Top 100 TOUR Players to Watch in 2010: No. 100

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Dec. 9, 2009

MORE TOP 100 PLAYERS: FORWARD to Player No. 99 | Top 100 archive


Regular Season Rank	141
Playoff Rank	141
Bonus Money	32,000

Stuart Appleby told reporters in his native Australia that he is drawing inspiration from Steve Stricker as he prepares for the 2010 campaign. The American is now ranked third in the world - a mere four years after being ranked below 330th. Not that Appleby wants it to take that long to resurrect his game. The 2009 season was the worst of his career and marked only the second time in his 14 years on TOUR that he has failed to hit six figures in earnings. Resigned to his fate, Appleby skipped the final TOUR event of the season to play in the JBWere Masters. The eight-time winner lost his TOUR card as a result, but Appleby will have conditional status and should be a popular pick for sponsor's invites -- not unlike Stricker was in 2006 when he won the first of two Comeback Player of the Year awards.


The 2009 season was an aberration. Appleby will be back -- eight wins tell me so. There has to be more to the story than just a bad year for Stuart.

In 2008, Appleby's scoring average of 69.73 tied for eighth lowest on TOUR, but his scoring average of 71.43 in 2009 dropped him into a tie for 147th.

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