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Fifth Year on Tour the Charm for Wetterich
December 31, 2006

There is of course a lot of money and prestige for professional golfers that manage to make it to the PGA Tour. However, for many PGA players, their longstanding desire is to simply make a living playing the game they love.

That means for every overnight sensation there are another ten players who work at their games, qualify for the tour only to struggle. They then manage to lose their card and have to qualify yet again. Many of those players make a few efforts then never return to the big time. Still others seem to go through the qualifying aspect over and over again.

Brett Wetterich is one of those guys. The man deserves enormous credit for believing in himself, for his path has been one that would test anyone. Though he turned pro in 1994, he would not manage to make the big time Tour until the year 2000. His promotion was not matched by great play, instead he performed poorly. Getting the opportunity to play in only nine events, the Tour newbie made only one cut and lost his card.

Returning again to the harrowing event known as Q-School, Wetterich managed to earn his card in 2001 but could not make the top 125 money list to earn an exemption. He returned to Q-School again and earned his card for 2002, only to miss the top 125 money list yet again.

It got worse. The journeyman missed the Q-School cut for the big tour in 2003. However, he did play well enough to earn a spot on the Nationwide Tour. A tour win in 2003 and a decent performance earned him yet another year on the Nationwide in 2004.

Then some relatively strong play on the Nationwide Tour in 2004 brought Wetterich to the Tour Championship in the number 23 spot on the money list. But the longballer got his game together and finished runner-up in the Championship, earning enough to climb 13 spots and finish tenth on the Nationwide money list to earn his way back to the Tour for 2005.

Sounds like maybe he had finally arrived? Just the opposite. The unheralded Wetterich could not quite keep his PGA card. After finishing 132nd on the money list, he once again had to return to Q-School if he wanted a chance to play in 2006.

But return he did, finishing in a tie for 26th to earn his card once again. Then, in 2006, in his fifth year on Tour, the veteran golfer emerged as a force to be reckoned with, finishing tenth on the money list, earning more than $3,000,000 in the process. He won the 2006 EDS Byron Nelson Championship, and had three other top five finishes, two seconds, at the Memorial Tournament and the Chrysler Championship and a fourth, at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. So solid was his play, the he qualified for a coveted spot on the United States Ryder Cup team.

The win at the Nelson proved to be monumental for Wetterich. In fact, the 1.1 million dollar check for first nearly matched his career earnings for his first 12 years as a professional, even though he owned two victories on the Nationwide Tour, the 2003 Chitimacha Louisiana Open and the 2004 Envirocare Utah Classic.

As yet another sign of the growth in Wetterich, prior to his first top ten performance in 2006, a tie for sixth at the Shell Houston Open in his sixth start of season, Wetterich had managed just three top tens in 76 prior Tour starts. In fact, his record prior to the 2006 season was one marked by his dream and a run of futility. In fact, that 132nd finish had actually been his best in four prior years on Tour.

In 2006, his overall stats also reflected his fine play. His average driving distance of 308 yards ranked him fourth on Tour and his percentage of 300 plus dives topped 45%, good for fifth overall. When it came to scoring, his birdie average of 4.04 per round ranked him sixth and he was eighteenth in overall ranking for ball striking. Most importantly, his six top tens ranked him fifteenth overall, and his earnings put in him in the top ten.

For a man who started playing golf at age the age of two, it has been a long hard road. But Wetterich's faith in his game and his longstanding desire to make a go of it on the PGA Tour finally came to fruition in 2006.

It took 12 long years overall and four on the PGA Tour before this hardworking and dedicated professional made it. Wetterich's story is one that every future golfer will point to, especially those that find the road to making a living on the PGA Tour one filled with roadblocks.

3:59 AM 0 comments

Tiger Woods - Can 2007 Match 2006?
December 26, 2006

The pundits put it all in context with their comments after Tiger Woods took home yet another title the recent Target World Challenge.

"One last birdie putt he didn't need. One final victory that didn't count."

How fitting.

Tiger wrapped up what might have been his best season ever when his final round 66 helped him cruise to a four shot victory over another limited field, although many competitors were amongst the best the world has to offer. For Woods, it was his third victory in eight years at the Target event. Tiger promptly donated the $1.35 million prize to charity, his own Tiger Woods Learning Center.

After his father and trusted confidante, Earl Woods, passed away in May after a long and difficult battle with cancer, Woods had one of his lowest moments of his life and his golfing career. The loss of his dad was so traumatic that Woods missed the cut at the U.S. Open, his first ever missed cut in a major. But once he put the emotion behind him, Woods went on one the greatest runs in modern golf.

From that point on, Woods won the year's final two majors and at one point amassed wins at six consecutive PGA Tour events. Even more amazing, Woods never finished worse than second in a stroke play event for the rest of the 2006 season.

Moreover, the Target World Challenge represented his 11th overall title of the year. What may even be more amazing is that Woods skipped the final five events on Tour in 2006, including the Tour Championship, yet still won eight times in official events. That matched his win total for 1999 and represented one less than his own standard of nine titles in 2000.

It will be fun to see what the red hot Woods will do in 2007. Given his strong finish in 2005 on top of his sterling 2006, many see him once again as the unequivocal favorite at every PGA event. So hot is Woods that even Golf magazine is picking 2007 as the year that he manages the single season grand slam, winning all four majors in the same year.

However, his 2005 total of six wins means his last two seasons of 14 wins still trails that 1999-2000 stretch of 17 titles. Yet that is exactly why 2007 looms so tantalizingly before golf fans. So the question remains, will he continue his run and top even his 1999-2000 run, or will he slow his torrid pace as he did after that amazing stretch? After all, the last PGA Tour event Woods entered that he did not win goes all the way back to the Western Open in early July.

Perhaps to add some suspense, Woods still has not indicated his exact schedule for 2007. Will he start at the Mercedes-Benz Championship in Hawaii in early January? Or will he wait for one of those tournaments associated with his name, the Buick Invitational?

Whenever he does decide to tee it up, he will put his six tournament win streak on the line. But for amny, the real excitement will not come until April with the first of the majors, The Masters. Only then will we begin to see whether Woods can put that final indelible stamp on his resume, that of the golf grand slam. That honestly seems like the only question left about Woods, as he seems destined to earn all of the all time victory records before he hangs it up.

Yes, everyone will have their eyes on Woods in 2007, to see what this guy can do for an encore.

10:30 AM 0 comments