Joe Durant is ready to embrace a moment that most professional golfers dread.

In three weeks, he's going to the infamous PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament. It's the nerve-wracking, pressure-filled, high-wire act that can make or break a career.

For a four-time PGA Tour winner like Durant, it would figure to be the last place he wants to spend a weekend. It's also the only way Durant, 45, a Molino resident and Escambia High graduate, can regain full playing status in 2009 on the PGA Tour.

"I'm actually kind of looking forward to going," said Durant, without hestitation, during his annual Joe Durant-Fellowship of Christian Athletes Golf Classic, held Thursday at A.C. Read. "I didn't want to have to go, you know, but it's an opportunity to improve my position a little bit."

Here's guy, after all, who has posted almost $12 million in PGA Tour earnings. And he's looking forward to the qualifying tournament?

"There's two mindsets," Durant said. "You can either say 'Man, I don't want to go to Q-School, I'm not looking forward to going' and be miserable about it, or say 'Hey, you know what, I'm going to go out there and have a good time, play some good courses and have a good attitude and try to beat the opposition.'

"I'm going to try to go out there and win tour school. Why not? It's a tournament."

Back to Q-School

The last time Durant was in this position was 1995. Since then, he's been one of the more consistent players on the PGA Tour, always playing well enough to assure his immediate future.

But after two struggling seasons, Durant has to re-earn playing priviledges.

A 12-year tour veteran, Durant found himself outside the top 125 on the PGA Tour money list on Sunday, an unkind distinction that strips him of a PGA Tour card in 2009. His last PGA Tour win was the 2006 FUNAI Classic at Walt Disney World — the final event of that season — providing him a two-year exemption that expired last week.

As consequence, Durant will be among the 156 players competing at the final stage of the PGA Tour's qualifying tournament — teeing up at PGA West in La Quinta, Calif. Dec. 3-8 — Durant will need to finish in at least a tie for 25th in the six-round marathon to earn his PGA Tour card back. As a cardholder last season, Durant was able to skip through the first and second stages of qualifying school.

It's not a desirable path, but Durant is obviously taking it in stride.

Durant finished No. 129 on the tour's money list in 2008, four spots from retaining his card. No one has ever questioned Durant's ability to strike the golf ball — he was No. 1 on the PGA Tour in greens in regulation in 2008 — but his biggest downfall, the flatstick, was the crushing blow to the 2008 season.

He was first in greens hit and dead last (197th) in putting.

To put his putting struggles in perspective, Durant is the first player to lead the tour in greens hit and finish outside the top 125 in the same year since Tim Simpson finished 144th on the money list in 1992.

"Putting, for me, has always been difficult," Durant said. "I've never been a great putter. But my stats were still pretty good tee to green. It's just about converting those opportunities. I just went through a dry spell where I wasn't converting. If I would miss a green, I would make a bogey. It's a domino effect, and you've just got to get on the other side of it."

From the PODS Championship in early March to the Buick Open at the end of June (11 events), Durant missed eight cuts and couldn't finish higher than 50th in those three events. Things began to turn around since the start of October as Durant made five straight cuts and finished 43rd or better in every event.

He could have worked his way into the top 125 with a win or runner-up performance at the Children's Miracle Network Classic at Disney last week, but a promising fifth place has Durant confident heading into Q-School.

"Last week was big for me from the standpoint of saying 'Hey, you know, I can still compete out here. I can still play,' " Durant said. "Those things do cross your mind when you aren't playing well — can I still compete anymore?

"I believe I can."

What's in store for '09?

Even if Durant doesn't finish in the top 25 in California next month, he will still be competing on tour next season.

He estimates that, between performance exemptions and sponsor's exemptions, he should play in 20 to 25 events, what amounts to his typical full season. The kicker is that instead of picking when and where he wants to play as the top 125 get to do, Durant will be at the hands of player withdrawals and tournament sponsors on a week-to-week basis.

Even though he'll get chances to play without it, there is still plenty of motivation for Durant to earn his card back at Q-school: At any given tour event, the top 125 have automatic spots. Next on the pecking order is the Q-school 'graduates' coupled with the players who earned cards based by finishing in the top 25 on the Nationwide Tour money list the season before. Next would be players who finished No. 126-150 on the PGA Tour, where Durant sits now.

So a top-25 at Q-School would put him one peg up in 2009.

"I want to just go out there and try to improve my position," Durant said. "A lot of tournament sponsors may look at it and see that if a guy doesn't go to Q-school, he's basically saying, 'You know what, I don't need it.' I'm going to make the effort to go, and it will pay dividends somewhere for me down the road."

Assuming he doesn't get his card, however, Durant already has his early season mapped out.

For starters, like many tournaments do throughout the PGA Tour season, a top 10 finish at Disney earns him an automatic spot in the next PGA Tour event. Since the PGA Tour season ended in Orlando, that exemption will take place in January at the Sony Open in Hawaii. After that, Durant will play in the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic — he won there in 2001 and got a 10-year exemption — and he expects to have a decent shot at a sponsor's exemption at the Buick Open in San Diego. He played in the final group (and finished 6th) with Stewart Cink as eventual champion Tiger Woods in February.

The ultimate goal would be for Durant, who says he has no plans of hanging it up anytime soon, to use those week-to-week opportunities to play himself into the top 125 of the 2009 money list and get back on the same saddle he's had for the last 12 years.

Optimistic as ever, he's ready for the challenge.

"Golf is just a hard game, but sometimes, no matter how hard you try, it just doesn't work out. You've just got to keep plugging," Durant said with a smile. "You can't give up, you can't quit.

"Well, you could quit, but I've never done that before. I don't want to start doing that now."