This isn’t the story I was hoping to write this evening.
I was all set for to be going on about how Phil Mickelson held his lead at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am for his 43rd PGA Tour win and a jump start for a charge towards another major at age 45.
But this is why we play the game. And this is why we love this game. Was Phil the favorite to win as he went to sleep last night? Surely.
Was Vaughn Taylor thinking of coming from six shots back for a win at Pebble Beach? Definitely not.
But strange things happen on the golf course and Taylor’s seven under 65 certainly fits that bill.
Taylor got into the clubhouse after a brilliant round which featured nine birdies against two bogeys and a run of four straight form thirteen through sixteen that got him to -17 and two ahead of Mickelson.
Mickelson still had some magic left as he birdied seventeen to close to within one shot. A birdie on the last seemed very probable when he chipped to five feet and when the ball started to dive in the hole it looked like Phil the Thrill would take Vaughn to extra holes.
But the ball spun out and he finished with par and while it left Phil with another familiar second place finish it changed Vaughn Taylor’s life.
Any PGA Tour win can be a life changer. Nowadays a players first win on the PGA Tour means a million dollar paycheck, a two year exemption and a trip to The Masters. But neither of these players would have been first time winners.
Phil Mickelson is one of the best players of his time. 42 PGA Tour wins, five majors, Hall of Fame, Hedge Fund guy at his side, untold riches, fame and fortune and a fairy tale life, blah, blah, blah. Other than laying notice to the young guns that Phil still has some game would this really change his life? I don’t think so.
Vaughn Taylor on the other hand just had his life changed in a very, very big way. Yes, this is his third win on the PGA Tour but a win at a regular season event at Pebble Beach while closing out a Hall of Famer goes a lot further then the Reno-Tahoe Open.
Taylor’s two prior wins came in 2004 and 2005 at the opposite field Reno-Tahoe Open. All the big boys were playing at the WGC while Taylor was winning $540,000 dollars two years in a row at Reno but that’s still a good paycheck.
But today Taylor cashes a $1,260,000 check and that’s not the best perk.
For a guy that has been bouncing between the Web.com and the PGA Tour with no real place to call home this settles things. Now, he plays the PGA Tour for the next two years.
This was big for Vaughn, so much bigger than Phil’s 43rd win.
You heard it in his voice and saw it in his eyes and in the tears that rolled down his wife’s cheeks.
A win for Phil would have been nice but this win for Vaughn was a real life changer.
We talk about “feel good” stories about how a guy that hasn’t had the best luck can sometimes come out on top. Vaughn did that today. He’s a guy that’s very popular among his fellow pros and appeared so overcome he could barely speak after the win.
So it wasn’t the story I had hoped to write tonight. But it is such a better one.
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