Champions Tour Insider: Price survives lows to win

text size

Serota/Getty Images

Nick Price's first Champions Tour win was one of the hardest wins of his career.

There is clarity to storytelling among golfers that rarely exists among other professional athletes.

MORE INSIDERS

The TOUR Insider
Nationwide Tour Insider
European Tour Insider
The Fantasy Insider

At their best, golfers remember and can recite the year, the tournament, the hole, the club, the distance and the result of shots good, bad or ugly.

Thirty years after his first professional victory in South Africa, Nick Price won again Sunday. His victory at the Outback Steakhouse Pro-Am in Tampa was his long-awaited and much-anticipated first on the Champions Tour.

Price hasn't forgotten the first. He remembers details right down to the fact that he got very little sleep that week in South Africa. And he likely won't forgot the latest. Price didn't have a problem sleeping last week in Tampa. It was his game that suffered from fits and starts.

Price is in his third full year on the Champions Tour. He's one of those golfers who had all the credentials and ability to dominate when he arrived to play with the over-50 set. It didn't happen. There were plenty of near-misses, two runner-up finishes last year and two more third-place finishes. The chances were there; the results were not.

Here is a man who has won dozens of titles around the world, including three majors and THE PLAYERS among his 18 victories on the PGA TOUR. After all that, isn't the game supposed to get easier?

It's golf, and nothing never gets easier. If you're wondering which of Price's victories were the most difficult -- those two PGA Championships, the 1994 British Open at Turnberry or THE PLAYERS -- you are wondering incorrectly.

In his mind, there is no question which of his titles had the greatest degree of difficulty: The first 30 years ago in South Africa and Sunday's gut-churning triumph in Tampa.

"Without a doubt," Price said. "Things are supposed to get easier when you get older. They're getting harder."

Thirty years ago while winning the Asseng Invitational, Price remembers vividly what was missing. Sleep.

"I didn't sleep at all," said Price, who was 22 at the time. "It was on the regular South African Tour. You probably wouldn't know it. That was my first win. That was pretty hard. I played well. I didn't make the mistakes. I just couldn't sleep."

He slept well enough in Tampa, which doesn't help explain the ups-and-downs of his final round. Price survived three double-bogeys to win. Think about how unlikely that is, to make three double-bogeys and still win.

What it says is that there had to be plenty of good to go with the bad and ugly.

"I think the golfing gods are testing me," Price said afterwards. "I really do. I think with a day like today, I kept sort of looking back and saying, 'This game is testing you; just keep going.'

"It's tested me for 52 years now, and my nerves aren't any good."

The victory came on Price's 39th start on the Champions Tour. That it has taken so long for a player of Price's stature to win certainly has been an ongoing plot.

Price has always been one of golf's most popular players -- among his peers, the galleries, the media and anybody else who is paying close attention. He had plenty of people rooting for him to win on the Champions Tour.

"Nick's a great player, a Hall of Fame player," said Larry Nelson, runner-up in Tampa. "He's played well enough out here a few times and hasn't quite finished and hasn't won.

"As disappointed as I am for me, I'm happy for him. I think it's great for our tour and for him. It was tough out there. This is not a golf course that you can play safe or scared on. There are just no bail-outs sometimes. So he did a great job. I was really happy for him."

Price acknowledged he was "absolutely dumbfounded" at the loss of focus on a couple of occasions that resulted in the double-bogeys.

"I never play like that," he said. "I mean, I never ever play like that. I might make five or six bogeys, but I never make three double bogeys. I don't know when was the last time I made three double bogeys in a round. I don't know."

What he does know, and has learned from all those years as a professional golfer, is the nature of the self-talk that goes with adversity.

"I was just trying to say to myself that even though with all the problems I had, I still had a chance to win," Price said. "Any time you get a chance to win, you've got to stop yourself and refocus and try and say, 'Well, just keep plugging away.'

"That's what I did. But I don't know what happened those three holes, to be honest. It's the weirdest thing. Short-circuit between the mind and body, I guess. I guess that happens when you get older, but it's never happened to me before.

It was tough. I mean, it was really tough."

Price was ready for a few days of R&R to contemplate and regroup -- and, yes, celebrate - before teeing it up in this week's Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf with partner Mark O'Meara.

Champions Tour Insider Notes:

• Tom Lehman will make his Champions Tour debut this week and he'll have the best player on the Champions Tour offering some insights. Bernhard Langer will team with Lehman, who has had some excellent performances on the PGA TOUR this year.

• Lehman was positioned to win the Transitions Championship with rounds of 68-69-68 before falling to T8 with a final-round 75. Lehman has made the cut in each of his last four appearances on the PGA TOUR.

• Tom Watson and Andy North are in their element this week at the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf, where they will be looking for a fifth straight team title. North also won a team title in 2000 and 2001 with Jim Colbert.

• Mike McCullough's T7 at the Outback Steakhouse Pro-Am was the best finish by the 64-year-old since a T4 at the 2004 Allianz Championship.