Like that old guy used to say on the commercials for an investment company (Smith-Barney?), Jason Dufner won this year's PGA championship the old-fashioned way. He earned it.
Unlike certain other well known golfers that seem to immediately jump from puberty to having PGA cards in their back pockets, Dufner had to fight and claw for years just to have the chance to compete at the highest level.
Indeed, Dufner spent several years in the "minors", otherwise known as the Nationwide Tour. From 2001 to 2006, with the exception of 2004, when he was finally brought up to the big leagues -- only to be sent back down again for lack of production -- Dufner struggled mightily just to eke out a living in the pro golf world. Needless to say, the competition is brutal, and the on-going influx of young foreign born hot-shot players that probably couldn't spell Q-school if you spotted them all the consonants and a vowel, let alone ever having to go through it, certainly didn't work in his favor.
Yet he persevered. (Is this corny enough for you yet? Hang on, it gets worse.) Finally, in 2009, Dufner played well enough in yet another go-round at Q-school to re-earn his PGA card, and he's been on tour ever since.
In 2011, Dufner made some big news. Like Carl Spackler, Bill Murrey's character in the classic movie Caddyshack, he came out of nowhere. At the PGA championship in Atlanta, Dufner held a 5 stroke lead with only 4 holes left to play. Yessirree, he'd make those rich country club ladies bark like a dog. Sorry. Got carried away there for a second in the movie mind-set.
Alas, he would eventually choke it away, only to lose to Keegan Bradley in a playoff. He had his first PGA tour win, and a major at that, all but in the bag, only to watch it sink faster than Judge Smail's boat when Rodney's anchor dropped through it. (So this is your wife, huh?. A lovely lady. She must have been something before electricity. Wanna make 14 dollars the hard way, baby?)
OK, OK, I can't help it sometimes. I loved that movie.
Nevertheless, Dufner certainly didn't choke it away this year. A stroke behind going into the final round, he stared down and outplayed Jim Furyk, no lightweight himself, to win the 2013 PGA championship. With a major title now on his resume, I don't think Jason Dufner has to worry about losing his PGA card again any time soon. And that $1,445,000 paycheck ought to tide him over for a week or two. That's a very impressive sum for 4 days work. Not sure, but that might even be more than A-Rod made during the same amount of time. That's when you know you're REALLY in the big leagues. Well, the tournament WAS in New York, right?
All of which leaves me with two questions ---
Is Smith-Barney even still around or did they old-fashion themselves into extinction? And much more importantly ---
I'm wearing that same black and white pork-pie hat in the movie as I write this. So where's my free bowl of soup?
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