THERE is another life beneath the manicured skin of golf 's lucrative major tours. A life where there are no five-star hotels, no courtesy cars and no egos. A life where lunch costs money, where the range balls are scuffed and where dreams often peter out and die. And Keith Nolan has lived it.

Last year, Nolan opted out of the PGA Tour's qualifying school. Not because his game was in a mess, and not because he couldn't face the agony of a job interview which involves 14 highly pressurised rounds in full public view. He opted out because he couldn't put his hands on the $4,250 entrance fee.

Last summer, he was holding on by his fingernails. He could have found a few events closer to home in Knoxville, Tennessee, but instead he decided to follow the Nationwide Tour . . . a stamping ground for the PGA Tour . . . as it wended its way across America.

But with no Nationwide Tour card to his name, the best he could do was enter for Monday qualifying which is an unedifying 18-hole scramble in which up to 100 players compete for a handful of places in the tournament.

Between July and August, the road took him from Springfield, Missouri, west to Wichita, Kansas, and then north to Omaha, Nebraska.

Four Monday qualifying competitions, and four times he missed by a single stroke. After each disappointment, he and his wife Yolanda would pack their three young kids into the car, and move on.

"I've had low points in my time, " says Nolan, "but last summer was very tough. Not only on me but on the family as well. I've had one or two moments over the years when I asked myself what I was doing, and that was one of them."

Keith Nolan is not just another 33-year-old who longs for success on the PGA Tour. He was not some handy amateur who practised all the hours God gave him, and who then decided to give the pro game a shot. He has a pedigree.

A Walker Cup player in 1997 alongside Justin Rose and another Irish emigre, Richie Coughlan, he also won the Irish Amateur Open twice, and cut his teeth successfully on the US college circuit. The Bray club in county Wicklow had never produced a talent like him, and within a couple of months of the Walker Cup appearance, he sailed through the PGA Tour qualifying school to win his card.

For a while, he tasted life on the other side.

"Probably got spoiled early. It's not to say I regret getting a full tour card, but maybe I needed to serve an apprenticeship, to play on the Nationwide Tour for a couple of years. I never thought when I turned pro it would've been this tough for me."

He lost his card in 1998, won it back for the 2000 season and promptly lost it again. In 2002, he played in 22 events on the Nationwide Tour and won only $18,000. In the meantime, he has worked on and off at his local Starbucks near Knoxville. But brewing and serving coffee wasn't a surrender. He refused to contemplate that his days of tournament golf might be over.

"I've thought about doing other stuff within the golf industry, and about five years ago there was an approach from someone I knew at Ping.

But it just wasn't right, I knew there was a competitor in there. The fire was still burning."

After coming through Monday qualifying just four times in almost 20 attempts last season . . .

"Those results speak for themselves, " . . . the portents were hardly good for another tilt at the PGA Tour's Q-school. But he came through the first stage, survived the second stage, and then after six gruelling rounds, left Palm Springs in California last week with a Nationwide Tour card.

If he failed to reach his ultimate target of a return to the PGA Tour . . . as did two-time US Open champion, Lee Janzen, and Duffy Waldorf . . . and if the margin was a tantalising three strokes, he has at least found a competitive home for 2007. "Good to let people in Ireland know that I'm still kicking. Out of sight, but not out of mind."

He found the first and the second stages more nerve-wracking than the final tournament at the La Quinta resort. From previous experience, he knew the courses, and knew that he didn't need to smash the driver off nearly every tee.

Instead he chose a conservative strategy, aiming for the wider parts of the fairways, and it paid off.

"By now, I know all about the pressure at Qschool. I try to lock myself away from it. I don't look at leaderboards, I don't read newspapers, I don't look at the internet, and I was turning down requests for interviews. I honestly didn't have a clue where I was starting out in the final round. That's the way I had to do it.

"It's not that it gets harder going back to Qschool, I think my experiences have actually toughened me. I'm a little older and wiser. When the guy in the scorer's hut showed me where I was on the computer at the end of the final round, I was a little disappointed that I'd missed out on the PGA Tour, but the year has finished well for me."

Perversely, he shot five under par on the more demanding PGA West course, and only even par on the easier Jack Nicklaus course, but he survived. A 76 in round five cost him a place on the main tour, but at least, he is no longer one of professional golf 's homeless persons.

Last season, the top-10 players in the Nationwide Tour money list all earned over $300,000, and next year, the overall prize fund will increase to $18m with the top-25 players earning automatic promotion to the PGA Tour.

"I don't regret the opportunities I had on the main tour, but just two months after playing in the Walker Cup, I had a tour card in my hand. You'd just wonder if that was the right thing to happen.

Now I have a perfect opportunity to get back on track, and my dream is still to win a tournament.

"As for the pressure of being that bit older and of having a family, I've already experienced the pressure of coming through the first and second stages of Q-school. So if I'm standing on the 18th tee with a one-shot lead, I don't think I'm going to feel any more pressure than I have already."

Tom Lehman, who won his first PGA Tour event at the age of 35, was once so discouraged after years of fruitless toil on mini-tours that he almost took a job as golf coach at the University of Minnesota, and only turned it down when he was told he'd be renting cross-country skis out of the pro shop during the winter.

Keith Nolan has found a way back. And maybe Starbucks' loss will be tournament golf 's gain.