DECISION ’08: A GOLFWEEK.COM SPECIAL PROJECTThe race for the White House may be over, but those vying for a coveted PGA Tour card still have 72 holes before the results are in. Check golfweek.com each day this week to follow the winners and losers at the season-ending Children’s Miracle Network Classic. Golfweek.com will be paying close attention
to these eight players specifically.
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Part I: Embracing perspective, not pressure•
Part II: ‘I have to play well’
• Parts III through VI: Thursday-Sunday
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Decision ’08: Players to watch
By JEFF RUDE
Senior WriterLAKE BUENA VISTA, FLA. – Charles Warren walked off the golf course and into a Walt Disney World Resort hotel carrying a fishing pole and golf club and wearing a smile. His carefree countenance Tuesday didn’t project the pressure that could be felt by someone 127th in PGA Tour earnings and in danger of losing his card entering the final tournament of the season.
“I feel shockingly calm,” said Warren, $40,115 behind No. 125 on the money list, the last spot for a 2009 full exemption. “It’s almost concerning because I don’t feel any pressure. But it’s like the last lap at Daytona. If you can’t put the pedal down for one more lap ...”
Warren wasn’t the only protagonist in the so-called “Battle for the Card” who portrayed a sense of peace instead of panic entering the Children’s Miracle Network Classic. Michael Allen (No. 123), Jeff Overton (125) and Martin Laird (126) were others who spoke with the measured calm of someone playing a casual round rather than for a job.
That might be the surprise of this odd week in golf, where the spotlight isn’t on first but last. One has to look hard to find evidence of stress, pressure, short tempers, sleep loss or lack of appetite.
In fact, Overton, an Oct. 21 appendectomy patient still on medication, showed maturity beyond his 25 years when talking about his approach to one of the most important golf weeks of his young career. He’s all about half full, at worst.
“You just have to go out there and try to win the golf tournament, and if you fail you’re going to finish top 10 and everything will take care of itself,” said Overton, $37,737 ahead of Laird, the man just on the other side of the card line. “But if you go out there thinking you want to make the cut and putting all that extra pressure on yourself, if you mess up a little bit you’re going to fall way short. You can’t let that stuff get in your way. You just have to go out and play and have fun and try to have a passion for it.”
Such was the case for him last week at the Ginn sur Mer Classic. Playing at less than 100 percent after coming back early from surgery, he gutted his way to a tie for 18th and made an important step from 126th to 125th. He was one of three players who moved into the top 125 Sunday – winner Ryan Palmer jumped from 143rd to 74th and co-runnerup Vaughn Taylor, the 2006 Ryder Cupper, advanced from 129th to 100th.
Overton wouldn’t have anything to worry about had he not faltered down the stretch and slipped to T-10 at the Turning Stone Championship a month ago. But he’s not playing the what-if game.
“All I can do this week is play for the love of the game,” he said. “It’s like the movie ‘The Natural.’ If you play for the love of the game, that’s when you play your best. Hey, I was just in a hospital bed with tubes sticking out of me. There was some good in that. It puts things in perspective. I love being out there.”
Laird, the rookie from Scotland, is another who says he hasn’t felt stressed out. One reason is that he has played well since an awful first six months. He has vaulted from near the bottom of earnings to his current precarious position thanks to three consecutive top-7 finishes in summer and 13 cuts made in his last 14 starts. What’s more, he has improved his finish each of the last four weeks.
“I haven’t gotten mad and frustrated,” Laird said. “I’ve been pretty calm. I haven’t been out there worrying about the money list. I’ve always been a grinder, and my thinking is that this week I really have to be a grinder now.”
Laird knows he needs a high finish to pass Overton and others. He maintains that keeps him away from the high pressure he felt while trying to get onto the Tour via the Nationwide Tour top 25.
“In a way it helps because I know I need a good week, a top 10 or 15,” Laird said. “My approach is to go out, go for it and see what happens. If I make it, it gives me a big boost. If I don’t, I’m not going to worry about it.”
And perhaps he shouldn’t. Laird has already earned more than $800,000 and if need be could improve his status at Q-School finals. What’s more, players in the 126-150 category retain a partial exemption and average about 20 starts the following year. The downside is their scheduling is limited.
“All you can do is go out and play hard, have fun and compete,” said Allen, the 49-year-old veteran who is no stranger to struggling to keep a card. “Life’s good. As a friend of mine said three years ago, ‘Mike, what am I supposed to say to you? You made $600,000 and lost your job.”
If anyone is feeling 11th-hour stress, it might be Shane Bertsch. The journeyman is 124th but didn’t learn until Tuesday that he’s not exempt for next year. Bertsch who didn’t play last week, was under the mistaken impression that his medical exemption would apply to next year. In fact, Bertsch, who missed 2007 because of vertigo, had 25 events this year to make $785,180 and stay exempt for the rest of ’08. He had thought the earnings would exempt him for next year and mentioned it to a reporter, who informed the Tour, which set Bertsch straight by telephone.
So now he’s back in grind mode.
Whether Bertsch can regroup and hang on bears watching. Certain is that flipping the switch back on isn’t always easy. Just ask Jay Williamson.
Williamson, another veteran who knows about struggles, was loving life in summer – he lost a John Deere Classic playoff, played in his first British Open and advanced to the penultimate FedEx Cup playoff event in his hometown of St. Louis. But he has missed the cut in his last five Fall Series starts and finds himself 132nd in earnings, about $82,000 from the good side of the line.
“I turned the engine off after St. Louis and I’ve had a hard time restarting it,” Williamson said. “I’m out of adrenaline, to be honest with you. That’s part of my problem. To be out here and try to beat these guys, you’ve got to be all in. Sometimes I’m not really all in.
His children are coming to Disney World on Wednesday night for what they expect to be a fun week. But while they’re at an amusement park, their father will be in search of lost confidence and an important high finish.
They seek thrills of a different kind.
• • •
Jeff Rude is a
Golfweek senior writer. To reach him e-mail
jrude@golfweek.com
Posted: 11/4/2008
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