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GOLF: PGA TOUR: Nationwide Tour Year In Review

/noticias.info/ By Dave Lagarde
PGATOUR.com Correspondent

The Nationwide Tour pastry chefs spread the icing on the cake that was the 2006 season last Sunday, but it was left for Craig Kanada to apply the final touch with stylish verve that served as a fitting punctuation mark.
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Kanada placed a sweet cherry on top with an incredible come-from-behind victory in The Nationwide Tour Championship at The Houstonian with his trip-the-light-fantastic finish. He rallied from six strokes behind with a 6-under-par 66 in the final round of to snatch the title away from third-round leader Matt Kuchar.

Certainly the rally was impressive, but the way Kanada finished -- without removing his putter from his bag on the 71st or 72nd holes -- was strictly off the charts. Talk about a stunner. Even the champion, whose closing rush enabled him to secure PGA TOUR playing privileges in 2007, had a difficult time digesting what he had done.

“To chip in on 17 and 18 to get my card and win this tournament. .. It’s almost too much to handle,’’ Kanada said.

But what a way to end a season that ran from January to November, played in four countries and produced another formidable graduating class of 22 who would love nothing more than to match the stunning success of the graduates who immediately preceded them to The Big Show.

So without further adieu, let’s take a look back by selecting the best of the Nationwide Tour’s rambling road show.

TOP PERFORMER

Tripp Isenhour, Johnson Wagner, Brandt Snedeker and Kanada each won twice, but none of the foursome could match Ken Duke’s play over the course of the season. Duke scored his first Nationwide Tour victory at the BMW Charity Pro-Am at The Cliffs, making a clutch putt on the 72nd hole to deny Jess Daley. He kept hammering away at Wagner, who led the money chase for much of the summer and fall, until he finally caught him with a string of four top-fives in six events down the stretch. Then, just when it looked like Wagner had the opportunity to wrest the money title from Duke heading into the final round of the Nationwide Tour Championship, Duke followed a third-round 76 with a 67 that secured the title. “It was important to me to maintain my position (on the money list),’’ said Duke, who finished in the top 10 in nine of the Nationwide Tour’s 13 statistical categories, including first in All-Around. “It is the first time I’ve been on top. I proved I was the best player out here this year.’’

TOP ROOKIE

Michael Putnam arrived on the Tour with the kind of credentials that make people sit up and take notice. He was a three-year All-American at Pepperdine University where he set the school’s career scoring mark. The individual runner-up in the NCAA Championship, he also won the Byron Nelson Award that is given to a graduating senior based equally on his collegiate academic career, golf career and his integrity and character while in college. Putnam did nothing to disappoint. Although he did not win, he finished 17th on the money list and is headed to the PGA TOUR. It was his body of work that made him standout. He made 20 of 26 cuts, had a pair of seconds and thirds, finished with five top-10s and 10 top-25s.

BIGGEST SURPRISE

Winning a golf tournament was the last thing on Jim Rutledge’s mind when he teed off in the final round of the ING New Zealand PGA Championship. How could a victory enter into the thought processes for a journeyman who barely scratched out expenses in his previous four seasons on the Nationwide Tour? For a guy who started in a tie for 25th, nine strokes behind 54-hole leader Jarrod Lyle? For a guy who owned not-so-grand total of one top-10 finish in 91 previous Nationwide Tour events? “If I tell the truth, it wasn’t even in the back of my mind,’’ Rutledge admitted. “I wanted to put together a solid round, make a nice check and get some momentum for when the Tour came back to the States.’’ But that’s the beauty of golf. Rutledge did a pretty good Craig Kanada imitation, holing out with a sand wedge for an eagle 2 on the 71st hole and making a 22-foot birdie putt on the last. His bogey free, 8-under-par 64 was good enough for a one-stroke victory and it propelled Rutledge toward his rookie season on the PGA TOUR at the ripe old age of 47. He will be the second oldest rookie to play on the TOUR, behind only Allen Doyle, who was 48 when he moved up in class in 1996.

FAVORITE MOMENT

They played 2,230 holes waiting for the defining moment of the Nationwide Tour’s season. Enter Kanada, who provided the pyrotechnics on the last two holes of the season. His chip-in from 25 feet for par on the 71st hole and 48 feet for a Nationwide Tour Championship-clinching birdie provided the perfect snapshot to close the year. “That is a memory that will last a lifetime,’’ Kanada said.

COMEBACK PLAYER

Former United States Amateur champion Jeff Quinney had failed to live up to expectations during his first five seasons on the Nationwide Tour, never finishing above 46th on the money list. He did that in 2004 and then took a step backward in ’05, plummeting to 90th. It appeared as if Quinney was headed to more of the same this season when he missed two of the first three cuts and finished 42nd in the other event. But he got out of the conditional status category with a third-place finish at the Livermore Valley Wine Country Championship and never looked back. He finally found his game as well as his comfort level, facts made crystal clear by his position on the all-important Nationwide Tour money ladder. Quinney was one of a record 10 players to earn more than $300,000 and will be a rookie on the PGA TOUR in 2007.

CLUTCH PERFORMANCE

When you need an eagle on the par-5 72nd hole to get into a playoff and make one it’s noteworthy. When you do it twice in one season there should be an award. In lieu of that, Brandt Snedeker, this is the best we can do. Maybe a little recognition for your unimaginable feat of twice lifting yourself into a playoff on the wings of a final-hole eagle won’t go unnoticed. Snedeker lost the first tournament -- the Chattanooga Classic -- to Monday qualifier Kyle Riefers’ birdie on the first playoff hole. He won two weeks later at the Scholarship America Showdown after tying Quinney with that eagle. Now that’s coming through when it counts. notas_de_prensa_archivo