List deals with ups, downs of the sport
Luke List is a 35-year-old competitor on the PGA Tour, so he has plenty of experience when it comes to the highs and lows golf can present.
List possessed a No. 11 ranking in the FedEx Cup standings in April 2018, when a runner-up finish in the Honda Classic and a third-place showing in the RBC Heritage had the former Baylor School and Vanderbilt University standout nestled among the likes of Jon Rahm and Justin Rose. A slow start to this season coupled with the coronavirus-related shutdown, however, has resulted in a FedEx ranking of 130 and having been left out of last weekend’s Charles Schwab Challenge.
“I didn’t play great during the fall, and I played OK on the West Coast in January,” List said this week. “My game then started rounding into form, but I still would play three good rounds and then one iffy round, with a couple of those coming on Sundays.
I thought my game was turning in the right direction, but once the pandemic set in, it was tough, because there were a lot of unknowns for everybody.
“I got to go home and spend time with my family and eventually work on my game these last six weeks or so, but I wasn’t sure what the schedule would look like when we came back.”
List returned to the PGA Tour
this week, shooting a 2-underpar 69 during Thursday’s opening round of the rescheduled RBC Heritage on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, but he followed that up Friday with a 73 and missed the cut. His playing partners were Vaughn Taylor and Nick Watney, but Watney had to withdraw from the event Friday before his early afternoon tee time after testing positive for the coronavirus.
The two PGA Tour rounds for List were the first since he opened with a 2-under 70 on March 12 at The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. That tournament was abruptly canceled after the first round due to the coronavirus outbreak.
While fellow Baylor School alums Harris English and Keith Mitchell practiced during golf’s absence with fellow St. Simons, Georgia, residents such as Matt Kuchar, Zack Johnson and Patton Kizzire, List was with his wife and daughter at their Peach State residence in Augusta. List was able to get matches in with others in that area, such as Taylor and Henrik Norlander, which he described as “smaller scale” competitions compared to those being held in PGA Tour havens such as St. Simons, Dallas, Jupiter, Florida, and Scottsdale, Arizona.
With no trip to last week’s Charles Schwab Challenge in Texas, List returned to TPC Sawgrass and won the Korn
Ferry Challenge, pocketing $108,000 in his first event on the developmental tour since 2015. It also was his first professional win since the 2012 South Georgia Classic on what was known as the Nationwide Tour at the time.
The Korn Ferry triumph was an obvious example of making the most of an opportunity, though it did put List’s stage in life in perspective.
“Being 35 used to mean the middle of the road on the PGA Tour as far as average age,” the former Ringgold resident said. “The average age has to be 27 or 28 or maybe 29, and I would say the average age in the Korn Ferry is 25 or 26.
“I’m a dinosaur now.”