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By Brett Avery
PGATOUR.COM Contributor

Sometimes it takes a player a few years to understand it's difficult enough to win on the PGA TOUR without continually having to overcome sabotaging himself.

Tom Lehman in 1994. (WireImage)

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In the case of Tom Lehman, it took 11 years.

Lehman gave new definitions to the heartbreak of being a "journeyman professional."

He lost and regained his card five times through the Qualifying Tournament and continually made self-imposed exiles to Asia, South Africa and domestic mini-tours. He could play brilliantly one week and then incredibly poorly the next.

And the next.

And the next.

"I had made a career of beating myself," he said. "Whether it was not getting up and down for birdie at a par 5 or three-putting from 15 feet or whatever, I never seemed to get it done."

Years after others would have given up full-contact competition, Lehman clawed his way back onto the TOUR in 1992. And for four magical days in May 1994, over a Muirfield Village Golf Course considered one of the finest the players see all year, against a Memorial Tournament field with few weak links, Lehman produced the unthinkable for his breakthrough victory.

Twenty strokes under par.

"Today, I didn't beat myself," he said. "That was key."

There's an understatement.

In a rare Memorial without precipitation, Lehman went out every day and produced a workmanlike 67. The guy who gained widespread support after he shot 72 in the final round of the Masters and finished runner-up to Jose Maria Olazabal -- the same guy who two weeks earlier had gone 68-77 to miss the cut at THE PLAYERS Championship -- made heads spin at Muirfield Village.

Lehman's 268 total meant a five-shot victory over Greg Norman, who himself lapped the field by four at THE PLAYERS. And thanks to shaving three strokes off Hal Sutton's tournament record, only John Cook (276), Donnie Hammond (277) and David Edwards (278) stayed within 10 shots.

Lehman had dominated before, notably on the Ben Hogan Tour (now known as the Nationwide Tour) by winning three of his 28 starts in 1991 and earning more cash than anyone else: $141,934.

He placed in the top 25 an astounding 24 times; of those, 11 were inside the top 10. Scoring average season: 70.06.

But those figures came only after he'd reached the depths of despair. In his first 78 TOUR starts -- from 1983, the year after he turned pro as a University of Minnesota product, through 1990 -- he missed 50 cuts and made the top 25 just three times.

Three times.

By the 1994 Memorial, however, Lehman was beating himself far less frequently and coming close to beating everyone else: 19 top 10s in his next 66 TOUR starts. He nearly won two Masters, sharing third in 1993 and solo second after Olazabal's 69-69 weekend.

"After watching Tom go through what he did at Augusta this year -- playing a perfect round of golf and not winning," Memorial host Jack Nicklaus said Sunday night, "I couldn't be happier for him."

Mark Brooks signaled this wouldn't be your typical, waterlogged Memorial when he set the first-round pace with an eight-under 64. Lehman strode to the fore with another 67, two ahead of John Cook and David Edwards. Lehman was 10 under for the week while the rest of the field was a cumulative 325 over par.

By sundown Saturday he was four ahead of Cook and the bulk of the pack was well back. Greg Norman, chatting with Nicklaus, said he thought a 63 would suffice.

When Lehman tossed off another 67, it meant Norman would have required a 59 to force a playoff.

"If somebody told me I'd shoot 15 under and lose by five shots this week, I'd have looked at them and laughed," Norman said. "I shot 64 and got my [butt] kicked by five. What Tom did was fantastic. I never thought this was a 20-under golf course in these conditions."

Lehman happily accepted the trophy and the $270,000 first prize. Perhaps more rewarding, though, was the declaration Nicklaus made at the prize giving ceremony.

"Bob Jones said years ago at Augusta that I played a game with which he wasn't familiar. Times have changed. Tom Lehman definitely played a game this week with which I am not familiar. This is a golf course we thought would be a pretty challenging test. It was for everybody except Mr. Tom Lehman."