- FedExCup Points: 50,000
- Purse: $1.26 million
- Winning Share: $1,260,000
- Yards: 7,154
PGATOUR.com Contributor
"Big Daddy" Stiles Mitchell is one of the great characters to ever play professional golf. He fit in a little better with the Myrtle Beach hustlers than he ever did on the Nationwide Tour. The big man from Louisiana, rounded by gumbo and stronger than a black bear, could pound on it. He easily could have bridged the gap between John Daly and Bubba Watson but the golf gods weren't that kind to Stiles.
His great gift to the world was the ability to make all of those around him laugh. He turned people like Charlie Rymer and me into his straight men. He was blessed with the ability to hit the ball a country mile and then make you laugh while you searched for it. His humor may be a little dark for some, and most of it can't be repeated here, but there is one line he uttered years ago that has come back to haunt us all who have ever toiled in the futility of professional golf.
I was playing the Nationwide Tour when Tiger devastated the field in the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. The next week in the locker room, in a town long ago forgotten, Stiles sat down at a nearly full eight-top table in player dining. The conversation centered around Tiger's performance. In atypical fashion, Stiles kept quiet. He seemed a little distracted, or perhaps road weary. The Nationwide Tour will make a long-haul trucker's work seem like a family vacation.
The conversational ball was going a bit flat amid all the awe and praise for the best player we had ever seen. Stiles stood up and said just loud enough for us all to hear, "just wait till that (guy) reaches his prime -- he ain't even good yet."
The line was delivered with a smile and comedic timing. We all laughed in the moment and then relayed the line from the driving range to the locker room the next couple of days. For fatalists like Stiles and me, though, there was more to it.
To even come close to making it in professional golf, you have to believe that on your best day you are unbeatable. Every player on the PGA TOUR and the Nationwide Tour holds at least a course record or two. (No, that is not verifiable; you are just going to have to trust me)
But what happens when your best day isn't good enough? The first lesson in competition is losing. The trick is to learn something from it every time, and to do that, you have to realize where you made your mistakes.
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So, here is a question. What if you break the tournament scoring record and don't win? Whether or not that is devastating remains to be seen. But for Aaron Baddeley and Steve Stricker, it has to be a looming question. What do you work on now?
Steve Stricker is a better player today than he has ever been in his career. The 1996 champ at Cog Hill broke the tournament scoring record by a shot this week at the BMW Championship. His third-place finish serves to add to one of the greatest comeback stories in the game since Ben Hogan.
Tiger described Steve's resurgence as "coming back from the doldrums." He went on to say that something like that "hardens a player and makes him tougher to beat." I wonder what Tiger considers the doldrums in terms of his own career -- a winning percentage under 33 percent? He doesn't have to worry this year.
Tiger also called Steve "Strick" in the interview. If his win at The Barclays hadn't convinced Steve that he was back, a nick name from the chosen one should push him over the edge.
Tiger, like most of the guys on TOUR, calls Aaron "Badds." It would seem that Badds and Strick are at contrasting points in their career. Stricker, nearly a decade and a half older than the uber-talented young Aussie has battled a little bit of everything throughout his career. Aside from Tiger, his biggest battle may be the calendar.
Baddeley, though, is among a crop of young stars who continue to get better. Even though Badds broke the tournament record by three shots and finished second to the best player in the world, he felt like he could have played better -- and so did Sticker.
The scary thing is that after his 60th PGA TOUR victory (which left him two short of Palmer and 22 short of Snead -- someone had to start the countdown), Tiger said that he thought he could have played better, too.
"If you don't think that way you might as well quit," he said after a final round 63, the low round of the day by two.
I don't think that Steve or Aaron have given that one much thought. They are both rarities in this era. They are on the list of players who have pushed Tiger to the limits of even his ability, and they will be even better for it.
But there are those of us who learned long ago that our best stuff wouldn't cut it, and we took Tiger's advice. Any questions about whether or not we made the right decision are put to rest every time he tees it up -- now that he has reached his prime.
