Stiles knows practice makes perfect -- and he's been practicing
By Dave Lagarde, PGATOUR.com Correspondent
Had it been 2007 rather than 2008, it's highly likely Darron Stiles wouldn't have had a very-long-distance conversation with PGATOUR.com a week ago.
See, it would have been highly unlikely that Stiles -- a notorious slow starter each and every one of his 13 previous professional seasons -- would have sniffed the winner's circle much less actually found it at the HSBC New Zealand PGA Championship, the third event of '08 on the Nationwide Tour, last year. Many things would have conspired against the occurrence, most notably Stiles' performance with the putter.
Simply put, Stiles had some serious issues with the flat stick. Getting the ball in the hole was a real problem last season.
"It was not good,'' Stiles admitted before the start of the second stop of the Nationwide Tour's two-week jaunt Down Under, the Moonah Classic, which concluded Sunday in Fingal, Victoria, Australia.
Ah, but that was yesterday. And yesterday's gone.
Six months of hard work on mechanics of the body as well as the mind paid off -- right there on the 36th hole of the rain-plagued event in Christchurch, where seven feet of New Zealand real estate separated Stiles from his fifth career victory on the Nationwide Tour.
The stroke represented a final examination of sorts on all the work he had done on his stroke and his approach to the short game with Michael Breed, a teaching professional based in Scarsdale, N.Y. The length of the birdie putt he needed to defeat New Zealand's David Smail by a stroke was precisely the distance that plagued Stiles in 2007, when he made only eight cuts in 24 starts on the PGA TOUR.
The ball found the cup, exorcising some extremely cruel demons.
"It was a pressure putt,'' Stiles said, reliving the moment. "To make that putt, when that's been the area and length that I've been struggling with over the last year, is awesome.''
There was one minor drawback to the time spent in New Zealand. The tournament was considered unofficial because it was shortened to 36 holes by the frog chokers that soaked the golf course.
Unofficial, smicial.
Think Darron Stiles gives a hoot?
The tournament hardware belongs to him.
The money still spends and counts toward his official earnings in 2008 as well as his career earnings on the Nationwide Tour, where the victory allowed him to join Paul Claxton and Tom Scherrer as the only players to have won more than $1 million.
So that's all official enough for him, a fact that made the long plane rides, the jet lag and the even longer rain delays quite tolerable indeed.
"Being a non-champion is a little weird, but I can live with it because everything on this Tour is predicated on the money list,'' Stiles said. "The money I won still spends and goes a long way toward finishing first on the money list at the end of the year.''
And the (unofficial) victory provided a major infusion of confidence for Stiles, 34, a native of St. Petersburg, Fla., who now calls the golf Mecca of Pinehurst, N.C., home.
"It's all about putting for me,'' he said. "That's what it all came down to last year. The weeks I putted well, I didn't hit it well. But that didn't happen very often. It led to some confidence issues.''
Enter Breed, who encouraged Stiles to take a different tack on his stroke mechanics as well as his thought process while considering approach shots into greens. The idea is to identify the best possible spots to position his ball on the green to set up putts with little or no break as well as the best place to leave approaches if hitting the green in regulation is out of the question.
"I have more focus now on where the holes will be located and where to leave shots that will give me the best opportunity to make putts or get up and down,'' Stiles said. "I've totally changed the way I prepare for tournaments. I'm paying a lot more attention to detail.''
Um, OK, Darron, but why has it taken so long to see the light?
"You could say I'm constantly a work in progress,'' he said. "If this game was an easy science, everybody would be a professional.''
Stiles said his work began paying off late last season and carried over into the PGA TOUR Qualifying Tournament, where he played his way through second stage and into the finals, where he said he had "six solid'' days. It wasn't good enough to gain his playing privileges in The Big Show, but Stiles' consolation prize was his exemption on the Nationwide Tour.
"I was very happy to get that,'' he said. "Had I failed in the finals, my status would have been very limited.''
Now Stiles is looking at 2008 like it is limitless, considering there are more tournaments and a money title to be won provided he remains grounded and maintains his work ethic. Stiles allowed that he approached the 2008 season as a year he would "get things back in order'' with his golf game. Winning so soon was an unexpected bonus that sets up the remainder of his schedule on a tour where he has acquitted himself well in the past.
"This Tour is still a proving ground,'' he said. "I needed to come here and regroup in my head and find out what I have to do to get back to the PGA TOUR. That is what this Tour does so well. It gives you a great place to play. The competition is just as tough out here, if not tougher, than it is on the PGA TOUR.''
| Player | Events | Points |
| Tiger Woods | 5 | 17,745 |
| Phil Mickelson | 11 | 10,846 |
| Stewart Cink | 11 | 9,449 |
| Player | Today | Thru | Total |
| Byrd, Jonathan | -6 | F | -12 |
| Perry, Kenny | -3 | F | -9 |
| Palmer, Ryan | -3 | F | -9 |
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