Golf Capsules: A long road to tour for 40-year-old Englishman
HONOLULU (AP) — Gary Christian is among 11 players at the Sony Open who are playing on the PGA Tour for the first time. It's a route to the big leagues unlike the others.
He worked as a pension administrator outside London when he finished high schools, two miserable years spared only by the fact his office was down the street from a pub, where he could extend his lunch hour.
He somehow landed at Auburn, where he couldn't understand the fascination of "alleged amateur American football" until he was invited to his first tailgate party.
When he decided to see if he was good enough to play golf for a living, he supported himself by going door-to-door selling steak knives. And after toiling 15 years in the minor leagues, the 40-year-old finally gets his shot.
It all began to sink in Tuesday when he went out to the range and found himself next to Vijay Singh, a three-time major champion.
"He's a big bugger, isn't he?" Christian said.
Christian is not lacking a sense of humor, or any measure of perspective. He attributes that to his heritage.
"English people tend to be more realistic," he said. "They don't have as many people telling them how great they are. Usually, they have people telling them how bad they are. At the end of every year, I looked myself in the mirror and said, 'Am I getting better?' And every year, without hesitation, I said, 'Yes.'
"I would have never kept playing the game if I knew I couldn't progress beyond a certain level," he said. "If my goal was to make the Nationwide Tour and make the cut a few times, I would have quit 10 years ago. My goal was specific — to get to the Nationwide Tour, play well, win, develop tools necessary to get on the PGA Tour, and stay on the tour."
Now that he's finally here, there's only one step left.
The Sony Open begins Thursday as the first full-field of the 2012 season. Mark Wilson is the defending champion. Steve Stricker is coming off a three-shot win last week at Kapalua.
The buzz along the shores of Waikiki comes from so much optimism, mostly from players who are just starting out after getting their cards through Q-school or the Nationwide Tour.
Harris English has one thing in common with Christian — this is his first PGA Tour event.
Christian was pouring drinks in a pub at the same age English was winning a Nationwide Tour event as an amateur. English went on to fulfill his dream of playing in the Walker Cup last year, then barely broke a sweat in both stages of Q-school to earn his card.
Even though his win gave him Nationwide Tour status for 2012, English didn't even bother with the PGA Tour until he had his card.
"I didn't feel like I deserved it, or that I had earned it," he said. "I wanted to get my gears ready, I made it through second stage of Q-school, played well in the final stage, and here I am."
Christian vaguely remembers a moment like that.
He went from selling knives to working at Inverness Country Club in Birmingham, Ala., where the head pro saw enough promise in his game to give him a job.
His scores while playing with members were 71s and the occasional 67, then 67s and the occasional 65. When his visa was about to expire, he was made the membership director, and the slight improvement continued.
Christian's first big year was on the old TearDrop Tour in 1998, when he won four times. He made it onto the Nike Tour the next year, and was on his way.
"I thought this was going to be a dawdle," he said. "I'd play a year on the Nike Tour, and then be on the PGA Tour. It didn't quite work out that way."
He never cracked the top 10 that year, and it took seven more years just to get through the second stage of Q-school and return to what by then had become the Nationwide Tour. It took him six more years of work just to get the big leagues.
Indeed, Christian might be the epitome of a late bloomer.
About the time he really got interested in golf, he was working as a pensions administrator, which he described as a "job only slightly more boring than it actually sounds."
Unable to hone his game without supporting himself, he stumbled into a scholarship program that sent him to Wallace State Community College, where he was teammates with Brett Wetterich, and then on to Auburn.
The highlight was tailgating.
"I didn't know what that meant," he said. "My friend said they park and have a good time. You drink and eat. I was on a small budget, didn't have a lot of money for food or beer, so I thought, 'Yeah, why not?' I had a girlfriend back then and I told her, 'I'll see you in about an hour-and-an-half. I'm going to tailgate.'
"It wasn't anything I was expecting," he said. "There were a bunch of 50-year-old men in orange trousers, women with orange earnings and whatever else. I thought, 'Well, I'm not going to enjoy this.' About five hours later ... I got what it was about."
It was while tailgating that he met a couple from Birmingham who offered him a place to stay while he chased his dream.
For work, Christian answered a classified ad offering $11.88 an hour to sell knives, but he wasn't very good at that.
"I found it hard to see someone parting with $800 for steak knives," he said.
Eventually, he moved on to Inverness and slowly worked his way to where he wanted to be all along.
The turning point came last summer, when he took his wife and two sons home to England.
Playing golf at his old club with friends, who had seen his action over the years, they told him he was ready. And as he says, the English don't just toss around praise. Within a few months, he won a Nationwide Tour event that helped him lock up his card.
On Thursday, he will be introduced on the 10th tee at Waialae as a full-fledged PGA Tour member.
''The nerves haven't hit me yet," he said. "I'll have to work 100 percent on relaxing and breathing, my tempo and rhythm, and trust the hard work I've done."
Chiquita Classic to be held in Charlotte, N.C.
WEDDINGTON, N.C. (AP) — The PGA Tour's Nationwide Tour is coming to the Charlotte area.
The Chiquita Classic, a two-year-old Nationwide Tour event formerly held in Cincinnati, will now be played Sept. 24-30 at the Club at Longview in the Charlotte suburb of Weddington it was announced Wednesday. A three-year tournament agreement is in place.
The announcement comes six weeks after Chiquita Brands unveiled plans to relocate its global headquarters to Charlotte, bringing more than 400 jobs to the area.
"We are pleased to bring the Chiquita Classic to the greater Charlotte area," said Fernando Aguirre, Chiquita chairman and chief executive officer. "We promised to help make a positive impact in the Charlotte area, and bringing this fantastic golf tournament here will do just that."
The Chiquita Classic will feature a field of 156 players competing over 72 holes of stroke play for a purse of $550,000 and a specially made putter in the form of a Chiquita banana.
All four rounds of the Chiquita Classic will air on Golf Channel in the U.S., with the tournament made available in 176 countries and territories around the world.
There will also be a Pro-Am event on the Wednesday before the tournament begins.
"The Nationwide Tour is thrilled to partner with Chiquita in Charlotte," said Nationwide Tour president Bill Calfee. "We have had a very solid relationship with them since they joined our family of sponsors two years ago. Chiquita has made a strong commitment to the Nationwide Tour and to Greater Charlotte, and we look forward to building a first-class event."
Charlotte also plays host to the PGA Tour's Wells Fargo Championship, held annually at the Quail Hollow Club and considered by professional players as one of the top tournaments in the country.
"We're not here to compete with them, we're here to complement them," Aguirre said.
Quail Hollow Club president Johnny Harris was on hand at Wednesday's press conference to welcome the tournament to the Charlotte area and lend his support for the event.
Two out of three players on the PGA Tour have played on the Nationwide Tour.
And Nationwide Tour alumni have won a combined 320 PGA Tour titles, including 14 majors.
"The popular thinking is if it's not the PGA Tour then you must be developmental or a minor league, but I challenge that thinking or attitude," Calfee said. "We look at the Nationwide Tour as golf's form of expansion. We don't have the ability to go to a city to open a franchise... I think the players on the Nationwide Tour are playing at the highest level. Unfortunately we don't have room for all of the great players on the PGA Tour. The guys aren't developing their games. They have games. And when they get to the PGA Tour they're having success and staying on Tour."
Several former Nationwide Tour players and current PGA Tour members call Charlotte home, including Webb Simpson, Brendon de Jonge, Mathew Goggin, Jason Kokrak and Johnson Wagner.
The Club at Longview is a 7,065-yard layout designed by legend Jack Nicklaus which opened for play in 2003.
"It's always an honor when one of our golf courses is selected to host a PGA Tour-sanctioned event," Nicklaus said. "The Club at Longview was our first design work in the Charlotte area and it turned out to be a beautiful setting for golf. The property was naturally rolling, with nice changes in elevation. There was a mix of existing open fields, accented by wooded draws or valleys that contained wetlands, streams and lakes. This all combined to add to the variety of the golf experience.
"Outside of the aesthetics, the golf course at Longview should be a good test of golf for these up-and-coming TOUR professionals. The golf fans in the Charlotte area should enjoy the level of competition when the Chiquita Classic comes to town in September."
Neal Vohr, the general manager and COO at the Club at Longview, called it an "honor" to host such an event.
"Our entire membership has embraced this tournament," Vohr said.
-- Steve Reed
Finchem gets four-year extension
HONOLULU (AP) — Coming off his most difficult stretch as PGA Tour commissioner, Tim Finchem is ready for four more years.
Finchem received a four-year contract extension Wednesday, which will keep him in charge of golf's most lucrative tour through 2016.
He suggested last year that he might be willing to stay on the job after his contract expired in June 2012, and Finchem said he made up his mind after talking to his wife. Their youngest daughter starts college next year.
The 64-year-old Finchem also wanted to get through the most recent television contract, an unprecedented nine-year deal with NBC Sports and CBS Sports.
"It was a no-brainer decision," Finchem said. "It's what I do. Plus, we got done with TV. And with a runway for 10 years, I figured we could do some good stuff long term. I'm as optimistic as I've ever been.
Finchem was appointed commissioner in 1994. By staying on through 2016, he would be the longest-serving commissioner of the three that have served since the PGA Tour broke away from the PGA of America in 1969.
There probably won't be another extension. When told he would be 69 when the new contract is over, Finchem pointed out that 77-year-old Bud Selig just signed on for two more years as commissioner of Major League Baseball; and that Ronald Reagan was 70 when he was elected president, serving two terms.
"I never rule out any possibilities," he said. "But the likelihood is this will probably be it for me. There's other things I want to do."
Among other things, Finchem had to respond to Greg Norman's proposed world tour in 1994, coming up with the World Golf Championships that began in 1999. There was a small attempt at starting a players' union that also was thwarted.
Even so, nothing topped the last three years — a downturn in the economy that put tour sponsorship in doubt, and the downfall of Tiger Woods, though a scandal and leg injuries, which kept him out of the game for two long stretches.
Finchem described it "the most trying period."
"It was a combination of things," he said. "It wasn't just a downturn; we had bankruptcies going on. This plays into TV. We had the No. 1 player not playing a lot. That plays into television. There was an extra level of concern. It wasn't a big downer. It was just hard work."
-- Doug Ferguson
Glover withdraws from Sony with sprained knee
HONOLULU (AP) — Lucas Glover is leaving Hawaii without hitting a single shot in competition.
Glover limped from the practice range back to his hotel room Wednesday after withdrawing from the Sony Open with a sprained right knee that still is not strong enough for him to play golf.
"It's getting better," Glover said. "But I'm not going to risk making it worse."
The former U.S. Open champion sprained the medial collateral ligament in his knee on Dec. 31 during a freak paddle boarding accident upon arriving on Maui for the PGA Tour's season opener. His foot caught the side of the board as he fell into the water, sending his body one direction and his knee the other.
Glover withdrew from the Tournament of Champions, but thought he might be able to play the Sony Open because Waialae Country Club is relatively flat and easier to walk.
He hit three wedges and a 9-iron on the range before his pro-am before deciding to withdraw.
"It was a long shot, but I was here and I wanted to try if I could," he said.
Glover doesn't believe the injury is more than a mild sprain, "it's just taking a little longer to heal." He planned to fly home to Sea Island on the Georgia coast and see another doctor to make sure it's nothing worse, and he hoped to be in San Diego in two weeks for the Northern Trust Open at Torrey Pines.
The timing for an injury is tough for Glover. A winner last year at the Wells Fargo Championship, he is No. 71 in the world ranking and had hoped to play a full West Coast schedule to get into the Match Play Championship (for the top 64 in the world) at the end of February, and perhaps another World Golf Championship event at Doral in early March.
-- Doug Ferguson
Townsend leads British Open qualifiers
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australian Aaron Townsend shot a pair of 2-under 70s to win the Australasian qualifying tournament for this year's British Open by three strokes.
Australians Ashley Hall (71) and Nicholas Cullen (73) took the other two qualifying spots up for grabs at Kingston Heath Golf Club after beating Champions Tour regular Peter Senior (71) in a playoff. The three golfers had finished tied for second at 1-under 143 after two rounds of regulation.
The British Open will be held from July 19-22 at Royal Lytham & St. Anne's in northern England. The next international qualifying tournament will be Jan. 18-19 at Royal Johannesburg & Kensington in South Africa.
