PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Every PLAYERS Championship seems to develop its own identity.

The 1982 tournament forever will be remembered for Jerry Pate ’s joyful leap into the water by the 18th green. Hal Sutton ’s cry of “be the right club today” defined the 2000 PLAYERS, just as Tiger Woods’ moonbeam of a putt at the 17th did a year later.

An improbable finish that included just one putt over the final three holes was Craig Perks' signature in 2002, and Davis Love III added a punctuation mark to a cold, miserable Sunday with his brilliant 64 in 2003.

Last year, though, Herbie the Love Bug took center stage. Yes, that’s right. When Fred Funk won the Rolls Royce of PGA TOUR events last year, the champion came into the interview area and likened himself to a talking Volkswagen.

Funk is, after all, a short hitter in this age of power players. He was 48 years old, too, beating players young enough to be his children. Most of all, though, he’s the consummate blue-collar worker who climbed to the top of the corporate ladder that day.

“I won a huge tournament against a great field on a really hard golf course in really hard conditions in my adopted home town,” Funk recalled recently. “It doesn’t get any better than that. I wouldn’t have dreamed that big of a dream.

“I am still baffled at the fact that I won this tournament.”

Funk played 32 holes that Monday get the victory, though, and he did it better than anyone else in the brisk, blustery conditions.

He negated an untidy bogey on the treacherous 17th hole with a drive that he now calls probably the best he’s ever hit. And he got up and down from a greenside bunker at No. 18 for the clutch par that gave him the win.

“I don’t think I could play 50 balls in the same position and hit it where I hit that (drive),” said Funk, who threw his hat on the green in jubilation when the final 5-footer curled into the hole. “And it was a great up-and-down. It made for great theater. I didn’t want that good of a theater but it made for great theater.”

The way Jeff Sluman, who was the runner-up at THE PLAYERS in 1987, saw it, the harsh weather conditions played into Funk’s hands -- literally, as well as figuratively.

“It put a premium on driving the ball in the fairway,” said Sluman, who was an assistant captain on the U.S. Presidents Cup Team that Funk played on last year. “Who does that better than Fred Funk? His win was one of the great stories in golf last year, by far.

“He’s a hell of a competitor, and he’s proven that time and time again. He gets a sniff around the lead and he likes it and he responds, and though he might not always win, he’ll give it his all and he won’t give it away.” Not bad for a man who went “belly up” on the Space Coast Tour in the early 1980s and found himself doing temp jobs and working in the circulation department of a newspaper. Not bad for a man who spent the next six years as the golf coach at his alma mater, the University of Maryland, catering to players with the same dreams he nurtured in himself.

“I guess how would you have expected to do that when I was punching a cash register and trying to coach a bunch of kids years ago,” Funk said. “So, you just never know. You just never know where life is going to take you, you never know where your talent level is going to be and timing is everything.

“I have been very fortunate, I still want to do a lot more but if it ended right now I would be sad that it ended but at the same time I would be very satisfied with where it had gone.”

Funk will be the first to tell you he’s an overachiever. The consummate late-bloomer, too. Funk, who grew up a 6-iron from the 14th hole at the Maryland golf course, didn’t get his TOUR card until he was 28 years old, and four of his seven tournament victories have come after the age of 40.

He learned the value of hard work from his parents. Funk’s mother sewed custom draperies in their basement. His stepfather, who already worked Monday through Friday at the Department of Transportation, spent his weekends helping her with the installation.

“That was something that stayed with me,” Funk said, “knowing how hard my parents worked to try to make ends meet and raise four kids.”

It stayed with him when he lost his PGA TOUR card in 1989 and three years later when he wondered if he was really cut out to make his living playing golf. “I was getting my resumes ready,” Funk admitted.

So he came to the Shell Houston Open in 1992 with no expectations. He made the cut on the number, then shot a course-record 10-under 62 on Saturday. A closing 70 gave Funk a two-stroke victory over Kirk Triplett and turned his life around.

“It was like I went from thinking there was no way I belong out here on TOUR to winning the next week,” Funk said. “I knew I could do it. I knew I could stand up to the Sunday pressure, and that is a learning experience in itself.”

His fairways and greens game doesn’t play well everywhere, to be sure. Funk’s extremely steady, though, and he’s finished in the all-important top 30 on the money list eight of the last 11 years.

“Fred knows how to play the game, how to keep it in play and he’s got more game than he’s given credit for,” Stewart Cink, another Presidents Cup teammate, says. “You always know what he brings to the table. He has great control. Like most guys out here, he’s a very competitive individual.”

Just as he has earned the respect of his peers, the gregarious Funk has attracted a loyal following of fans who like to call themselves “Funks Punks.”

The group was founded in Ponte Vedra 12 years ago by Judi and Tom Zitiello, who were building a home down the street from Funk and his wife, Sharon. This year the Zitiello’s 20-year-old son, Louis, has even wrapped his black truck in orange film and a giant photo of Funk, turning heads when he drives around town.

“Funk’s Punks” went national in 2002 during the PGA Championship at Hazeltine. He played with Tiger Woods in the final group on Sunday, and as Funk puts it, “I was kind of the adopted guy, the Jason Gore of the U.S. Open.

“They were rooting for me hard, if not harder than Tiger,” Funk, always quick with a smile, said. “He admitted that, and thought it was a pretty neat deal.”

Funk is extremely generous with his time -- to the media, to the fans and to a Jacksonville teenager named J.T. Townsend, who was paralyzed during a high school football game two years ago.

Townsend and Funk had mutual friends and the two met last summer. Since that time, the two have become extremely close. Funk, who has three children of his own, goes to Townsend’s rehab sessions when he can and takes him to movies. He also designated his share of the charity dollars from last year’s Presidents Cup to the J.T. Townsend Foundation.

No wonder so many people are drawn to this genuine and gracious man.

“If you think of the term regular guy, then that is Fred Funk,” said Scott Verplank, who has played in The Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup with him. “He’s got a lot of fire and enthusiasm on the golf course, but at the end of the day, he’s just a good, pleasant guy who you can see really enjoys the game and what it has done for him.

“He appreciates where he’s been and what he has been able to do, and you never really see him get down, even when he’s not playing his best.”