Hard work pays off for Appleby in winning with a historic 59
By Helen Ross, PGATOUR.COM Chief of Correspondents
WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. -- Maybe it was karma.
Stuart Appleby had seen the scorecard in the locker room, after all. The one that had all the particulars of the 59 Sam Snead shot in a pro-am at The Greenbrier in 1959. He did the math, and even then, he couldn't believe it.
"It was just phenomenal," Appleby said. "Then there's the ball and the club, and you're like, how did he do that?'"
The Aussie found out on Sunday as he won the inaugural Greenbrier Classic, breaking a four-year victory drought in the process. Appleby's 59 was the fifth in PGA TOUR history -- but second in four weeks -- and enabled him to erase an eight-stroke deficit and beat Jeff Overton by one stroke.
Appleby made nine birdies -- including one on each of his final three holes -- and an eagle Sunday. A lot will be made of the fact that he used just 23 putts, but the veteran also was spot-on with his approach shots. Only one of his birdie putts came from outside 14 feet and the eagle was a 12-footer.
"We spend so much time trying to have rounds like today," Appleby said. "Forget whether it's a 50-something, you're just trying to have rounds where you're scaring the hole. And when you do and they drop, it's a pleasant feeling.
"You just never seem to get enough of them."
Appleby hadn't had that kind of feeling very much lately, though. He had played 80 rounds this year entering the Greenbrier Classic and only shot in the 60s on 21 occasions. This was his 11th straight tournament as he grinded trying to regain his form.
He had planned to make it 12 in a row next week, too -- only Appleby was committed to play in the Turning Stone Resort Championship. Instead, he now finds himself once again playing with the game's best at the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational.
"Now that my FedEx points are up higher, I can look to when I can book flights to Australia to have a rest," said the man now ranked 24th in the standings. "When you have uncertainty in this game, it's very frustrating to plan things."
This week's change of venues is significant for several reasons, too.
Until he failed to make the field of 64 for the Accenture Match Play Championship in February, Appleby was the only player to have competed in every World Golf Championships event -- a string of 33 straight. He met his wife, Ashley, on a blind date during the tournament in Akron several years ago, too.
The remarkable consistency that made Appleby, now a nine-time PGA TOUR champion, a regular at those events designed to bring together the best players in the world had taken a nosedive in 2009, though.
After 10 seasons of racking up six figures in earnings, the Aussie scrambled to hit $500,000. And year after he ranked eighth in scoring, Appleby had tumbled to 147th. In fact, he ranked 120th or lower in every major stat category except for driving distance, where he clocked in at 77th.
Appleby ended up 137th on the money list last year, too -- and he had to use his one-time exemption for ranking in the top 25 in career money to keep his card. This year hadn't much better, although he did have two top-10 to his credit to offset the 11 missed cuts when he came to this toney resort in the West Virginia mountains.
Hence the sense of urgency that necessitated the stretch of 11 straight tournaments that will grow to 13 once Appleby plays in Akron and the following week at the PGA at Whistling Straits. But Sunday made it all worthwhile.
"It's really changed my season," Appleby said. "It's given some real valid weight to the time you spend on the range frustrated, and it's been plenty of those. Every player that's on, you know, golf, but certainly on the TOUR has that.
"...I really want to be back to being the player that I was I am, I feel like I've always been. I guess I just changed my cloak now and then."
The 39-year-old was asked what it meant to end a four-year victory drought. He had gone 110 tournaments since that victory in Houston, and he had racked up 358 rounds since he last shot 64 or lower -- much less threatened a 59.
"Four years is not a short period of time by any means," Appleby said. "... Not getting any younger, and they seem to just fly by. I would love to be a yearly holder of a trophy, for sure. There's a couple hundred guys thinking like that, too, so it's not easy.
"But four years -- I should be getting older and wilier and more experienced, and that's maybe how I'll use some of that timeline through those four years, to make sure I don't ever have a break like this again."
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