Yet how each got to this place in his
career is as interesting and complicated as what kind of chemistry the duo
might have as Ryder Cup teammates. Dufner is a self-fashioned, 35-year-old late
bloomer. He's a journeyman who walked on to the golf team at Auburn
and was little-known even inside the very insular world of pro Titleist 712 AP1 Irons until his
surprise showing at last year's PGA Championship in Atlanta. The Cleveland native went back and forth between
the Nationwide Tour and PGA Tour before he finally settled down on the big
stage in 2009 when he had six top-10s and earned more than $2.1 million.
In Thursday's first round at Colonial,
Dufner will play with Matt Kuchar in addition to Fowler. Kuchar was an early
bloomer who won a U.S. Amateur as a college student and then struggled on tour
before rebuilding his golf swing a few years ago. Since then, he's become one
of the most consistent players in the world. The 33-year-old former Georgia
Tech star is a good example of an early bloomer who had a late bloomer phase in
his early 30s.
Playing together this week for the first
two rounds at Colonial, they might learn how well their games would mesh if
U.S. team captain Davis Love III sent them out as partners. The coupling of
their differences in style and comportment could bring a special congruence to
their potential partnership in Greater Chicago.
The weathered players take a less glamorous
and linear route, humbled somewhere along the way by some circumstance that put
them behind schedule. Ben Hogan didn't win the first of his nine major
championships until he was 34. Vijay Singh took 22 of his 34 PGA Tour wins
after he turned 40. Late bloomers like three-time major winner Larry Nelson and
12-time tour winner Calvin Peete didn't play golf until their 20s, but they
were two of the best American players of the 1980s. Nelson went 9-3-1 in three
Ryder Cup appearances, including 5-0 in the 1979 matches. In the 1990s, no one
better personified the late-bloomer tag than Tom Lehman, who won a British Open
and had the 54-hole lead in three straight U.S. Opens.
According to recent educational studies of
struggling school-age students in reading, late bloomers are rare. The slow
learners Titleist 712 AP2 Irons typically never catch up with the early bloomers, and the ones who do
close the gap with their more advanced peers need early intervention. These
talent-deficit kids must become very hard workers.
Stars who rose to prominence early in their
careers -- such as Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Seve Ballesteros, Phil
Mickelson and Tiger Woods -- have dominated the sport for years. Sure, plenty
of these prodigies have fizzled out by the end of their 20s, but the best of
them get out ahead of the heap and stay on top for a long time. They have
superior talent. Rory McIlroy and Fowler want to play that role for their
generation.
Dufner now expects to win and compete in
major championships. He's in the same boat as Fowler, but as a grizzled
veteran, Dufner doesn't have the same pressure to succeed as the California kid with the
bright-colored clothes. Fowler has the pressure to be one of the great young
American players, and he is expected to help fend off the international
challenge to displace the United
States as the center of the pro golf world.
That's a hefty responsibility. Perhaps Dufner is in a better place, right in
the middle of the action, but not burdened with the same kind of expectations.
Hamilton was a 38-year-old stalwart on discount golf clubs the Japan Tour when he finally earned
his 2004 PGA Tour card after eight trips to Q-school. In his rookie year, he
won twice, including the British Open at Royal Troon, where he beat a phenom,
Ernie Els, in a four-hole playoff. Since that major victory, Hamilton has had just three top-10s and is no
longer fully exempt to play the PGA Tour.
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