The journey before the putt

Golf Digest, April, 2001 by Dave Kindred

A bizarre putt at Q school symbolizes Joe Daley's road to the PGA Tour

On the fourth day of Q school, with two rounds to play, Joe Daley was 16 under par and moving with the leaders. "Cruisin' along," he says.

His 17th hole that day was a 158-yard par 3 into the wind. When his playing partner's 8-iron shot dropped on the green's front edge, Daley went up a club. "I wanted to hit a smooth 7, but I came over it and pulled it into the water," he says.

From the drop area, 72 yards away, he put a sand-wedge shot 18 feet behind the hole.

   His first putt rolled four feet past. The putt coming back was simple. He
   thought, "Left center."

The journey

It was her birthday, in the spring of 1991, and the Atlantic Ocean moved over her feet, for after dinner they walked on the Virginia beach. Joe Daley had the ring in a box hidden in his sock.

"Come over here," he said to Carol, and he handed her the ring, and she said, "What does this mean?"

He said, "What do you mean, 'What does this mean'? "

She waited.

"Oh," he said, "I have to say it?"

She waited.

"Carol, will you marry me?"

"Yes."

He said, "But you do know, don't you, what I want to do?"

"Yes."

He wanted to chase the dream.

She wanted to chase it with him.

And what a dream at what a time. Some men his age had already given it up. He was 30. He had been a wholesale credit manager since graduation from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. He played golf, as he had in school, and now and then friends would remind him he could really play, as during a pro-am when he watched PGA Tour players.

"They'd ask, 'Why aren't you out here with these guys?' " Daley said.

So the newlyweds hit the road. They went to Florida, where she worked as a teacher and he worked on his game, moonlighting as a banquet waiter to help pay the bills. Slowly they saved $5,500; they tried not to spend it quickly. "A big night out," Carol says, "was pizza once a week."

The putt

If you're a professional golfer 40 years old, as Joe Daley was on that day in December, you've knocked in tens of thousands of four-footers. Still, four days into Q school, you grind on those putts, because if you miss them you can be a dreamer, lover, husband and banquet waiter, but you cannot be a professional golfer.

Left center.

For years Daley carried with him a putting-practice gizmo, a cup liner that reduced the regulation hole opening by an inch. Heaven only knows how many hours on how many putting greens in how many countries he stood hunched over putts just like this four-footer.

Of 169 players in the final-stage field, 36 would qualify for the 2001 PGA Tour. The next 51 would go to the Buy.com Tour that, nice as it is--and it's maybe the third-best tour in the world--is the minor leagues.

It's the Dakota Dunes Open.

It's the dream deferred.

Daley had played well all week at La Quinta's PGA West Jack Nicklaus courses, starting with a 65. Now, a four-footer. Left center.

The journey

Crisscrossing North America for two years and more, Joe Daley, 6-foot-3 and 159 pounds, folded himself into a tiny Nissan 200SX and drove 200,000 miles. The Canadian tour in 1992. Florida mini-tour events in '93.

Chile, South Africa, Bermuda, Jamaica in '94 and '95. "It's not 9-to-5, 48 weeks a year," Daley says. "I had that for 10 years. I know what that's about. We could have that now. We could have the two jobs, the stability, the house. But this is a lot more fun and a lot more rewarding. It's the unknown. It's an adventure."

Says Carol: "My friends in teaching, when I told them I was going to Florida with Joe, said, 'What are you doing with your life?' Well, now they're still teaching and I've been all over the world."

Twice he qualified for the PGA Tour, first in '96 and again two years later, but failed to play well enough long enough to stay. "Such commotion out there," he says. "So many people, so much happening." One journalist described Daley in those years as "a kid in a candy store," changing equipment, playing too many pro-ams, listening to too much well-intentioned advice.

Daley saw Tiger Woods make the first hole-in-one of his pro career. He shared a first-round lead with Greg Norman (a headline began, "Norman, unknown Joe Daley . . . "). He tied for sixth in the B.C. Open. In two years in the big leagues, Daley earned $138,379. He came to a harsh realization: "My swing needed work, big-time. I'd developed movement that I didn't need. It looked like Jim Furyk's."

While working with an Old Dominion teammate, John Hulbert, to reshape his swing, Daley lost even his Buy.com card. He already was an old man on a young man's journey. Asked by Toronto sportswriter John Gordon if he thought his time had come and gone, Daley said, "There's no quit in Joe Daley."

He made nine straight Buy.com cuts in 2000, had five top-five finishes and, with $151,233, finished 23rd on the money list, good enough to earn a spot in the final PGA Tour Qualifying School.

The putt

He needed to hit the four-foot putt firmly, left center. He hit it just that way on just that line. It was in. It disappeared.