New-found aggression serving Thompson well on NWT  PGATOUR.com Contributor For a guy who won only one individual title in a glittering collegiate career at Georgia Tech, one would have expected Nicholas Thompson to be a nervous -- rather than Ramblin' -- wreck coming down the stretch in the HSBC New Zealand PGA Championship a fortnight ago. Instead Thompson, seriously challenging for the first time in his third season as a professional, was cool, calm and collected. He seized the moment with clutch birdies on the 71st and 72nd holes to enter a playoff against David Morland IV. Then he scored pro victory numero uno, putting his mitts on the tournament hardware and its first-place check of $113,684.21 with a tap-in par on the first playoff hole.  Nicholas Thompson had a distinguished collegiate career at Georgia Tech. (Grayson/WireImage)
To listen to Thompson, 24, it was a no-sweat win. The reason? Beginning on the eighth hole of the final round, he hit one quality shot after another. His closing birdie putts of 6 and 4 feet were set up by laser-like wedge and 8-iron shots. "I shot 32 on the back nine, but it could have easily been a 28,'' said Thompson, whose closing 68 was his best round of 2007. "I don't want to sound like an idiot, but the truth is I really did not miss a shot coming in.'' Thompson was the aggressor, something that marked a 180-degree change in the way he approached his craft while in college. Turns out Thompson had other priorities while competing at Georgia Tech. College golf is about team, with four of five scores contributing to the team's daily total. Since Thompson, a four-time All-America normally was slotted as the Yellow Jackets' first or second player, it was important that his round counted. "I played for my team and I was very conservative,'' he said. "I didn't try to hit any heroic shots.'' That fairways-and-middle-of-the-greens approach served Thompson, and more importantly Georgia Tech, well. His career stroke average over 143 rounds was 72.05, the fifth-best in Tech's rich golf history. He also had 15 career top-10 finishes and 26 top-20s. "I only won one tournament (ironically, it was the Western Refining Collegiate All-America Classic, an individual event in the fall of his senior season where Thompson did not have to concentrate on team results),'' he said. "But my team won a lot of tournaments. That's the way I chose to play at Georgia Tech.'' Thompson immediately displayed he also could play for himself upon graduation. He captured the William C. Campbell Trophy, which is presented to the player with the lowest aggregate score -- Thompson was 14-under par -- from the Northeast Amateur, Players Amateur and Porter Cup, three of the summer's most prestigious amateur events. Thompson also played on the victorious U.S. Walker Cup team in the fall, before taking the PGA TOUR National Qualifying Tournament by storm. He was medalist in the first stage and tied for third in the finals, advancing to golf's highest level in his first try. That certainly was praiseworthy but something important was missing in early 2006 when Thompson made his first start on TOUR: his swing. The fact that Thompson was playing with a new set of irons only compounded the problem. "Those old clubs were shot,'' he said. "I practice with the 4-, 6- and 9-irons and the grooves were gone." So it took Thompson a while to find his swing and adapt to new irons, all this while trying to process all the information that a rookie can accumulate early on playing against the world's best golfers. The combination was deadly, but his misfortune was far from over. The last straw came at The Honda Classic, Thompson's hometown event. He came down with a virus. Yet he was determined to compete, despite not being able to keep anything down for five days. "I was sick as a dog,'' said Thompson, who had to be given four liters of IV fluids immediately after he walked off the 18th green in the third round. "It was a miracle I played as well as I did.''
Understandably drained, Thompson closed with a fat 79 and tied for 55th. Nevertheless his check for $12,320 was the best in his first 19 starts in which he failed to play on the weekend 15 times. Despite the results, Thompson could feel his swing returning in May. It took some time, but things began coming together in July when Thompson closed with a 64 to tie for sixth in the B.C. Open, his only top-10 in a season where he would finish 180th on money list with $264,717. But he made 10 of his next 12 cuts. Here's the thing, Thompson is nothing if not analytical. He was taking it all in, learning from the experiences. He arrived at the second stage of q-school last year exhausted after chasing the money all the way to the finish line. "I just made too many big numbers on a course that was very penal,'' he said of his q-school failure. But when Thompson looks back on the 2006 season as a whole he sees it as a boom, not a bust. "I could not have learned more playing anywhere else,'' he said. "I had the tournament lead four or five times early in events. I learned how to play PGA TOUR golf. And besides, you learn more from defeats than you do from victories.'' Those lessons -- along with a few he uncovered while playing in three Nationwide Tour events -- served him well in New Zealand. He knew, for instance, he had plenty of game to compete on the Nationwide Tour after finishing tied for sixth at LaSalle Bank Championship. It helped his attitude coming into the season. "I told myself I had a solid second half (on the PGA TOUR) in my first year out,'' he said. "I had some success on the Nationwide Tour. So I knew I was moving in the right direction. I knew I could compete on any level.'' Affirmation came in New Zealand and now, with the Nationwide Tour taking a three-week break, it will be reinforced each time Thompson checks the money list and sees his name on top. |
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