Keith Duggan watched the final act of the cruel drama which is the European Tour's Q-School

The proposed bet is this. Duncan Muscroft - English, tall and handsome in that glossy, Spandau Ballet golf-pro kind of way - will line up at the first tee. On his back he will carry another human being. Anyone at all.

He says he will out-sprint anybody over a hundred metres for whatever wager they care to name. The only condition is that his opponent has to drink a pint of water before they begin running.

The first tee at the Platja de Pals course is long deserted and dewy and spooky, because in November in northeast Spain it does not so much get dark as God flicks out the lights. It becomes utterly black.

Muscroft has just missed the cut for the last rounds of Qualifying School, and although he is privately devastated and at best vague about his plans for the next year, he is incapable of not being warm and brilliantly funny.

He has spent the day playing with Ireland's Philip Walton, who squeezed into the last rounds with a brave and terrific series of rallying birdies that would leave him on the magic number of six under par. Last year, Walton missed the cut here by one stroke. On Monday, as he prepared for his second putt on the par-three 18th, the required number on the leaderboard behind him changed from five to six under.

His caddie, known in this game as McDivot, threw his eyes to heaven. It was déjà vu - 12 months earlier, the number also changed just as Walton arrived on his final green. This time, though, there was no last-second heartbreak.

The mood around the course all day had been tense, with Muscroft visibly battling with himself as the holes disappeared and with them his chances of playing catch-up. A former English schools champion, the son of a well-known golfer, not so long ago Muscroft's eyes glittered at the possibilities that lay ahead.

He now teaches golf in Italy and knows he suffered here from not playing more competitive tournaments. He was in two minds about coming to Q-School anyway, but kind of found himself sucked into stage one at Koln, got through, and suddenly he was playing for a place in the last two days.

His exit was bittersweet, full of ifs and buts and maybes, but when the group - Walton and Muscroft and a quiet German kid who did not reckon on the scoreboard - sat down together in the clubhouse, he could not have been more generous.

"We didn't have much to say out there," remembered Walton, "but he came up to me after the 13th and just told me that I was hitting it really well and to go for it. And that meant something."

Walton is no stranger to this hothouse of professional golf. He first arrived in Q-School in 1998, having relinquished his tour rights after a season when he "putted like Ray Charles". The comedown was hard to accept.

"I was embarrassed. Yeah, I was embarrassed to be here, because I had a career and all that and used to be in the position to win tournaments. But not now. The game has got so big and is just so competitive that you see a lot of very good players in this situation."

Q-School is everything that the big tour isn't. There is no pampering, no sponsorship, no crowds. It is bare-essentials golf, played ooff-season courses like Pals and Emporda, round after round of golf where fates and careers are honed in an atmosphere of whispered desperation.

Groups of three moving like shades across the muted fairways and generally the only sound a pistol crack of tee-shots from neighbouring holes. Concentration is total and the prize is simple. The top-35 players get their cards for the European Tour.

Those that make the cut to the final two rounds, like Walton, are guaranteed some tournament rights. The rest are sent spinning back towards the twilight zone of professional golf, chasing bucks in Asia, maybe settling for a season at teaching, waiting until the application forms for next year's Q-School come out, promising themselves it will be different. Next time.

Muscroft reckons he will not be happy until they transplant the famous sign outside Galatasaray FC that reads "Welcome To Hell" and post it at the entrance to whatever club stages the school. There is no enjoyment in playing here because the stakes are too high and the humour is inevitably from the gallows.

Every school has its stories. On the day of the cut, a story circulated about a caddy who might be described as an enthusiastic novice.

On his very first green, his task was to hold the flag and lift it after his player connected with a distant putt. He wrenched the pole with such velocity that the cup somehow sprung out as well. The group could but watch in fascinated horror as he struggled on his knees to replace the cup as the ball rolled merrily towards its home.

Then there was the story of a youngster, a Scandinavian maybe, who lined up his very first tee-shot and sent it wayward, into the trees. Instead of remedying the situation with a short chip back to the fairway and cutting his losses, the teenager went for broke and watched his ball ricochet through the trees into even rougher terrain. The kid dropped eight shots, and all realistic chances, before he could even see the flag at the first.

"The first few days, you just don't even like to talk golf because you hear so many stories and know that anything can happen," Liam Bowler would say after the last round.

A professional from Wexford, Bowler caddied for his friend, Damien McGrane, who was back at Q-School to retain the card he earned last year. McGrane and Walton were the only Irishmen to make it to the last two rounds out of the eight who started.

"Last year, I scraped in," remembers McGrane, a compact, no-nonsense player with a fine temperament and a wonderful short game. "This year, I decided I wanted to get the best card I could, a top-10 finish if possible."

McGrane walks the course at pace and his attitude to this year's school seemed to be to play his heart out, to get through, and then get the hell out of Dodge. You could not blame him for that. On the northern periphery of the Costa Brava, Pals in November will never be mistaken for paradise.

It is as if the European Tour selected these courses to remind the contenders of the loneliness of their predicament; that the sunshine boys from the big tour are off at the shimmering resorts, light years away from this grind.

Driving to Pals, you encounter every reminder of abandoned - or rather, postponed - merriment. There are tennis courts strewn with leaves. Closed-up water adventure parks. And the always eerie sight of swimming pools drained for winter. There are countless shut restaurants, chairs stacked and windows whitewashed, so definitively closed it is impossible to ever imagine queues or food sizzling or the happy ring of a cash register.

This is not St Andrews. It is not Augusta. The village of Pals is breathtakingly quiet; if people know that the future stars of golf have assembled in their area for the week, then they do not care. The players are here by choice, but it is Hobson's. Nobody pretends to love the place.

What spectators are here are few, mostly family members of the competitors. Along the course, though, you do bump into the serial golf lover. Two of these are from Northern Ireland.

Graham Whitley was caddying for Damien Mooney, who failed to make the last cut, and his friend Brian Fyffe travelled out to keep him company and watch a bit of golf. The pair are afficionados of the game and have watched the Majors as score-takers so they could stand close to the greats. They are equally enthralled by these quietly epic scenes, though, where careers come together or are smashed.

On Wednesday, Whitley followed McGrane and by the turn was grinning broadly. Whitley has the caddy's knack of making himself invisible as he walks the course and he is enthused by the Wexford man's hot streak, with birdies at three, five, six and eight.

The day before, McGrane had just consolidated the score he established in the early rounds, finishing at 19 under. The scoring had become so ferociously high thatit was figured the cut would be at around 14 under, so the cushion was useful. This run, though, shot him up onto the leaderboard alongside the two guys who had dominated all week, Scotland's Stephen O'Hara and leader Francois Dela Montagne of France.

He was cruising, with at least four birdie putts skating the lip of the cup before rolling back on to the grass.

As McGrane played his home nine, the cars were already beginning to purr out of Emporda, school all done for some, racing back to the airport at Barcelona and home.

McGrane stopped for a brief look at the scoreboard and then made his way to the car park. He was looking at a top-10 finish, earning him a card with maximum playing rights for the season ahead. Finishing at 23 under with the leader at 27 under, that was a cert.

"Very happy, glad it is all over," he smiled. "It has been a tough week out there, a grind. And I deserve the score I shot, I finished with a 66 so I am pleased. Last year, scraping in was not really the place to be, so, this year, I knew I wanted to get the best card possible.

"And I have played a lot of good golf this year, so I feel I have every opportunity now. Maybe before I came here to make up the numbers, but this time I felt I was in the top-35 players here so, if I played to form, I would comfortably qualify.

"But needless to say over six rounds it is never that simple. Golf is a funny game. Still, I hit a lot of good shots, I was never in trouble. Finished with the same ball I started with. That can't be bad."

Phil Walton was being governed by different emotions. McGrane and Walton are on friendly terms, but their career trajectories are vastly different.

The younger man is working along a progressive arc that right now is lit with promise. He has retained his card and will no longer be a rookie on the glamour tour.

Walton is in a sense searching for a second life in the game. His name alone still carries the legacy of grandeur; here is a player who touched Ryder Cup magnificence, a tour veteran; someone who intimately knew the waters the younger players hoped to sail.

He still looks familiar: the red hair, the slightly doleful expression and the sudden grin, alive with mischief. Even on a tough day, Walton has generous time for anyone and repeatedly he signs balls, sometimes for guys who are places above him on the leaderboard.

His description of what Q-School feels like to play is unbeatable. "It's like turning up at Malahide at half-seven in the morning to play in a challenge for a Christmas turkey, with fellas hung over and mist everywhere."

Except, of course, you are playing for your very existence. Or something like that. Walton has turned up here for the past couple of years trying to fill in a void that falling off the big tour left. "I'm 41. Still young. Maybe it is getting on in golf terms, but, at heart, I still feel 16. The game does that to you. I feel I am playing the game of golf now as well as I did in 1995. But I am not on the tour and I can't get back on it. And I miss it. I'm a proud man and I miss it.

"I have got a lot of people rooting for me back home. Because I know I can play against everyone, but finishing it out is what I am not doing. I used to do it well, but not at the moment."

What Walton is grappling for, what he says he needs, is a bit of luck, a good run on the greens over the course of a tournament again. Making the cut was the most vital aspect of this year's Q-School. That he was on the line, at six under, meant rocketing into the top 35 through the last two rounds was always going to be a tall order.

He played well through school's last session, with rounds of three under on both days. His final score of 12 under would have been good enough last year. This year, the magic number was 17 under, a number that shocked people. Walton believes he is driving as well as he ever has, but still found his ball dropped 20 and 30 yards short of opposing contenders.

"That's 'cos if you auctioned your equipment at the Antiques Roadshow, Walts, you would get about £30," teased Muscroft.

But the point was valid. As somebody observed in the café at Emporda when the scores began to plummet, "technology is fucking the game".

Walton is a traditionalist when it comes to clubs. He plays with equipment he has always liked, good enough to give him more than respectable fairway distances over the years, but not those that are necessarily the most advanced.

As it was, it didn't matter; he had no trouble finding the greens all week. It was in closing the deal that he was less consistent. He walked off Emporda with dusk closing in on Wednesday afternoon with mixed feelings.

Deep inside lurks his old game and by turning up at this god-forsaken place he is like a medium, trying to communicate with it, to bring it back again. Slowly, but surely, he is getting there.

Regaining his card would have left him with a fresh dilemma anyway. Hayley, his eldest girl, is 13. Being back on tour would take him away from the three kids, from home, for 30 weeks of the year.

"Can I honestly say that I am ready for that?" he mused.

Twenty years ago, it would not, of course, have been a dilemma. Family is not a consideration for many contenders here. Players like Jeppe Huldhahl, a Danish player who looked like he had walked off a billboard for Calvin Klein. He carried his golfbag, puffed cigarettes and shot well under 20 to secure his passage in fine style.

Leaving northern Spain with their cards were this new generation: lean European kids with ragged golf clothes and goatees and hyper-light equipment with solemn expressions and big dreams and conversations they confined to their mobile phones.

A different generation to that with which Phil Walton cut his teeth. Still empathetic, still obsessed and respectful of the game, yes, but just more distant. The number of first-time card holders who broke through was the extraordinary aspect to this year's Q-School - that, and the savage rate of scoring. On they fly, the new breed, scavenging and hungry, the fat cats in their sights.

Damien McGrane and Philip Walton headed out of northern Spain on Wednesday evening, eager to leave golf's own house of pain behind.

Nobody took Duncan Muscroft up on his bet in the end. It was just as well. The trick was that when he got his victim lined up at the first tee, the barman would present him with a glass of water that was boiling hot. Muscroft could stagger the hundred metres with his weight and still beat the water drinker. It would have been a great sight, but, in truth, everyone was far too exhausted for japes.

Misery Hill is Walton's pet name for Q-School. It leaves you with energy for golf only. This winter, it beat him, but he left far from broken.

"The signs are good again now," he vowed over a quick sandwich in the restaurant where the staff were already folding away the tablecloths.

Outside, a girl hosed down the patio and, around the leaderboard, people said their goodbyes and departed quickly. School was fled with nobody turning round for a fond last look.