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By Brett Avery
PGATOUR.COM Contributor

After two decades, all anyone recalls of Bob Tway's 1986 season is summed up in a 12-second video clip.

It shows his frenzied jumping, jumping, jumping after dramatically holing a bunker shot at the PGA Championship's 72nd green to help Greg Norman snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

"That's alright with me," Tway says of the single-mindedness of golf fans. "That's probably all I'd remember, too."

Tway had so many more highlights that season, his second full one on the PGA TOUR. In fact, this week's event in San Diego commemorates the first of many heart-stopping moments, a playoff victory over reigning Masters champion Bernhard Langer.

Torrey Pines is a special place for Bob Tway. (Franklin/Getty Images)

At one point in the final round there were 16 players tied for or within two shots of the lead at Torrey Pines GC. Tway and Langer bolted out of that group to shoot 204, then settled who would take the $81,000 first prize with Tway's par 3 at the 16th, the second extra hole.

"Has that guy ever won before?" a puzzled Langer asked when he returned to the clubhouse.

Finally, the answer was "yes."

A soft-spoken product of Oklahoma State University, where he was 1981 college player of the year, Tway arrived on TOUR full-time in 1985 with exceptionally high expectations.

Early on he lived up to none of them. He missed the cut in six of his first seven starts and by the end of April he had official earnings of precisely $904.89.

Tway would sit out five more weekends that season but no one would remember. Blotting out those disappointments were a runner-up finish to Dan Forsman in July at the Lite Quad Cities Open (now the John Deere Classic) and a pair of October thirds, the Southern Open and the old Seiko-Tucson Match Play Championship.

Enthusiastic about finishing 45th on the money list ($164,023), Tway entered 1986 with a can-do attitude. He tied for sixth in the unofficial Bahamas Classic and made three straight cuts to open the West Coast swing.

Tway arrived in San Diego for the Shearson Lehman Brothers Andy Williams Open (now the Buick Invitational) with a reputation for low first-round scores. He did not disappoint with a 67 on the easier North Course before tacking on a South Course 68. That tied for second with Danny Edwards, one behind Larry Mize and one in front of a nine-way jam featuring Langer.

Then some of the most miserable weather in tournament history arrived.

The tournament lost its first day of play since the event began in 1952, succumbing to 1.5 inches of rain that began falling overnight. The incessant precipitation swamped several of the South Course's greens so severely that squeegee crews could not keep pace.

A less-experienced player might have fretted away Saturday but Tway enjoyed the rainout, spending that evening with Edwards watching motocross races at what was then known as Jack Murphy Stadium. "That loosened me up," Tway recalls.

Sunday morning Tway grabbed the lead after birdies at the fifth, sixth and seventh holes while Mize double-bogeyed the fourth and three-putted the seventh. Tway added another at the par-5 ninth, reaching with a 3-wood second, to take command.

Several players thrust at Tway -- Paul Azinger grabbed part of the lead during the back nine before tumbling -- but Tway was alone at the top after 52 holes. Although he bogeyed the 17th and fell into a tie with Langer, already in the clubhouse, Tway holed a gutty six-footer at the 54th to secure the playoff.

Both made 4s at the first extra hole, then faced similar 25-footers at the next. Langer, using the cross-handed grip he typically reserved for short putts, knocked his ball five feet long. Tway lagged to three feet, then watched Langer miss.

"You work hard all your life for endless hours and dream this will happen," a relieved Tway said at the time. "And finally it comes."

The win set Tway on a tear with top 15s in eight of his 11 subsequent starts. Just as he appeared cooling the experience of winning at San Diego paid dividends. In consecutive weeks he won the Manufacturers Hanover Westchester Classic (now the Barclays Classic), tied for eighth in the U.S. Open and won the Georgia-Pacific Atlanta Classic (BellSouth Classic).

Two months later Tway was a familiar entity when he stunned Norman and a worldwide television audience at Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, holing out from the bunker to win the PGA Championship.

"That year was great, not only because I won four times but because I had [13] top 10s," Tway says. "Sometimes you win because you play well and sometimes you win because someone hands it to you. But if that happens you have to be there to accept it."

Tway finished the year No. 2 in money ($652,780) and owning all of a winner's perks: guaranteed spots in the major championships, the Tournament of Champions and invites to play around the world. "It opened up a lot of doors for me," he says.

It also made for one of the more dramatic video clips in the game's history, in case anyone forgot how he won the PGA.