Nice Guys Do Finish First

People thought Steve Stricker would never graduate from the school of hard knocks. He has...with high honors

Steve Stricker is a rarity in the world of professional sports.

By Tim Rosaforte

August 29, 2007

Back home in Madison, Wis., Steve Stricker is just a regular guy. "That's just the way he is," said father-in-law Dennis Tiziani on Sunday, after "Strick" won The Barclays for his first victory in six years. "When he comes here, when he comes home, he's one of them. He's the one cooking food, making sure everybody gets fed."

Out on tour, Strick's an approachable, down-to-earth, regular guy, too. Maybe too regular, too nice a guy, to be a cold-blooded closer of a golf tournament, especially a big one like The Barclays: Going back to the quote from his father-in-law, it seems like everybody has fed off Stricker as he hit the part of the learning curve where pressure hits the swing changes and the inevitable meltdown occurs. Starting back at Winged Foot during the 2006 U.S. Open, and progressing through the British Open at Carnoustie, Stricker has put himself in position, only to be fast-food for the field on Sunday.

This past Sunday at Westchester C.C. wasn't like that, although there were moments early in the round where it appeared that Stricker would be too soft for his own good. His family could even feel it. Gathered around the TV set at Stricker's home in Madison, Tiziani watched with Stricker's wife, Nicki, his 8-year-old daughter, Bobbi, the wife of caddie Tom Mitchell and the most recent addition of Team Stricker, 15-month-old Isabella Nicole. She was too young to know any better, to have sat and watched the front nine at Carnoustie, where her dad, one of the best putters in the world, missed a couple of three-footers to fall woefully behind in the chase for the Claret Jug. Not Bobbi. "Every time Steve had a putt, she would go behind the couch," Tiziani said. "She'd say, 'Grandpa, is daddy going to win?' ''

Honestly, Tiziani didn't know what to tell her. With three holes remaining at Westchester, it looked like K.J. Choi's tournament. The Korean was dropping cross-country putts on the back nine -- having a 43-footer go in the hole after being redirected by Hunter Mahan's ball marker at 15 to take a one-shot lead. Stricker turned in even par and bogeyed the short 10th and No. 13. With Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson making a move, the first round of the FedEx Cup playoffs looked like it was slipping from Stricker's grasp.

But Stricker didn't disappear. After hanging close to Choi with a 2 at 14, he rattled off three closing birdies for his first win on United States soil since the 1996 Western Open at Cog Hill in Chicago. For clarification, his last victory was the 2001 WGC-Accenture World Match Play Championship in Australia. That was the week nobody showed up and those who did, didn't appear to care. Tiger Woods skipped. Ernie Els got off the plane and toured the course in a cart, beer in hand, and lost to Pierre Fulke in the semis. Vijay Singh lost early to Toru Taniguchi. Stricker beat Padraig Harrington, Scott Verplank, Justin Leonard, Nick O'Hern, Taniguchi and Fulke in the finals.

At the time, Stricker was 91st in the World Rankings and had not made a cut on the PGA Tour since the previous July. Bobbi was born in 1998, moving wife and caddie Nicki off the bag and into the role of mother. Stricker went into a slide, and it was blamed on a combination of Nicki not being there with him and the love of hunting over hitting balls. In truth, he asked Nicki to quit her day job and take care of Bobbi because he didn't want the friction hurting his marriage. It took the impending birth of Nicole for him to get out of the tree stands in Wisconsin and into Tiziani's three-sided mobile home that serves as a hitting bay at Cherokee C.C. in Madison.

"It seemed like every time Nicki and I have had a baby I've had a good year," he said. "I think just maybe it puts me more at ease or whatever. But during that time when I wasn't playing so well, I got into some bad habits before we had children and I ended up firing my wife as a caddie, basically, because things were not working out so well and I didn't want anything to come between her and I. When she's on the road with me every week out of the year, caddieing, seeing her 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to not seeing her, it was hard. Probably could have been an excuse somewhat, but I'm over that. They understand that this is what I need to do. I understand that I need to be out here and they understand that this is where I need to be, and she's very supportive that way. It helps to have a good wife at home."