Maggert finds his touch with the putter, shoots 68

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With a 4-under 68 on Thursday, Jeff Maggert is just three shots off the lead at the Quail Hollow Championship.

CHARLOTTE -- If Jeff Maggert played baseball, he'd likely be retired by now. He wouldn't be throwing footballs or making tackles, either.

Golf, though, gives 45-year-olds like Maggert the opportunity to compete well past the age when other athletes are selling autographs and living off investments fueled by the hefty guaranteed contracts they signed in their youth.

Maggert showed he's still got game, too, on Thursday when he fired a 68 that lifted him into a tie for fifth at the Quail Hollow Championship. He's three strokes behind the game's No. 1 Tiger Woods and one stroke shy of Phil Mickelson, Robert Allenby, Steve Marino and Jason Dufner.

That strong start notwithstanding, the 2009 season has been one of feast or famine for the soft-spoken Texan. He's missed seven cuts in 10 events, but he also has one top-10 and a tie for 21st two weeks ago. The dichotomy is not lost on Maggert.

"I feel like I'm going to win every week, but I miss the cut every week," he said with a wry smile. "So it's been kind of a strange year. I feel like I'm playing pretty well, but I don't know what's going on. I've missed a lot of cuts this year, and when I have made the cut I've played pretty well. So we'll see what happens this week."

Maggert admits that finding balance in his life can sometimes be a challenge. He and his wife Michelle have a blended family of five children -- three who will be in college next year, as well as 5-year-old twins -- "so I've got them spread out all over the map," he said.

This week, Maggert's family is with him. His wife is from Greensboro, N.C., which is about 90 minutes from Charlotte. They have lots of friends in the area, and they are able to visit Michele's stepfather, who is in the hospital battling cancer, back in her hometown.

More often than not, though, weeks spent playing in tournaments mean precious time away from Maggert's wife and kids.

"I don't like to make excuses about getting old, but after 20 years of playing out here, it's probably more of a motivational thing," Maggert said. "There's just a lot of stuff at home that's just kind of taking a bigger priority, I guess, in my life than playing golf sometimes.

"... It's a lot of fun being at home and (I) probably just haven't worked as hard as I needed to stay competitive out here."

Maggert isn't alone in his dilemma. The average PGA TOUR pro plays between 25-30 tournaments a year, which means he is gone roughly half the year. It's not a three-game stand or a home-and-home series, either. He's gone for entire weeks at a time.

That means a lot of Little League games, gymnastics meets and spelling bees that TOUR pros may have to miss as their children get older and start school. Not even Woods, who recently became a father for the second time, is immune.

"Elin and I talked about it the other day, it's hard to imagine life without kids," Woods said. "For some reason it's hard to imagine, what did I do with all that free time?"

More than likely, it was spent at the practice range.

In the 1990s, Maggert was one of the game's steadiest players. He played in three Ryder Cups and one Presidents Cup. He's won three times and earned more than $15 million for his career. So he's seen both sides of the spectrum.

"Just being competitive, you want to play better than I have been," Maggert said. "But it's more of a challenge than a balance. You talk to all the players probably in my age category, they all go through the same thing of trying to stay competitive and spend time at home with your kids and family.

"It's just part of what we do because this sport we can play for so long, and other sports we'd be retired, and I don't know what we'd be doing. But I just feel lucky that I've had a 20 year career out here and played well and still have opportunities to win tournaments at 45 years old. You can't beat that."

When he's struggled, Maggert blames his putter and the stats bear him out. He ranks 16th on TOUR in driving accuracy and 43rd in greens in regulation. His putting average, though, is 189th and putts per round put Maggert at No. 170.

"The putter can just kill you on this TOUR if you're not making putts," said Maggert who needed just 29 Thursday after hitting 15 of 18 greens. "You can strike the ball well week after week after week, but you've got to put the ball in the hole with the putter, and that's probably been the biggest struggle most of the year.

"This week it feels pretty good, but certainly just inconsistency from week to week. Sometimes you can drive yourself crazy and try to change things or switch putters or feel like you've got to change your stroke, so I've just kind of tried to stay to my basic game plan and spend some extra time reading the putts ... and try to stroke the ball where I see it, and hopefully some of them will start to go in."

Like they did on Thursday at Quail Hollow.