No place like a Tenn. home
Defending FESJC champ settles in to state
The defending champion of the FedEx St. Jude Classic is a Tennessean, a claim the FESJC hasn’t been able to make, or promote, since the mid-1970s.
Ben Crane, a Texan when he won the FESJC, enters this week’s PGA Tour stop at TPC Southwind defending a title and proclaiming an affinity for his new hometown of Brentwood, a suburb of Nashville.
Crane and his family moved to Brentwood in August after the PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky, which will make him the first resident of the state to defend the FESJC title since Memphian Cary Middlecoff in 1962. (Chattanoogan Gibby Gilbert won in 1976, but he did not participate in 1977.)
Crane, 39, will do so proudly, probably stopping just short of draping his caddie in the Tennessee flag.
“We were talking about moving,” Crane said. “We first went to Nashville and looked around and we never even went to Charlotte because we liked Nashville so much.”
“It’s been great,” he said. “We love it. We’ve been getting plugged in. Our kids are at a great school. We couldn’t be
more thrilled. We’ve met a lot of great friends.”
After spending the previous 13 years in the Dallas area, Crane said he was captivated by changing of the seasons and the burst of colors in the fall. He has enjoyed the hiking opportunities and area lakes.
He’s also become enamored with TPC Southwind, a 3½-hour drive from his new home. En route to last year’s victory, Crane had three rounds in the 60s. On the final day, in which he was required to play 30 holes because of earlier weather delays, he survived to finish at 10-under 270.
“I wasn’t playing well leading up to (the FESJC),” Crane said. “But I had finished something like 30th at the Byron Nelson two weeks earlier and it was the first time in a while I felt like there were some signs of hope for me, it let me know it wasn’t necessarily a total disaster every time I teed it up.”
Crane had attempted to qualify for the U.S. Open on the Monday of the FESJC, but after 28 holes of the 36-hole sectional qualifier, he picked up his golf ball and called it a day.
“I was playing bad and I knew I wasn’t going to (qualify),” he said. “I remember saying I had to save myself for the (FESJC).”
The strategy worked. Crane opened with a 7-under 63, his best score in 30 rounds at TPC Southwind dating to 2002. It was a round aided by perfect scoring conditions: no wind, and greens softened by a three-hour rain delay.
He followed with a 65 on Friday, a third-round 69 and final round 3-over 73 to win by one stroke over John Merritt. He made only one birdie in 30 holes Sunday and his final round did not include a birdie. Still, it was enough for Crane’s first win on Tour in three years.
“I didn’t see it coming,” he said of his FESJC win. “It was nice to rewire the wires. I think I enjoyed it more (than the previous four titles). You just don’t know if there is ever going to be another one.
”If someone had said you can finish 10th at Memphis, would you take it? I would have been thrilled. We (he and his caddie, Joel Stock) weren’t really thinking about winning the golf tournament.”
But he said it was a wonderful gift, a reward, of sorts, for the work he had done to alleviate back pain with an altered swing. Stock said the goal during the week was simply to improve.
“There were many sleepless nights thinking about the different things I could do to improve,” Crane said.
The celebration of his first PGA Tour win since the 2011 McGladrey Classic in Sea Island, Georgia, continued when he returned to Dallas. It was an emotional release after several months of struggles, including missing four of his five cuts before the FESJC.
“We invited 80 of our friends to come over,” Crane said. “We got a couple of food trucks, hired a DJ and we brought in some bounce houses for the kids. We threw a huge party to celebrate because that win ... it was a gift.”