Second chance

The World Ranking says Steve Stricker is better than everyone but Tiger, Phil, and Ernie. Yes, things have changed

By John Feinstein

Photos By Chris Stanford

June 2008

The World Ranking says Steve Stricker is better than everyone but Tiger, Phil, and Ernie. Yes, things have changed.

Steve Stricker isn't sure what has been his best moment in the past couple of years.

It might have been the birdie-birdie-birdie finish at Westchester last August for his first PGA Tour victory in almost seven years.

It could have been the look on the face of longtime pal and fellow Wisconsin native Jerry Kelly during a tearful hug as Stricker came off the green that day. Perhaps it was the coterie of friends and family who greeted him at the airport when he flew back with the trophy.

Maybe it was going from wondering if he could play enough to stay on tour to making more than $7 million on the golf course in 2007.

Or maybe it was what Tiger Woods said after Stricker had been named the PGA Tour's comeback player of the year for a second consecutive year. "You realize," Woods said, "that you've done something no one will ever do again."

Stricker hadn't thought of it that way. But hearing it -- especially from Woods, who had stuck with him during the bad times -- made it pretty cool.

"It also tells you how far I had to come back that I had the chance to win it two years in a row," he says. "In the past, when I've played really well I might have gotten a little satisfied. I don't want to do that this time. My goal was to win again; I did it. Now I have other goals: win a major, make a Ryder Cup team. There's plenty to work on."

Stricker has become the most recent tour symbol of hard work paying off, bringing a career back from near-dead. On a breezy December day in Florida in 2005, he walked off the 18th green at Orange County National Golf Club after flunking Q-school finals thinking he might be finished as a serious golfer.

"The thought had crossed my mind during that year that maybe I should think about doing something else," he says. "The first few days at Q school I couldn't hit a ball straight off the tee. Everything was short and crooked. I had that shot down. The guys I was playing with were hitting it 50 yards longer than me and straighter. I was thinking, What's going on here?"

That last day at Q school might have been a turning point. He hit the ball a little straighter, made some putts and shot 67, missing getting his playing privileges back by two shots.

"It made me realize that there was some kind of a golf game still locked inside me," he said. "I was actually kind of fired up when I went home for the winter, wanting to work on my game. That day was really a starting point."

When Stricker went home to Madison, Wis., for the winter, he talked about his golf swing -- as he always had -- with Dennis Tiziani, the longtime Wisconsin golf coach and his teacher since college. Tiziani didn't want to tell Stricker what he thought was wrong. He wanted Steve to figure it out on his own.

"That way he wouldn't have any doubts," Tiziani says. "I had to stop being a teacher and become a resource. He asked me questions, I answered them. Steve's always been streaky. Some of that's because he's so anal. If something is off just a speck, it can really throw him off. He hadn't lost his golf swing. It was still in there. He just had to find it."

Stricker first made it to the tour in 1994 and was labeled a future star. He wasn't great off the tee, but he was solid with his irons, and he could really putt. And he was completely comfortable with Nicki, his wife, on his bag. They had met when Stricker began taking lessons from Tiziani.

"We were sitting on a cart after I'd taken a lesson," Stricker says. "Nicki walked by. I elbowed Tiz and said, 'Hey, who's that?'

"He said, 'That's my daughter.' "

Steve and Nicki still argue about who asked whom out first, but they became partners -- on and off the golf course -- not long after that.

Stricker played well his first two years on tour, then won twice in 1996 and was fourth on the money list. That was the first time he felt satisfied. He signed one of those big-money contracts with an equipment company and spent the next year trying to find a driver he could hit straight, plummeting to 130th on the money list. A year later, he almost won the PGA Championship at Sahalee (second to Vijay Singh) and was 13th on the money list. Then came more ups and downs -- he won the Accenture Match Play in 2001, but four years later he had dropped to 337th in the World Golf Ranking.

"If there had been something else I was dying to do, I might have gone and done it," he says. "But there wasn't. What I was really thinking was, if I could make a couple hundred thousand a year playing 10 to 12 times on my past-champion status, maybe that was enough. Maybe that was all I had left."

Nicki didn't see it that way. She knows her husband and his golf game. When he talked about quitting, she mostly listened. "He needed a sounding board, someone to vent to," she says. "I've always thought that guys will do the opposite of what you tell them, so I just told him he should do whatever he thought would make him happy.

"I think he got to a point that a lot of guys get to: When he started on the tour he wanted to make money, make a living. He did that. Once he did that, things changed. He needed to find a way to motivate himself again. What people don't understand is, it wasn't something that just happened. It was gradual." What helped Stricker when he began searching was knowing exactly what was wrong with his game. He could still make putts, but making putts for bogey didn't do a lot of good. His iron game was OK, but hitting greens after pitching out of the rough wasn't of much use, either. It all came back to driving the golf ball. "It had gotten to the point where I dreaded walking onto a tee box," he says. "I would stand there saying to myself, When will this be over? It was like going to the dentist. I was gripping the club so tightly there was no way for me to have any tempo at all in my swing. I would stand there fiddling with the club hoping to find a comfortable grip, but I couldn't do it. Sometimes I'd walk off the tee, and my hands would be sore from gripping the club so tight. I just couldn't make myself relax."