Well, so much for the year of Rory, Jordan, Jason and Rickie. Last weekend’s PGA Championship at storied Baltusrol in New Jersey concludes golf’s major championship season. While there is Olympic Golf, the Fed Ex Cup Playoffs, the Ryder Cup and the Race to Dubai still to be contested, golf at its highest level is all about winning one of the game’s major championships. Your year, and in many cases your career, is still defined by winning the Masters, the United States Open, the Open Championship and the PGA Championship. When all is said and done, a green jacket or a Claret Jug is a whole lot more valuable than an Olympic gold medal or a $10 million check from Fed Ex.
The 2016 season will go down as the year of the newbie. Danny Willett, a young and talented Englishman who is a top-10 golfer on the European Tour, won the Masters at Augusta National in April. Dustin Johnson, the game’s best player without a major, finally got that major monkey off his back as he won our National Open at Oakmont in June, regardless of the ineptitude of the blue-blooded blue jackets of the USGA. Henrik Stenson, the game’s best Euro without a major, got the putting monkey off of his back and won the British Open last month in a duel for the ages with American Phil Mickelson. And then there’s 37-year-old Texan Jimmy Walker. Six years ago it was “Who is Jimmy Walker?” Last year it was late-blooming journeyman Jimmy Walker. Now it’s major champion Jimmy Walker.
It was just about six years ago that Walker had his greatest season on the PGA Tour – up to that point. On the all-exempt tour that includes the game’s 125 top money winners for the season, Walker had to make a 10-foot putt on the final hole of the final tournament to secure his PGA Tour card via the top 125 for the first time ever. He made the putt and ended up exactly 125th on the money list. Realizing he needed help with his erratic golf game, the 31-year-old Walker took a chance and left a message with noted golf instructor Butch Harmon. Yes, that Butch Harmon who has worked with Tiger Woods during his early period of domination and Phil Mickelson during his game’s rejuvenation in his 40s. When Harmon first got Walker’s message, he asked a number of his golfing associates the big question. “Who is Jimmy Walker?” It took about eight queries before he talked to someone who knew who Walker was.
Jimmy Walker was born in Oklahoma City in January of 1979. His family moved to the San Antonio area when he was young. He took up golf as a kid, played solid high school and junior golf, and was a member of the golf team at Baylor University. Upon graduation, he turned professional although he wasn’t exactly a household name. He spent a couple of years on the Texas Chili mini-tour circuits and worked his way onto the Nationwide Tour (now the Web.com Tour) in 2003 as a 24-year-old. He learned the mini-tour ropes in 2003 and then took a big step forward as he won Nationwide events in Panama and Louisiana in 2004. He was that circuit’s player of the year in 2004, graduated to the PGA Tour in 2005, and then began a career trend. He was one of the better mini-tour professionals, but he just wasn’t good enough to stick around the PGA Tour. He had an injury prone 2005 and then finished 202nd on the PGA Tour in 2006. He played well on the Nationwide Tour in 2007 and got back onto the big tour in 2008, only to finish 192nd on the PGA Tour money list. He returned to Q School in the autumn of 2008, got himself back on tour, and then had to rely on late-season heroics in 2009 to secure his card with his 125th-place finish. He was a 30-year-old. After he made that 10-footer, it was a matter of incremental improvement as he kept getting better at being a journeyman.
In 2010 he was 103rd on the tour. The following year he worked his way down to 67th place. In 2012 Jimmy finished 43rd on the money list and in 2013 he topped the $2 million mark in prize money as he finished 36th with five top-10s. The PGA Tour started the wraparound schedule in 2013-14 and Walker was its immediate beneficiary as he won the season-opening Frys at Silverado in Napa. It was his first tour win in 187 tries. Yet he was no one-hit wonder as he then reeled off wins in the Hawaiian Open and at Pebble Beach. He finished in seventh place on the tour’s money list, played on the Ryder Cup team, and made just under $6 million. The 2014-15 season wasn’t as dynamic but Walker did win twice, repeating at Hawaii and beating Jordan Spieth in the Texas Open. That’s pretty good stuff for a 36-year-old journeyman.
This year seemed like a step backward for Walker as he entered the PGA Championship ranked 50th on the PGA Tour money list. He had five missed cuts and hadn’t played especially well since the spring. Yet one never knows when it comes to golf at the highest levels. Walker opened play at the PGA Championship with a 65 at Baltusrol and followed it up with a 66. He was tied for the lead and then had to sit out all day Saturday because of heavy rains that pounded the New York area that afternoon. He played his third round early on Sunday morning and shot 68 to maintain his lead. He returned Sunday afternoon to complete the tournament and came up big when it was most needed.
Walker made nine consecutive pars on the front nine and found himself atop a crowded leader board with defending champ Jason Day, Open champ Henrik Stenson, and Branden Grace. Walker found the greenside bunker on the 10th hole and holed out the sand shot for his first birdie of the day. He made another birdie on the 11th and then made a crucial birdie on the 17th hole to take a three-shot lead into the final hole. Yet nothing is easy in golf. As Walker walked up the 18th fairway, he realized that Day had just eagled the 18th, cutting his safe three-stroke lead to one. Yet the journeyman prevailed, made his par on 18, shot a final-round 67, and moments later was holding up the Wannamaker Trophy as the 98th annual PGA champion.
Most impressively, Walker didn’t make a bogey during his final 28 holes even though he had to play 36 holes Sunday. Good things happen to good people and Jimmy Walker has shown the inner fortitude to get to this unexpected point in his career. His wife and kids added color to the 18th green celebration, and it must have been a nice moment for his caddie, Andy Summers. Summers competed against Walker in college golf, had a lot of talent and yet now suffers from MS. He has been on Walker’s bag throughout his PGA Tour career.
In the end we have four first-time major championship winners in 2016. After all the hype of the new breed, who could have forecast such an outcome? Well, that’s why they tee it up.
