Golf's lost battalion is back at Moreno Valley Ranch this weekend.
They share only two things on the Nike Tour. They all can play. And they're all here because something went wrong.Nike is nobody's destination. You play Nike because you missed the PGA Tour's all-exempt list of Top 125 money winners. Or you didn't make the Top 40 at the Qualifying School. Or you didn't make the Top 10 on last year's Nike money list.
Misery loves company. The cast at the Inland Empire Open has 16 former PGA winners (including L.A. champs Pat Fitzsimons and Ted Schulz); '92 Tour Rookie of the Year Mark Carnevale; ex-Club Pro champion Jeff Roth; and 16-year-old Michael Beard, who qualified Monday and whose father, Frank, led the PGA money list in 1969.
But generally the Nike player is either Jeff Gallagher or Bob Gilder or Tom Kroll.
"You've got to really play out here," Gallagher said. "Shooting 69 does you no good."
He should know. This is the seventh year in the past eight that Gallagher has played Nike. He was on the big tour last year, but played hurt and finished 157th, then missed the cut at Q-school.
However, Gallagher was among the top 70, which gave him an exemption on this tour. The last round was rained out, infuriating those who were one stroke away from their PGA Tour cards, but reprieving Gallagher.
"If it hadn't rained, I would have been in a playoff for the top 70," he said. "If I'd lost, I would have been a conditional Nike player. I've done that before and it's awful. You can't plan your schedule. This way, I can play where I want."
The brother of Ryder Cup player Jim Gallagher, Jeff knows there are other, less comfortable tours.
"The differences are things like day care for the kids," he said. "The PGA Tour events have it. The Nike events don't always.
"It can cost you anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 to do the tour. The events are well-organized and the courses are much better than they were. It's tougher to make cuts here than on the PGA Tour. We've got 55 spots; they've got 70. And if you make $100,000 here, you're probably playing better than if you made $500,000 there."
Gallagher had braved the morning bluster to shoot 1-under for the day, 4-under for the tournament. In the afternoon, he looked out the window and saw no trees moving. Everybody else would score. Gallagher shrugged. If golf were fair . . .
Bob Gilder won his first PGA Tour event in '76, the year of Tiger Woods' birth. He has banked nearly $2.8 million of official money. But when the putter started hiccuping, Gilder found himself on Nike, at 46. He does not pretend to embrace it.
"You have to get yourself up for this," he said. "It's tough dealing with the fact you're taking a step down.
"And that's not taking anything away from these guys. They can play. But it's hard when I think about how I'm hitting the ball - the best I've ever hit it. It's tough to accept it. Up there, that's the big show."
Gilder reckons he could play 15 PGA Tour events if he wanted to. But then he couldn't hope to make Top 15 here (which gets you onto the PGA Tour this year, as does three victories in a year). "That's the dilemma I'm in," he said.
There's also the Senior Tour in four years. Until then, Gilder practices, plays, goes to his room and tries to forget.
"I got a letter saying that Greensboro is increasing their purse by $200,000," he said with a grin. "That's our total purse this week - 200,000."
And there's Tom Kroll, who is 6-under at the halfway point. He is new to this. His wife, Jennifer, calls it "our big adventure." Kroll gave up a research job at Taylor Made to tour the underbrush as a 30-year-old rookie. That's pretty adventuresome.
"I haven't played many four-round tournaments," Kroll said. "I don't know how I'll react to the travel. The tour is made up of 250 gypsies. Whoever is the best gypsy can win."
Life pushed Kroll into the highway. He wanted to get to the Masters by winning the U.S. Amateur. But then his anniversary kept falling on Amateur weekend. Forget that.
Then he appeared in a commercial for Taylor Made. He was not paid. Too bad, said the U.S. Golf Association. You're a professional now.
"Taylor Made had put a quarter to a half million into that ad," he said. "They could have shot it over, but my wife was getting tired of those trophies and plaques I was bringing home. It was time to see what I could do for money."
Kroll didn't try it at the normal age. He got a job cutting shafts on the Taylor Made floor, from 4 p.m. to 1 a.m.
"Working at Taylor Made, you get to know the game," he said. "I saw Mark O'Meara testing equipment, hitting 100 5-irons to within 10 feet of the pin. I probably hadn't hit 100 shots like that in my life. Everybody who breaks par thinks they can play the tour. I was a little more realistic."
Kroll got over that. He showed up at the first stage of the Q-School last year, sick as a dog, tossing, turning, finally getting awakened by the phone. Jennifer told him don't worry, everything's OK here in San Marcos, but the firemen said we should evacuate . . .
"I shot 76," he said. He recovered, got to the finals, tied for 70th, got through a playoff. He's giving himself three years to find success. Nothing against the nice folks at Moreno Valley, he said, but success is out there elsewhere.