TOUR Insider: Frys.com Open has been kind to Matteson
By By Stan Awtrey, PGATOUR.COM Correspondent
There are many things that come each year around this time. The weather is getting cooler and preparing for the arrival of the Great Pumpkin. Football season is in full swing and the contenders and pretenders have been identified. Baseball season is winding down and fans are grabbing their parkas out of the closet and getting ready for what has become the November Classic.
It's also the time the PGA TOUR sets aside for the Frys.com Open. And that means Troy Matteson needs to brush up on his victory speech. The Georgia Tech graduate has won the tournament twice (the 2006 Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open was called the Frys.com Open and was won by Matteson) and will defend his championship this week. It wouldn't be Frys.com week if Matteson weren't in the field and contending for the championship.
And for those who watch the stock market, keep an eye on the shares of Frys in case of a Matteson victory. He said that he and wife Shauna spent a lot of their prize money on a shopping spree at Frys. They replaced a couple of old TVs from his days at Georgia Tech and bought a new fridge. You can get a lot of flat-screen televisions and appliances at Frys with first-prize money. Some economist is probably looking for the correlation between TV sales and stock prices.
The Frys.com Open has arrived just in time for Matteson, who has enjoyed another solid season on the TOUR. He's had two top-10s (the John Deere Classic and the Greenbrier Classic) and five top 25s. He didn't get past the second stage of the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup after missing the cut at the Deutsche Bank Championship. And he's missed more cuts (13) than he's made (12). Most of those missed cuts came in the first half of the season. Since mid-July he's only failed to qualify for the weekend twice, including last week's McGladrey Classic, where the cut was low.
Now Matteson gets a chance to defend his championship, although he doesn't get a chance to do it at the same place he won in 2009. The Frys.com Open has moved to CordeValle Golf Club in San Martin, Calif., a Robert Trent Jones Jr. course that opened in 1999. Matteson won the event a year ago at Grayhawk Golf Club in Las Vegas.
But changing locations is nothing new for Matteson. The first time he won the Frys.com Open in 2006 it was contested at the TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas. If he wins here this week and the location is moved again, there may be something fishy going on.
No matter where the location may be, Matteson has shown the ability to go low. When he gets dialed in, Matteson is as dangerous as any player on TOUR. He shot a 68 at THE PLAYERS this spring and went on to tie for 17th. But that was nothing like at the 2009 Frys.com Open, where he had back-to-back 61s.
"The 61s are probably something that I'll never do again," Matteson said. "That's as good as I can play. I really don't have to worry about playing better than that, because that's it."
It's hard to back up a 61, much less a pair of 61s. Matteson did it last year with a 68 on the final day, which still required him to beat a pair of whippersnappers (Rickie Fowler and Jamie Lovemark) in a playoff. He closed it out in style, hitting a low 6-iron to within a foot of victory, a putt that made him extremely nervous, despite being in kick-in range.
"It's funny. Even for professionals, when it comes down to it and it's the last one, doesn't matter if that thing is six inches, you have all kinds of weird thoughts running through your mind that you shouldn't have running through your mind," Matteson recalled. "I just got up there and hit it before I really through about it too much."
That victory allowed Matteson to increase his TOUR exemption through the 2011 season, the sort of job security that every player enjoys. Even though Matteson's earnings are down -- he's won $723,328, about half of what he made in 2009 -- he doesn't have to worry about setting his schedule for another year.
His goal this week is to finish strong in the Fall Series and use the momentum to build a better season for 2011. That plan worked for another Tech guy; Matt Kuchar won in the fall of 2009 and became one of the PGA TOUR's most consistent contenders in 2010, contending at the PGA Championship and earning a spot on the Ryder Cup team.
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