance of advancing. Rice played somewhat better but with 75 never sniffed the good sign of the cutline.

Of the three, Romo was playing best. He went out in 37, one over par. He needed a hot second nine. The group’s play was sluggish and the threesome was put on the clock, a warning for slow play. Romo made no birdies on his second nine (Broken Ridge’s front nine), shot another 37 and signed for 74. Close-ish. Those final nine holes went 4-4 and a bogey 5; 3-4-3, all pars; 4-4-5, three more pars to close when he needed three birdies. Rice kept Romo’s card. Another player always keeps your card — he’s your marker. All the while, a player keeps his or her own card, too. 

In a phone interview Thursday with Ryan French, publisher of Monday Q Info, Rice said he thought Romo made a 5 on his 17th hole, but Romo told him in scoring it actually was a 4, and that’s the score Romo signed for. By the end of play that day, Romo’s three rounds — 76, 75, 74, a neat progression of improvement — meant he missed advancing by three shots. That’s how it appeared. Certainly respectable. With all he had going on in his life, including a plea of no contest on his DUI charge and the conclusion of his high-paying, high-profile CBS Sports gig? More than respectable, really. Tiger Woods once said of Romo that the only celebrity athlete he knew who had more game was the retired pitcher John Smoltz, though that was before the star basketball player Steph Curry’s golf skill was on display for all to see on national TV.

There was only one problem with Romo’s third-round 74, as Rob Keller, a 12-year PGA Tour rules official, explained it in a phone interview with GOLF. Keller was the chief referee for this pre-qualifier, run locally by Oklahoma’s South Central PGA section. Two problems, actually. A South Central PGA pro had monitored the group’s play, and its pace, as it “limped in,” in Keller’s vivid description. At that point in these situations, the main goal is to get the group to the clubhouse and make sure it doesn’t hold up the threesome behind.

The Oklahoma pro, whom Keller declined to name, looked at Romo’s scorecard Friday night on a website that showed hole-by-hole scores. As he recalled Romo’s play, Romo had a three-putt bogey 5 on his 16th hole and a three-putt bogey 5 on his 17th hole as well. In other words, where Rice had Romo for 4 and a 5, the South Central PGA pro/walking referee had Romo for a 5 and a 5. But Romo signed for a 4 on 16 and a 4 on 17.

By the Rules of Golf, if you sign for a higher score than your actual score, you’re stuck with the higher score. In all PGA Tour-sanctioned play, and by modified local rule, if you sign for a lower score than you actually shot, and don’t fix the error within 20 minutes of leaving the scoring area, you’re disqualified. The next thing that happens is golf’s two saddest letters, DQ, are stamped next to your name. Often the mistakes are innocent errors in procedure. But sometimes those two letters become golf’s version of Hester Prynne’s A in “The Scarlet Letter.” It’s hard to know what you’re actually seeing, because so much of golf is in the player’s head. You don’t know because you can’t know. Only one person really knows.

Keller got word that there might be a problem with Romo’s third-round scorecard. He interviewed both players, Smith and Rice, by phone. Neither player was certain what Romo had done on those two holes. Keller called Romo and asked him to recall his play on those two holes.

Keller, a former All-American college golfer and a widely respected rules official, described a rushed scoring process and Romo signing Rice’s proffered card without carefully checking it. He suggested that Romo, between the slow-play warning hanging over the group, his inability to mount any sort of birdie run “and all that was going on with him” was frustrated with how the day went. Keller said Romo took responsibility for the wrong card and was “very complimentary” about the event and how it was run. Keller noted that Romo was not going to advance either way.

“The protocol I like is, we want eyes on the scorecards,” Keller said, describing the late call he received about Romo’s third-round scores, the call that turned a number into a DQ.

So, in the end, Romo did not shoot 225 in the three-round Korn Ferry Q-School pre-qualifier at Broken Ridge. You could say it was 227, with those two 5s, but that’s not accurate, either. Per the Rules of Golf, Tony Romo didn’t have a third-round score. In the end, his three rounds ended not with a number at all, but with two letters.

By Romo’s own admission, his life is at a crossroads, and he plans to take some time to reflect on it. (There was no immediate response to a request for a comment from Romo sent, by email and by voice mail, to Romo’s agent.) At 46, maybe he’s going to try to hatch a plan to try to earn a spot on the senior tour in the next four years. If he gets there, he’ll have some good rookie company. Justin Rose, Sergio Garcia, Adam Scott, Ian Poulter and Lucas Glover all are 46, too.

*Regarding Romo’s meteoric rise as a CBS Sports analyst, it brought to mind what Phil Mickelson did in a brief cameo as an analyst at the 2020 PGA Championship, also broadcasted by CBS Sports. He was funny, insightful, fast and prescient. If that was Mickelson’s tryout, it looked like he could write his own ticket as a broadcaster. At the time, there was a quote and an insight going around anybody could understand: “Phil Mickelson could be the Tony Romo of golf.”

At the time, anyway, it made a lot of sense, but a lot can change in six years.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com.