Jerry Kelly is happy to be back in The Woodlands for the Insperity Invitational.
Three-time winner occasionally his own worst enemy
THE WOODLANDS — Based on a quick perusal of the Champion Tour statistics and recent results, the nominal favorite to win the Insperity Invitational this weekend isn’t the tournament’s three-time champion Bernhard Langer or defending champion John Daly or any of the other famous names and faces in the 79-man field.
No, the guy to watch seems to be Jerry Kelly.
Kelly will be the highestranked player in the Charles Schwab Cup race teeing off on The Woodlands Country Club Tournament Course for the first round Friday. He’s second on the 2018 Champions Tour money list, trailing only Steve Stricker. Kelly counts three titles among his nine top-10 finishes since last August.
The numbers don’t lie, right? The Wisconsin man from Madisonis on fire.
Except, to hear Kelly tell it, the only part of him that’s on fire is his hair.
“I haven’t been consistent in any way,” he said of his second Champions Tour season, which he launched by collecting the $305,000 winner’s check at the Mitsubishi Electric Championship. “It’s usually been one round every tournament that has kept me in it.
“For a microcosm of what’s happened, in Atlanta (in midApril) I had one of my best rounds of the year and one of my worst rounds of the year — on the same day. I didn’t know what I was doing, or how I was doing it. It’s been tough. But coming back to The Woodlands is a blessing for me.”
Kelly, 51, loves playing this track, which he made his way around seven times, finishing in sixth-place ties twice, while he was on the PGA Tour and it hosted the Shell Houston Open. He also came for qualifying school and, although he failed to do so (“I’m the most successful 0-for-6 non-graduate of Qschool ever, I think,” he noted) he enjoyed himself.
“I love the grass,” he said. “I love chipping out of this stuff. I love the greens. I even like the sand, which seems to make a big difference. There’s a lot of bunkers out there so I don’t have to worry about hitting into them because I can get out. This (tournament) was one of my ATMs back in the day.”
Talked into coming here
Nonetheless, such was Kelly’s fried state only a couple weeks ago, following a hot-cold, up-down, all-over-the-place effort in the Bass Pro Shops Legends of Golf — he still finished in a fifth-place tie — it took an intervention by his team to convince him to fly to Texas rather than hide under the bed.
“I played so bad in all facets of the game, I’m like, ‘I’m done. I can’t go,’ ” he said. “But my wife and my caddie told me, ‘Let’s don’t be rash.’ (My caddie) reminded me yesterday, ‘This was one of the only tournaments that you mentioned to me when you got on the Champions Tour that you were dying to go back to. And then you missed it last year (to attend his son’s highschool graduation).’ He told me, ‘I wasn’t going to let you pull out no matter what.’ ”
As is the case with so many of his club-wielding peers, touring pros and muny-course duffers alike, Kelly routinely battles brain lock, the paralysis-byanalysis thing. He conceded he’s as prone to overthinking as he is to overswinging, which happens a bunch, too, because he was never among the longest hitters on the PGA Tour.
In short, he comes across as something of a tortured soul. But it goes with the golfing turf and, Kelly insisted, “I’m still having fun being nuts. My wife tells me, ‘Nobody takes more enjoyment out of getting (mad) than you do.’
“I can safely say every golfer has multiple personalities inside his head telling him what he should be doing, what he shouldn’t be doing, where to go, where not to go. It’s pretty much an endless conversation going on in there. Mental fitness … that’s where the struggle has always been for me, and maybe for everybody.”
‘Addicted to adrenaline’
As ultimately frustrating as his PGA Tour career ended, Kelly decided to give the seniors circuit a shot last season because, he said, “I’m addicted to adrenaline.
“I’m always going to regret what happened on the PGA Tour. Always,” he said, lamenting final-round near-misses in both the Masters and the U.S. Open in 2007, after which came one missed cut after another. “That’s never going to change. My record in the majors was poor, just awful. But I’ve turned the page. This is a new book, not a new chapter.”
An “ah-hah” moment during a teaching session with a fellow pro earlier this week gave him reason to hope a happy Houston ending might be in the cards.
“He was doing the same thing (wrong) I was doing,” Kelly said. “I’m like, ‘Dude, just do this …’ ”
Kelly slapped himself on the forehead.
So, he was asked if he should be a guy, even the guy, to watch this weekend.
“There’s no question,” Kelly said. “But it’s still manufactured until you get that first round behind you. At least (my game) feels good again. I feel like I’m doing what I did to win (in January).
“But that’s the biggest joke between me and my wife. She doesn’t ever want to hear me say again, ‘Don’t worry, honey, I think I’ve got it all figured out.’ ”
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