Confident Canadian Delaet uses Weir’s Masters win as motivation
ROCHESTER, N. Y. — No Canadian has ever won the PGA Championship. No Canadian man had ever won one of golf’s four majors until, memorably, Mike Weir claimed a green jacket as 2003 Masters champion.
Another decade since, Graham DeLaet remembers.
“He’s one of the main reasons that I’m doing what I’m doing right now,” the 31- year- old DeLaet said Tuesday. “I looked up to him my entire career, life, as a kid and teenager, when I was in college.
“I remember where I was when he won the Masters.”
That was Pocatello, Idaho, where DeLaet and his Boise State Broncos golf teammates were playing the Idaho State University tournament.
Weir certainly had his best shots at winning the PGA Championship, too, contending twice at Medinah, Ill., and once here at Oak Hill Country Club, but didn’t close the deal.
At Medinah in 1999, he shared first place with Tiger Woods going into the last round, but struggled to an 80 and tied for 10th.
Seven years later and seven years ago, he was third behind Woods and Luke Donald through three rounds, but a closing 73 left Weir in sixth position, still the best PGA Championship ever for a Canadian.
In between, at Oak Hill in 2003, the Canadian lefthander was third behind Shaun Micheel and Chad Campbell, but he tied for seventh after a Sunday 75.
Now 43, Weir continues to grind, seeking to rebuild his game and his confidence after a long and precipitous dip, but he was a long way from qualifying for the field of 156 in this year’s field. That leaves Canadian hopes resting on the shoulders of DeLaet and David Hearn, 34, of Brantford, Ont.
Neither of them has previously played a PGA Championship. Hearn’s past experience in majors comprises three U. S. Opens, DeLaet’s just a single Open Championship three weeks ago at Muirfield, Scotland. He survived the cut after two rounds, but slid back on the weekend and finished 83rd.
Still, he professes confidence in his chances of becoming the next Canadian major champion, maybe even this week, as unlikely as that might sound for someone with such a thin major championship resume and with a missed- cut in his last PGA Tour appearance, the RBC Canadian Open at Oakville, Ont.
He took last week off to rest before travelling to Rochester on Sunday.
“I have to play well, obviously,” DeLaet said before starting an afternoon practice round on Oak Hill’s back nine.
“Whoever wins here is going to play well. I think this course suits my game fairly well if I can just hit fairways. I think that’s the main thing because the rough is just so deep.
“I’d like to be in the mix, that’s for sure.”
Given that there are just a handful of Canadians currently with full status on the PGA Tour, those who do make the grade enjoy a relative grade of celebrity, and it has been the same here this week. DeLaet said he and Hearn both signed a handful of red maple leaf flags during a joint practice round on Monday.
DeLaet, whose best previous finish this year was third place in the Travelers Championship at Cromwell, Conn., in June, will play his first two PGA Championship rounds with U. S. tour pro Kyle Stanley and Kirk Hanefeld, a Massachusetts club pro who qualified by placing ninth in the PGA Professional National Championship. Hearn’s playing partners are fellow PGA Tour members Tommy Gainey and Ryan Palmer, both of the U. S.