HEARN LEARNS
So many close calls in 2015
David Hearn, standing on the tee of a short par-5 at stately St. George’s Golf and Country Club, smoothly bombs a drive down the left side of the fairway. He lofts a short iron to the elevated green, landing his ball about 15 feet from the hole, and, casually chatting with his playing partners, lags the putt up for a tap-in birdie.
Hearn, the 36-year-old from Brantford, Ont., who finished his PGA season as the top Canadian among the six on Tour, is playing at St. George’s as part of a small event hosted by Dunning Golf, one of his sponsors. He’s checking out the new greens at the club, which were completely rebuilt and reseeded after a 2013 ice storm killed most of them.
It was a tremendous undertaking at the site of the 2010 Canadian Open, but when you are St. George’s, which is so lush and moneyed that you half-expect divots to uncover Robert Bordens lining the fairway, you don’t spruce up on the cheap.
On a par-4, Hearn bashes another soaring drive, wedges his ball to another elevated green, and rolls up a putt for a tap-in par. Easy game, this.
The last time I saw Hearn up close, it was two months earlier, when he held the sole lead at the RBC Canadian Open entering Sunday, kept it until the back nine, but was done in by a charge from Jason Day, which, as it turned out, was a little like trying to hold back a galloping rhino. (Day would win three more times before season’s end.)
“It was a pretty amazing experience,” Hearn says now. “I’ve never experienced anything like it. I needed to make some birdies down the stretch to win the golf tournament and I just didn’t quite get over that hump.”
It’s undeniable that trying to become the Canadian to break the 61-year winless streak at the Open is not the ideal situation for someone also trying to secure a first PGA victory, but Hearn doesn’t allow that the pressure was a negative. He had thousands of people cheering every shot, he says. And the situation — where almost everyone at a PGA stop is rooting for the same guy on Sunday — has no equivalent in the sport.
“It was the stuff you dream of,” Hearn says. “I certainly want to get myself in that position again, and I guess the countdown is on to the 2016 RBC Canadian Open.”
Whatever happens next year, when the national open returns to Glen Abbey, one thing is certain: Hearn will be using a different putter. Golf’s governing bodies sounded the death knell for the anchored putter in 2012, and the transition period ends in December of this year.
Hearn, who has used one of the long-handled broomsticks for the last several years, which happen to coincide with the period during which he became an established Tour pro, is one of many who aren’t so much “transitioning” from the anchored putter as they are using it until the last possible minute.
Hearn doesn’t sound all that fussed about the switch, but he’s not grinning about it, either.
“I’ve been practising. Every week when I go home and play with friends, I’ll use a shorter putter,” he says. “I’ve been putting great, actually. We’ll see what that transition is like on Jan 1. I’m sure it won’t be perfect, but I’m not a perfect putter now.”
Still, it is telling that Hearn says he will play the fall events on the PGA schedule, which count toward the next FedEx Cup race, with the long putter.
He’s planning to play five of the six fall events, which is a lot for someone who finished 55th in the standings in the season just completed, but any points he can pile up in the next few weeks will help ease the transition to the short putter in January.
Then it will be on to 2016, where Hearn hopes to make the season-ending Tour Championship for the first time, compete in the Olympics — “I had to fill out my drug testing forms,” he says — and, yes, win. He thinks the close calls this season, where he also lost in a playoff at the Greenbrier, will help him the next time he’s in contention.
“I’m not going to compare myself to Jack Nicklaus, but I think he was runner-up more times than he won,” Hearn says with a laugh. (Not quite, at 73 wins and 58 second-place finishes, although he was runner-up in 19 majors and won 18.)
“So,” Hearn says, “I can take something from that and say that to get better as a player you have to keep putting yourself in those positions.”
“Some guys seem to jump right out and win tournaments, but for me I’ve been the kind of player who is getting a bit better each year,” Hearn says. “I definitely want to win one soon. I’ve been playing good enough golf to do that. I might be able to get one of those wins before the 2016 calendar year comes around.”
He just might. And he’ll have the familiar putter while he’s trying.