In the world of high level competitive golf, there are no overnight successes. While the story of Tin Cup is a most interesting one, golfers just don’t come out of a driving range overrun with armadillos in west Texas to suddenly have a chance to win the United States Open. Everyone has a history, everyone has a level of success. In most cases, everyone has a pedigree.
This past Sunday, the first stage of the Web.com Tour’s qualifying series played out at the Scarlet Course at Ohio State University in Columbus. The top 75 golfers on the money list from the 2018 edition of the Web.com Tour were joined by the first 75 golfers on the PGA Tour to lose their exempt status because of a less than stellar 2017-18 campaign. Those professionals who finished from 126th to 200th on the PGA Tour’s Fed Ex Cup points list were getting a mulligan of sorts. Although they failed to gain a spot on the world’s most competitive as well as lucrative tour for the 2018-19 wrap-around season, they had a four-week respite to try and play well and get back inside those golden ropes.
In the past, we’ve had some golfers of pedigree find themselves in the situation. In 2008 Trevor Immelman won the Masters. It was pretty heady stuff for the 28-year-old from South Africa. The Masters win got Immelman a five-year exemption on the PGA Tour. Amazingly, by 2013 Immelman had lost his game. For the 2014 season, he was out of his Masters exemption and a less than exemplary 2013 found him outside of the PGA Tour’s top 125. Trevor got back to the big show by winning the first Web.com qualifying tournament in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in early September. He defeated a very young Patrick Cantlay by one stroke. As a brief aside, things didn’t turn around for the now 38-year-old Immelman. He currently works for the Fox Channel and does a nice job as an on-air analyst.
Peter Uihlein was literally born to be a golfer. His father spent decades as the chief executive of Achushnet Golf. Their two major brands are Titleist and Foot Joy. Peter went to the David Ledbetter Academy in Florida when he was a 13-year-old. He was the AJGA junior golfer of the year. He went to collegiate golf powerhouse Oklahoma State. He was on a winning Walker Cup team. He won the U.S. Amateur at Chambers Bay. He received the Ben Hogan Award as the game’s top college golfer.
Then Uihlein turned pro and it all went south. He failed to get through PGA Tour Q School. He went to Europe to qualify for their tour and he fell short of gaining exempt status. Visiting pro golf’s version of the hinterlands, Peter played on the Challenge Tour and on the South African Tour. A fourth-place finish in the Tshwane Open, co-sanctioned by the Safari Tour and the European Tour, got him into other European Tour events. He then won the Madeira Islands Open and suddenly he was a circuit regular. Along the way, Uihlein got an invite into last year’s Puerto Rico Open, finished fifth, and had enough Fed Ex Cup points to finish inside the American tour’s top 200. He entered the Web.com’s qualifying tournament at Columbus last September, won it, and got onto the PGA Tour. Currently he is ranked 83rd on the PGA Tour and is playing this weekend in Boston in stage two of the Fed Ex Cup playoffs.
Last weekend, the 150 golfers currently on the outside looking in, met once again in Columbus, Ohio, for week one of the Web.com qualifying series. With four events on the calendar, it would stand to reason that just one finish in the top five would probably be enough to earn a PGA Tour card for the next season. One solid week would be all that was needed.
The Columbus tournament headed into overtime last Sunday and the two participants tied atop the leader board had eerily similar backgrounds. Peter Malnati, who was ranked 161st on tour this year, is 31 years old. He turned pro in 2009. Robert Streb, who had finished 178th on tour this year, is 31 years old. He too turned pro in 2010. Malnati played college golf at Missouri while Streb competed on the collegiate level at Kansas State. Malnati won the Missouri Open in 2008. Streb won the Oklahoma Open in 2009. Malnati won the Nebraska Open in 2009 and 2010. Streb won a second Oklahoma Open in 2011.
Malnati worked his way onto the Web.com Tour in 2013, won a tourney in Knoxville, and got onto the big tour in 2014. He lost exempt status, returned to the Web.com in 2015, won the Brasil Championship, and got back onto the PGA Tour for 2015-16. That November he won the Sanderson Farms in Mississippi and was exempt through this year. He never approximated the success of the Sanderson tournament over the course of the past two seasons.
Streb played the Hooters Tour in 2010 and 2011 and got to the Web.com in 2012. His rookie season was a fruitful one as he won the Myan Classic in Pittsburgh and got an exempt pass onto the PGA Tour for 2013. However, Robert finished 126th on the points list and lost his fully exempt status. Several weeks after the 2014 Masters, Streb got into the field at New Orleans and finished a most impressive second. He got into other tour events that season and finished 71st on the money list. As the wrap-around 2014-15 season began, he came through to win the McGladrey Classic at Sea Island, Georgia, and was exempt through 2017. Several nice finishes, including a playoff loss to Danny Lee at the Greenbrier in 2015, kept him relevant. Yet just like Malnati, Streb struggled in 2018. He too was no longer exempt.
Even the most serious fans of the game would have a hard time picking Robert Streb and Peter Malnati out of a lineup. Yet they played major college golf, won state opens, won on the Web.com Tour, and even won on the PGA Tour. Pretty impressive stuff for guys who have spent their professional golf careers flying largely under the radar.
There are hundreds if not thousands of really outstanding professional golfers who are on the fringes of the American PGA Tour and the European Tour. For that matter, there’s hundreds more who excel in South Africa, Asia, Australia and Japan. It’s a very thin line between exempt and non-exempt, between millions and five-figure debt. From week to week we see why Justin Thomas and Brooks Koepka are so very good. Yet three hours before them on the first tee are pros such as Peter Malnati, Robert Streb, Peter Uihlein and the rest, grinding out a 35th-place finish. They’ve all got pedigree and history and a blatant need to sustain their successes.
