By Harry King
LITTLE ROCK — A column about a pro golfer who does the right thing is rare these days, but both J.P. Hayes and former Razorback Brenden Pappas deserve the ink.
Surviving the six-day ordeal that is the qualifying tournament for the PGA Tour is the backdrop for their story. Hayes tied for eighth and Pappas for 12th and realists will point to good putting or solid shots. Less pragmatic is the idea that they deserved a break, Hayes for his righteousness and Pappas for doing a good deed for a buddy.
The 44-year-old Hayes has been around for years, winning a Tour event in both 1998 and 2002, and losing his Tour card at the end of the 2008 season. A year ago, he was in the second stage of qualifying in Kingwood, Texas when he reached the 12th hole.
Hayes needed a new ball and his caddie grabbed one out of Hayes’ bag. He teed off, chipped onto the green, and marked his ball. At that point, he realized the ball was not the same model as the one he began the round with — a two-stroke penalty.
Despite that blunder, he shot 145 in the first two rounds and was in good shape to advance to the final stage. That night in his hotel room, Hayes realized the ball he used for all of two shots was a Titleist prototype that might not be on the list of equipment approved for tournament play.
He could keep mum and nobody would know. Instead, he called an official in Houston and admitted his error, knowing that playing an illegal ball would mean disqualification. He was quoted as saying, “I would say everybody out here (on the PGA Tour) would have done the same thing.”
Maybe, maybe not. He was DQed and played in barely a dozen Tour events. “It’s not the end of the world,” he said. “It will be fine. It is fine.”
After he finished his sixth round on Monday, a Golf Channel reporter complimented him on getting through the qualifying and raised the possibility of karma. Hayes responded by talking about the many positive things that had happened to him during the year.
A regular on the PGA Tour in 2008, Pappas barely broke the top 100 on the Nationwide Tour money list in 2009. His best year in the big time was in 2003 and that’s the year Chris Couch phoned him. Couch was struggling on the Nationwide Tour and had contacted his home club in Gainesville, Fla., to see if the head pro could use some help.
Couch and his wife were so hard up that she had gone back to work teaching elementary school. At that point, Couch called Pappas.
“That was not an easy call,” Couch told a reporter a few years later. “Brenden and I talked for about 45 minutes when he lent me $3,000. He told me to believe in myself and that it was now or never.”
The next week, Couch tied for 20th in a Nationwide event. A week later, he was second and the $39,600 was his biggest paycheck in two years. Another week, another nice check, and he repaid Pappas.
In 2006, Couch broke through on the PGA Tour with a victory in New Orleans.
Now that Hayes and Pappas have their Tour cards, they must play well enough in 2010 to keep them and that is a difficult task. Arkie Ken Duke earned more than $2.2 million in 2008, but only $382,000 last year and lost his card. This week, he missed the top 25 at Q School by one shot and will return to the Nationwide Tour where the money is about one-tenth that on the PGA Tour.
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Harry King is sports columnist for Stephens Media’s Arkansas News Bureau. His e-mail address is hking@arkansasnews.com.
