He actually had to go to Q-School to get on the Asian Tour because the tour allowed only twenty non-Asians to be full-time players each year. “Had to go through two stages,” Micheel said, laughing. “I was stunned when I found out, but I had already committed to it mentally so I just went.”
He got through Q-School and played decently until the tour took its annual monsoon-season break. He flew home during the break to play some golf and to get married. While he was home, he played a round of golf with his dad and some buddies and shot 58.
“It wasn’t like I was playing a PGA Tour golf course,” Micheel said. “But it was a 58. That’s a pretty good round of golf under any circumstances. It gave me some confidence when I went back.”
The first tournament back after the break was the Omega PGA Championship in Hong Kong, which was a major on the Asian Tour.
During the pro-am, his first round of golf as a new husband, Micheel started out wearing his wedding band. “It felt really uncomfortable though, so I took it off after a few holes.” He smiled. “Once I took it off, I couldn’t stop making birdies. That was the last time I played with it on.” He ended up shooting another 58. All of a sudden he was making putts, something he had struggled to do throughout his pro career. With another confidence boost, he went out and won the tournament—his first win other than on minitours as a pro. Most important, he won $80,000. That windfall allowed him to finally pay off his sponsors and feel as if he could go forward as a pro without any help. By the end of the year he had finished third in the Asian Order of Merit and, for the first time in his career, had made some serious money, about $125,000 in all.
In 1999, Micheel made it back to the Nike Tour and continued to play solid golf. He won for the first time on that tour in Greensboro and made $173,411 to finish ninth on the money list. That provided him with an instant spot back on the PGA Tour because the top-15 money winners on the tour advanced past Q-School and past go to collect not $200 but their exemption.
“I remember Commissioner [Tim] Finchem giving us all our [tour] cards on the 18th green after the [Nike] Tour Championship,” Micheel said. “It obviously wasn’t the first time I’d made it to the tour, but this felt special because I’d worked all year as opposed to one week to earn it. I think playing well on the Nike also made me feel like I was finally a good enough player to go out and have a chance to succeed against the big boys.”
The first half of the year didn’t go a lot better than his two previous years on tour had gone. He missed seven of nine cuts to start the year, his best finish a tie for 40th in Tucson. But things began to pick up slowly. He made five cuts in a row—by far his best streak ever on tour—even though he didn’t finish higher than 37th.
The breakthrough came in the searing late July heat at the John Deere Classic. On Sunday, Micheel played perhaps his best round of golf since his final round at the ’93 Q-School, shooting a 65 to rocket up to a tie for fifth place. Given that he had never before finished in the top 25 in a tour event, it was a massive confidence boost.
“I had been in position going into Sundays before, where a good round might not win the tournament for me but would get me a big check, and I’d never been able to do it,” he said. “Finally doing it helped a lot. After a while, you do begin to question yourself. Am I just not good enough to play with these guys? That week told me the answer was at least maybe.”
He went to Canada in late August and came back with a tie for 13th in Vancouver and a tie for 10th at the Canadian Open. That put him in position to retain his card if he could finish strong. He did—most notably with another tie for fifth, this one in Las Vegas. That check vaulted him comfortably inside the top 125 on the money list. He finished the year with $467,431 in earnings, good enough for 104th.
“At that point, my attitude was, ‘Okay, I know I can do it. No more going back to Q-School,’ ” he said.
It didn’t quite turn out that way. Micheel didn’t play poorly in 2001, but there was a distraction that was beyond his control. His mom had dealt with bipolar disease most of her life, and her meds simply weren’t working as well that year as they had in the past. Buck Micheel was winding down his career with FedEx but was still away for long stretches. Often the calls from Donna Micheel were made to Shaun, who would try to track his dad down through a special system FedEx had for emergencies.
“I’m not going to use that as an excuse,” Micheel said. “Everyone has family issues. But it was difficult at times. The next year my mom started doing a lot better, and my dad had retired and was home, and, coincidence or not, I played a good deal better.”
Micheel dropped to 136th on the money list at the end of ’01, meaning he would have partially exempt status the next year. He decided to suck it up and go back to Q-School to improve his position, and did so, finishing in a tie for 13th place. That meant he would get to play most weeks without hanging around hoping for withdrawals, which is the lot of most players in the 126 to 150 category. “It definitely turned out to be a good move going back,” Micheel said. “I didn’t enjoy it, but by then I was used to it. Plus, being in the top 150 meant I went straight to the finals and knew, even if I didn’t make it, I had some status on tour the next year. I think that relaxed me a lot.”
In 2002, Micheel had his first real chance to win a tournament—the B.C. Open. He led after 54 holes and was within a couple of shots of Jeff Sluman’s all-time scoring record for the event. But, as often happens to first-time contenders, he slipped on Sunday, bogeying the last two holes to finish tied for third. It was his highest finish on tour but disappointing nonetheless.
“There’s a difference between having a chance to win a tournament and being in position where you should win a tournment,” Micheel said. “I’d had chances before, times when if I had a good round on Sunday I could have come from behind to win. But this was different. I was in the last group, and I had a three-shot lead. I should have won.”
Still, the finish at B.C., along with a tie for fifth in Texas, wrapped up his card for 2003, allowing him to finish 105th on the money list. His goal going into 2003 was simple: keep your card two years in a row, and crack the top 100 on the money list.
Winning a tournament, which he believed he was capable of doing, would be a bonus.
14
Moving On Up… to a Major
AT THE START OF 2003, Shaun Micheel did something he had never done before to begin a year on the PGA Tour: he played good golf. In his five previous years on tour, he had never had a top-10 finish before July. By early March, he had two: a tie for 10th in Los Angeles and a tie for eighth at Doral. The money for those two weeks got him off to the fastest start of his career by far, but they also made him feel good about his game, because both events are played on high-quality golf courses.
“Riviera [Los Angeles] is obviously one of the better courses we play,” Micheel said. “There have been U.S. Opens and a PGA there. Doral may not have quite the reputation it did twenty years ago, but it is still a place where you have to hit good shots in order to compete.”
The timing for an early hot streak could not have been better. Stephanie was pregnant and due in November, which meant she would have to give up practicing law at least for a while. Job security for Shaun was clearly a good thing, and the fast start meant not having to spend the summer and fall worrying about another trip to Q-School.
“I had become a better player and maybe more important a better putter,” Micheel said. “My first few years on tour, there were times I hit the ball well enough to really compete, even to win, but I never did. Every player will tell you the same thing: when you putt well, everything else in your game seems to go better, because you feel less pressure to get the ball close on every hole. Once I started to make putts with some consistency, I felt a lot more relaxed on the golf course.”
He began the year by making eleven of twelve cuts, a far cry from his first two years on tour when he had made nine cuts total—in forty starts. When he finished 13th in Washingto
n and 10th in Hartford, Micheel did two things: wrapped up his card for 2004 and earned a spot in the PGA Championship. That was a big deal.
“One thing people don’t understand is that it’s hard to get into major championships even if you’re playing on the tour,” he said. “The Masters takes about ninety players, so essentially you have to have won a tournament or be in the top 50 in the world to have a chance to get in. The U.S. Open and the British Open only have a handful of players who are exempt, and everyone else has to play a 36-hole qualifier, which is a crapshoot. That’s why every year, you see club pros and amateurs making it into those events while established tour players don’t. I’m not saying that’s wrong; that’s what makes them open championships. It just means that being on the tour, unless you are one of the top guys, doesn’t guarantee you anything.”
The PGA Championship is the most accessible of the four majors to those who play the U.S. Tour. Micheel just about clinched his spot with his performance in Hartford, because it put him in the top 70 on the money list for the twelve months that ran from the end of the Buick Open in 2002 to the end of the Buick Open in 2003. He was 68th on that list and sweating just a little bit when he finished tied for 24th at the Buick. That allowed him to hang on to his spot. Just making the field meant a lot to him. He had never before played in the PGA, just two U.S. Opens.
After Buick, he played at the International outside Denver. He finished tied for 60th and flew directly into Rochester to begin preparing for the PGA. Stephanie, who was by then six months pregnant, was going to work on Monday and Tuesday and planned to fly in on Wednesday to be there when the championship began.
Micheel liked the golf course right from the start. He knew it was going to be a week that put a premium on driving the ball in the fairway, because the rough was cut high, and a missed fairway was likely to mean a lost shot. That was fine with him. He was driving the ball well and felt good about the way he was putting.
What’s more, it was hot. In fact, on Wednesday, there was a power outage that left a lot of the city without electricity. Micheel was concerned about Stephanie having to sleep in an un-air-conditioned room, but the hotel never lost power. On the golf course, the heat didn’t really bother him. “When you’re from Memphis,” he said, “you get used to playing in the heat.”
Micheel was paired on Thursday morning with Kevin Sutherland and Jeffrey Lankford, one of the club pros, a comfortable pairing for him. The weather was still sticky and humid, with temperatures approaching ninety degrees. He was very happy to piece together a solid round of one-under-par 69. That put Micheel in a tie for sixth place. Rod Pampling and Phil Mickelson had opened with 66s, and Billy Andrade, who had gotten into the field at the last possible moment as the fifth alternate, had shot 67. Two major champions, Mike Weir and two-time U.S. Open champion Lee Janzen, were one shot further back.
Micheel was one of seven players at 69. The group also included Vijay Singh and Chad Campbell, who, in a poll of PGA Tour players done by Sports Illustrated a few weeks earlier, had been chosen as the next player expected to win his first major title. Campbell was twenty-nine and, like Micheel, had never won on tour and had never contended in a major, his best finish being a tie for 15th at the British Open a month earlier.
But Campbell had been a hot player all year, having finished second twice, with four other top-10 finishes, including a sixth at the Players Championship. A Texan who was very comfortable playing in heat, humidity, and wind, Campbell was clearly considered an up-and-comer by other players on the tour. Micheel wasn’t mentioned in the poll.
Micheel’s 69 was satisfying because it was a long, tough day on a difficult golf course. “The one thing you learn out here is that the only thing you can do on Thursday for sure is knock yourself out of a golf tournament with a bad round. A good round assures you of nothing, not even making the cut. Still, I felt as if I was playing well, and, if nothing else, I was in good position to make the cut.
“That was my goal coming into the week: make the cut. After all, I’d only made one in a major, and then see what happened on the weekend. I was at the point where I really wanted to win a golf tournament—any golf tournament—but the thought of winning a major had never crossed my mind. After all, I’d only played in two of them at that point.”
By the time he teed it up on Friday afternoon, it was apparent that the cut number was going to be high. There was just enough of a hot breeze blowing through the golf course that the greens had gotten dry and hard, and absolutely no one was going low.
The two Thursday leaders, Mickelson and Pampling, were both struggling. Pampling would shoot a 74 to finish at even par, Mickelson one shot higher than that. Weir managed a one-over-par 71, while Janzen shot 74. Andrade shot a solid 72, which meant he and Weir were the only players in the field under par as the afternoon wave moved around the golf course. Tiger Woods, who had opened with a 74, made no move at all, shooting a 72 that left him two shots inside the cut line (eight-over-par 148) and nine shots behind the leader.
That leader was Micheel. With his putter working well all day and with the help of a number of excellent up and downs after missing greens, he worked his way around the golf course in one shot less than he had needed on Thursday. The two-under-par 68 put him at three under for 36 holes and gave him a two-shot lead on Andrade and Weir. Pampling was at even-par 140, and a host of players, including Mickelson, Ernie Els, and Chad Campbell, were a shot further back.
Being in the lead meant that Micheel was invited into the interview room. The only other time he had been in an interview room had been at the 2002 B.C. Open. This was a little different.
“I remember it was huge; that was my first impression,” he said. “There were a lot of guys there. They sort of wanted to know my life story in twenty minutes.” He smiled. “I’m generally shy. But once I get going on something, I can’t tell you what I had for dinner in under twenty minutes.”
Being in the interview room made Micheel keenly aware of where he was and what was at stake. Still, he wasn’t about to get carried away after 36 holes. If nothing else, the way he spent the evening brought him back to earth if he needed to be brought back to earth.
“Steph needed a prescription filled,” he said, laughing. “We ordered room service for dinner, and then I went out to find a drugstore to get the prescription. There wasn’t a lot open. It took a while. I remember thinking, ‘Well, Mr. Glamour, here you are leading the PGA, and look at you.’ I was tired by the time I went to bed. Fortunately, I could sleep in since my tee time was so late.”
Micheel’s tee time was 2:50 in the afternoon, so he had plenty of time. He spent that morning watching golf on TV before leaving for the course. As soon as he and Stephanie got out of the car, he noticed a half-dozen camera crews in the parking lot waiting to record his “walk” into the clubhouse.
“I felt kind of silly, to be honest,” he said. “I told Steph that I figured this was the opposite of a perp walk.”
His nerves were churning as he warmed up, but once he got on the golf course he was just fine. Andrade was a good pairing for him. Although he was a very good player who had won four times on tour, Andrade wasn’t a superstar like Woods or Mickelson or Els.
“I think if I’d played with one of those guys, I’d have been really nervous,” Micheel said. “I knew Billy was a good player and his rep was as a good guy to play with. That helped relax me.”
Andrade is, in fact, one of the friendlier, more outgoing players on the tour, and his small talk and one-liners were the perfect salve for Micheel. “Billy was great the whole day,” he said. “Even when he struggled that day [shooting 72], he never lost his sense of humor, never got tense—or at least didn’t seem to me to be tense. I think his attitude helped me a lot because I had certainly never been in that position before.”
In fact, Andrade knew very little about Micheel and didn’t consider him a serious contender to win the tournament. “I knew of him a lot more than I knew him,” Andrade said.
“I knew he’d been on tour for a while, and I had heard he was a solid player. But I also knew he had never been anywhere close to contention in a major before, and history says that guys who lead majors after 36 holes who have never contended before tend to fade.
“Honestly, I thought of myself, not Shaun, as the leader, and guys like Els, Weir, Mickelson, and Woods—the name guys—were the ones I had to try to stay ahead of to win.”
Micheel had been in one weekend final group—on Sunday at the B.C. Open a year earlier. But this was a lot different: much bigger crowds, a sense that he was playing for history, and the knowledge that every swing he took was being seen on national TV.
Fortunately, he got off to a good start, bouncing back from an opening bogey to get on a roll and make birdies at seven, eight, and nine, finishing at five under for the championship. Another birdie at 12, a long par save from 20 feet at 13—after his third shot flew the green and he appeared to be dead—and one more birdie at 15, and he was at seven under par and had a four-shot lead on the field.
Everyone kept waiting for someone else to make a move, but no one did—except for Chad Campbell who was piecing together the best round of the tournament three groups ahead of Micheel and Andrade. By the time they reached the 16th hole, Campbell was in the clubhouse, having shot a five-under-par 65 that put him four under par for 54 holes. Campbell had birdied the 15th and then made a long birdie putt at the difficult 18th. Still, Micheel had a three-shot lead, and Mike Weir, at one under, was the only other player in the field who was under par. By now, Micheel was fully aware that he was not only leading the PGA but that there really weren’t very many players close to him.
Whether it was a glance at the scoreboard that showed only two players within seven shots of his lead or just being tired, Micheel stumbled for the first time all week on the finishing holes, making three straight bogeys. The last one dropped him back to four under par and into a tie for the lead with Campbell. Even so, he had shot a solid one-under-par 69, a pretty good day of golf given that he had never been in contention in a major or even an important tour event.
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