Mike Reid will forever be haunted by his loss in the 1989 PGA Championship when he blew a two-stroke lead over the final three holes and lost to Payne Stewart.
However, the soft-spoken former BYU golfer and longtime Provo resident, has sort of made up for that disappointing defeat in a major by winning two majors on the Champions Tour.
Sunday, 20 years nearly to the day after he lost the PGA, Reid won the JELD-WEN Tradition in Oregon in a playoff over John Cook, similar to his win in the Senior PGA in 2005 when he won in a playoff over Jerry Pate.
Reid, who once said he gets emotional over supermarket openings, could hardly talk in his post-round interview on TV, paying tribute to fellow senior Ken Green, who recently suffered a serious accident, and giving credit to his 22-year-old son Daniel, who caddied for him.
"I could never have figured this," Reid said.
How could he when you check out his record?
Since joining the Champions Tour five years ago, Reid hasn't exactly torn it up. After finishing 21st on the money list as a rookie in 2005, he's steadily gone downhill, finishing 39th, 47th and 52nd. Going into Sunday's tournament, he ranked just 64th on the money list in 2009 with zero Top-10 finishes.
But he came through in one of his tour's biggest events, just like in 2005.
It's always nice when one of sport's truly good guys is successful.
GET A CLUE, LOU: Lou Holtz was a pretty good college coach, compiling a 249-132-7 mark with six different colleges. He's also good motivational speaker, which I discovered when he spoke at a luncheon before the Poinsettia Bowl in 2007.
However, as an analyst Holtz isn't the greatest.
After the A.P rankings came out Saturday, Holtz was asked on ESPN what was the biggest surprise in the Top 25. The team he singled out? Utah at No. 19.
He could have mentioned Mississippi being ranked No. 8 or Georgia Tech No. 15 or perhaps Iowa at No. 22. Or even Alabama being ranked No. 5 after losing to a non-BCS school in the Sugar Bowl last year.
But those are BCS schools, so Holtz had to beat up on the poor Utes, who still can't seem to get much respect in the national media.
Actually Holtz may not be wrong — the Utes could have a hard time sticking in the Top 25 this year with an unproven quarterback and three tough games on the road against teams in the preseason Top 25.
However, he lost all credibility in the next minute when asked which team would play Florida for the national championship.
His answer? Notre Dame.
Yep, the same Notre Dame that barely made a bowl game last year with a 6-6 regular-season record last year after going 3-9 the year before. The same school that Holtz happened to coach for 11 years. Sure the Irish have a pretty easy schedule, but there's no way they'll go unbeaten or even 11-1, which they'll need to do to get into the national title game.
Lou needs to get a clue, especially when it comes to Notre Dame. I've rarely seen him pick against the Irish, even when they're bad. As an analyst he shouldn't let his bias be so obvious.
GET A CLUE, JERRY: How about building a $1.15 billion stadium and not leaving enough room for punters to punt? That's apparently what has happened at the new Cowboys Stadium, where BYU plays Oklahoma in two weeks.
In last week's opening game, Tennessee punters hit the hanging video screens several times in warmups and once during the game.
Uh, isn't that something you might want to check out before you play a game? And how about Dallas owner Jerry Jones' claim that the board wasn't a problem unless a punter was attempting to hit it?
I guess he has to say that, so he won't have to spend the couple of more million it's going to take to fix the problem.
MWC'S CHANCE: The Mountain West Conference needs to get some better bowl affiliations, especially for its No. 1 team.
With the Alamo Bowl trying to steal the Pac-10's No. 2 team away from the Holiday Bowl, there are going to be some shakeups among bowl affiliations after this season.
Of course, the MWC should jump at the Holiday Bowl if it can, but there are other bowls such as the Insight Bowl (Phoenix) that would also be attractive.
All I know is, the league needs to get something better than the Las Vegas Bowl for its champion unless the bowl can find a better opponent than the fifth-place team from the Pac-10 and increase its paltry payout.
e-mail: sor@desnews.com