  Hadron masses are calculated in quenched lattice QCD in order to probe the
scaling behavior of a novel fat-link clover fermion action in which only the
irrelevant operators of the fermion action are constructed using APE-smeared
links. Light quark masses corresponding to an m_pi / m_rho ratio of 0.35 are
considered to assess the exceptional configuration problem of clover-fermion
actions. This Fat-Link Irrelevant Clover (FLIC) fermion action provides scaling
which is superior to mean-field improvement and offers advantages over
nonperturbative improvement, including reduced exceptional configurations.
