The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Retro Tway emerges
’86 PGA champ, winless as senior, surprises himself with lead.
It’s right there in his official Champions PGA Tour bio, plain as a witch’s wart. But there has to be some mistake. This just can’t be.
In nearly eight years on this over-50 tour, Bob Tway has barely left a divot. His bio clearly states he is winless through 159 events. And more than that, he’s finished second once, and third one other time. Just 10 career top-10 finishes, which is an impossibly meager output for a player of his pedigree — unless he turned all eccentric and opted to play in footie pajamas in his golf dotage. Got to be fake news.
But the source does not deny it. “I haven’t played very good since I turned old,” said Tway, 57.
The source is brutally blunt. Self-delusion just may be the weakest part of his game, although he will tell you there have been other problems.
“The truth’s the truth,” he said. “I’m a realist. My short game, wedges and putting needs to be a lot better. It’s half the game. If something’s half the game, you’d better do it a lot better than I’ve been doing it.”
All those difficulties stepped aside Friday and let the Bob Tway who won eight times on the PGA Tour, including the 1986 PGA Championship, play through. He shot 7-underpar 65 to take a one-shot lead in the 54-hole Mitsubishi Electric Classic at TPC Sugarloaf.
It was his best round in years.
“My highlight was watching Bob,” said one of Tway’s playing partners, Scott Verplank, who was a none-too-shabby 68 himself. “Bob hit it so good. He put on a clinic tee to green.”
There was no watching Tway on Friday and ever guessing that he has been a golfer in distress.
(But here’s some distress for you: While he has finished no better than 25th in the four champions events so far this season — with an average finish of 39th — that has been a relative renaissance for him. Friday represented his seventh round in the 60s this young season, already more than he managed through 52 rounds all of last season.)
For 15 holes, certainly, Tway’s troubles seemed particularly unexplainable.
The guy is no dilettante out here. He grinds like this is still a profession. “I play a lot of golf,” he said. “As poorly as I’ve played out here the last few years, I still enjoy playing.”
He still cuts the same long, strong figure he did as a younger pro, not all that much physically different from the player who took Greg Norman’s heart by holing out from the bunker on the 72nd hole of the ’86 PGA. Why, it looks like he could almost fit into his Wheeler High graduation gown (his mother and sister still live in Marietta, while he long ago moved to Oklahoma).
And for a while there Friday, it looked like Tway was capable of shooting his age. Starting on the back nine, he holed out for eagle on his third hole — pitching wedge from 137 yards. Then he birdied six of his next nine holes.
His flirtation with the Champions course record of 64 ended when old bugaboos resurfaced, and he three-putted for bogeys on his 16th and 18th holes.
David Frost is the same age as Tway, with six Champions victories in his quiver, and found himself one shot back Friday. Tway’s winless status is something of a mystery to him, too.
“I’m surprised he hasn’t, you know, produced the results like he did on the PGA Tour,” Frost said. “He works hard and somehow he hasn’t won yet. Look at all the guys that won last year 55 and up, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulls one out of the hat.”
Larry Mize and Bernhard Langer were among six players at 67, two back of Tway.
Ever the realist, Tway made no big promises based on one round: “I still work at it hard and I see a little bit of improvement in my short game, but I really haven’t done it when it really matters to give me a whole lot of confidence about it. But, you know, just keep plugging.”
Said Verplank: “There are going to be scores right up there around him. Winning out here you got to shoot somewhere between 15 and 20 under for three rounds, so, yeah, that’s pretty hard.”