SNOQUALMIE – When Ryan Moore finally won a PGA Tour event, last weekend at the Wyndham Championship, the 26-year old Puyallup product collected a check for $918,000. This figures to be more than enough to cover a lifetime of cable bills and steakhouse tabs, but those golfers familiar with the experience of winning for the first time on the Tour will tell you that the check is secondary.
“The money comes and goes,” said Keith Fergus, “but the trophy is still there. I can look at it every day and say, ‘For that one time, that one week, I was the man.’ ”
Fergus, here this week to compete in the Champions Tour Boeing Classic at the TPC at Snoqualmie Ridge, ended his four-year drought at the 1981 Memorial.
“When people find out you’re a pro golfer, the first question they ask is, ‘Have you ever won out there?’ ” said Fergus, a three-time PGA Tour winner. “Or else, they want to know how many times you’ve won. And unless you’ve won, you’ve got to answer, ‘Well, I haven’t.’
“For a kid like Ryan Moore, that’s good to get off his back. It may be his only one, there’s no telling. But at least he’s got that one.”
Like Moore, who had three second-place finishes before last Sunday – including a heartbreaking defeat to Adam Scott on the third playoff hole of the 2008 Byron Nelson Classic – Denis Watson once played well enough to come close on the PGA Tour. Until 1984, Watson just never played well enough to finish first.
“Winning gave me a sense of relief, this feeling of: Now I can do it,” Watson said of his milestone 1984 Buick Open title at Warwick Hills, outside Detroit. “It will be interesting to see if Ryan lets go and plays fantastic from now on, or whether he goes back to being tense about winning. Some guys finally win and take off, because they realize they can. I was the same way.”
Watson won two other PGA events within seven weeks of his inaugural victory at the Buick Open. Injuries and slumps followed – it wouldn’t be until 2007, at the Boeing Classic, that he’d hoist another trophy – but the thrill of winning for the first time on the PGA Tour was such that the South African remembers the breakthrough victory “as if it were yesterday. …
“Lee Trevino hit one out of bounds on the last hole, and Payne Stewart and Isao Aoki were in the mix, too,” Watson said. “I made some great shots finishing. It was as if I overcame myself.”
Afterward, the late Bobby Locke, a four-time British Open champion and the first South African golfer to make a name for himself in America, wrote Watson a letter of congratulations. He had met his legendary countryman before, but it wasn’t until Watson won on the Tour that he gained ultimate acceptance in one of sports’ most selective fraternities.
“You get a great sense of appreciation from your peers,” Watson said. “They know what it’s like. They know how hard it is to win, especially the first time.”
As for the other benefits?
“I think I bought a condo because I needed a place to live,” he said. “I also won a Buick Riviera convertible – a really fantastic car. Those of us who come from English colonies are not used to driving big cars like that.”
For Fred Funk, the fondest recollections of his first PGA Tour title – at the 1992 Shell Houston Open – are personal.
“I met my current wife that weekend,” he said. “Actually, we only talked for five minutes. When I returned to Houston the following year, that’s when we started dating.
“Very special memories.”
Funk was struggling that season before he broke the course record with a third-round score of 62.
“I was probably at the lowest point of my early career,” he said. “I didn’t really know if I belonged out here. I kind of went into that tournament without any expectations. Then I went out and shot 62 on Saturday, and off I went.”
Funk believes his Houston conquest provided the “validation” he needed to survive on the Tour.
“I don’t think Ryan Moore would ever need to feel a validation because he had such a stellar amateur career,” said Funk. “Now he knows how to win, and he’s got to be ecstatic that the monkey is off his back.”
Then again, when you’re regularly dueling against the best shot-makers in the world, success is only temporary. Take Watson, who almost earned PGA Player of the Year honors in 1984, then was shut out until he was able to revive his career on the Champions Tour.
“I never did play golf at the same level I did after 1984, and that’s frustrating,” he said. “But at the same time, I’m luckier than most. There are a lot of players on the PGA Tour that never win a golf tournament. I’m fortunate. At least I got to feel it.”
He’s also able to watch it.
“I think there’s a video somewhere at home of my first victory,” Watson said. “I haven’t looked at it in years, but maybe I should take it out and study it sometime. It’s always good to remember how you won.”
Precisely how Denis Watson won 25 years ago might not apply to his game this weekend at the Boeing Classic.
The larger point is that he realizes he’s among the relatively few pro golfers to have won at all on the PGA Tour.
He got to feel it.
John McGrath: 253-597-8742; ext. 6154
john.mcgrath@thenewstribune.com Site: Snoqualmie. Schedule: Friday-Sunday.
Course: TPC Snoqualmie Ridge (7,436 yards, par 72).
Purse: $1.8 million. Winner’s share: $270,000.
Television: Golf Channel (Friday: 3:30-5:30 p.m., 9 p.m.-11 p.m.; Saturday: 3:30-6:30 p.m., 11 p.m.-1 a.m.; Sunday: 4-6:30 p.m., 11 p.m.-1 a.m.).
Last year: Tom Kite won the event for the second time in three seasons, birdieing three of the final four holes for a two-stroke victory over Scott Simpson.
Last week: Mike Reid won the Jeld-Wen Tradition for his second Champions Tour major title, beating John Cook with a 12-foot birdie putt on the first playoff hole at Crosswater in Sunriver, Ore.
Notes: Kite beat Keith Fergus in a playoff in 2006 after finishing second behind David Eger in 2005 in the inaugural event. ... In 2007, Denis Watson won in a tour-record, seven-man playoff. Watson eagled the second extra hole to beat Craig Stadler and R.W. Eaks. Eger, Gil Morgan, Joe Ozaki and Dana Quigley were eliminated on the first playoff hole. ... Jack Nicklaus designed the TPC Snoqualmie Ridge. ... The Wal-Mart First Tee Open is next week at Pebble Beach.
The Associated Press
