Front And Center

He is not long and he has trouble getting noticed (by some magazines), but Players' champ Fred Funk is a legitimate big stick

Funk, a self-proclaimed "pea-shooter," recently tested an oversize driver at the World Golf Village

By Tim Rosaforte

Photos By Eric Larson

April 29, 2005

Little-known fact about Fred Funk: He had never been on the cover of Golf World until this week.

Why is that a big deal? Because Funk, 48, has seven PGA Tour wins and—although no "official" records are kept—it's believed no other golfer has had that many tour victories and never been on our cover. (Funk certainly doesn't doubt that—trust us.) So when he won the Players Championship five weeks ago, he admits that despite all the hubbub that resulted, he couldn't wait to see Golf World. The date of that issue was April 1, but the cover that greeted Funk was, sadly, no April Fool's Day joke. It was a picture of Tiger Woods, with a headline touting the upcoming Masters. Funk's Players win—delayed 24 hours because of lousy weather—wasn't even mentioned.

"To be on the cover," Funk said recently, "I felt like I had to win the Grand Slam or something."

The story would be funnier if it didn't exacerbate Funk's one noticeable character flaw: Though engaging and popular with players, sponsors and tournament officials, Funk fights a shaky self-confidence—not entirely surprising from a guy who began his sports career as a pint-sized boxer; got cut from his college golf team and didn't really make his mark there until he became its head coach; ranks 182nd on tour in driving distance and doesn't scare anyone with his putter; and even now, 16 years and more than $16 million after first earning his tour card, behaves like he's just lucky to be here.

"I've always said I'm glad golf is such a hard game because if it wasn't more people would be doing it well," says Funk. "There's a fine line between being good enough and not being good enough. Somehow I figured out a way to be good enough and to still be getting better at almost age 49."

When Funk is in one of his deepest, you know, funks—which usually strike while he's playing some big-hitter's layout like Augusta National—he begins thinking about the Champions Tour and its shorter courses. As he said when an official pointed out that one of the perks of his Players victory was a five-year tour exemption: "What am I gonna do with that?"

But self-deprecation, a great iron game and the straightest tee ball on tour can be powerful forces. Like the time a couple of years ago when he was playing a casual round with friends at Pablo Creek, the private club near his home in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., where he belongs. The 18th hole has a back tee that sits on a small island of grass in the middle of a marsh. Funk, naturally, split the fairway with his 270-yard drive, and by the time he and his companions reached his ball, a spirited discussion about Funk's uncanny precision had ensued. On a whim, Funk teed his ball, turned around and, using his driver, belted the sphere back toward the tee. It didn't just land and come to rest on the tee—it stopped directly between the black markers. Skeptical? Larry Moody, the pastor who leads the PGA Tour's weekly Bible study group, was a witness.

"He's just a bulldog," says Jack Nicklaus, who captained Funk at the 2003 Presidents Cup in South Africa, "a good, steady, solid, down-the-middle player. He's not going to dazzle anybody with a lot of very low scores, but he's going to play good solid golf. And good solid golf ain't all that bad."

Funk grew up on Bridgewater Street in College Park, Md., about a 5-iron from the 14th green at the University of Maryland GC. But golf wasn't his first sport. One of his neighbors, Joe Gardella, who had been 49-1 as a Golden Gloves boxer, was organizing a team at the Adelphi Boys Club, and brought Fred, 8 years old and 56 pounds soaking wet, to the first tryout. Fred stayed on the team until he was 16, boxing in the winter and then switching to golf as soon as the ground thawed, first at Paint Branch GC, a nine-hole county-run course near his home, and later the University Course.

Future world champion Sugar Ray Leonard was a Maryland Boys Club boxer at the same time as Funk, but—thankfully for Fred—the two were never in the same weight class. Fred, whose best showing was runner-up in a county qualifier one year, admits his most vivid memory was a clocking he suffered at an exhibition match at Virginia's Lorton Prison, producing just one set of the many blackened eyes, bloodied lips and broken noses he suffered over the years. It eventually dawned on him golf was a safer sport. As he explains, "You can't box and not get hurt."