San Diego charger roars back

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/07/2010 (5845 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Aaron Goldberg knows all about the kinds of punches golf can throw at an aspiring player.

It can be a mean-spirited, uncaring game as easily as a rewarding, life-enhancing pastime.

Hoping to take his first run at PGA Tour qualifying school in the latter half of 2008, he had to enter a pre-qualifying tournament because he was a newly minted pro without a record.

He passed that test with flying colours.

"I was 18 shots clear of the cut," he said Sunday.

Just one problem, that dreaded scorecard error, and for that he was tossed out on his ear for that year.

"I wrote it down wrong on my (scorecard) rip-off and so did the guy keeping my score," Goldberg said. "I triple-checked my score but I was checking the wrong thing."

Not even Monday qualifying and making a Nationwide Tour cut a few weeks later earned him a reprieve.

Players aren’t allowed to have "two bites at the apple," the PGA Tour said.

Fast forward about 22 months and the San Diego native has put that incident long in his rear-view mirror.

Today, he’s celebrating his 25th birthday on his way to Toronto, where he’s the newest Canadian Tour Players Cup champion who earned an invite to the RBC Canadian Open at St. George’s.

The Players Cup winner’s cheque for $48,000 wasn’t hard to take, either.

With birdies at Nos. 12 and 13 Sunday afternoon at Pine Ridge Golf Club, Goldberg closed with five pars to deny runner-up Jim Rutledge a seventh Canadian Tour victory.

Goldberg’s final round of five-under 66 allowed him to come from three shots behind and add a win to his already more-than-decent season of three previous top-10’s, including a tie for second at Victoria.

"I’ve played well this year before, I but I’ve felt like I haven’t quite gotten four good rounds together in a tournament," said Goldberg, who joined the Canadian Tour not long after that Q-school disappointment, winning the Canadian Tour’s winter qualifier in California. "I really wanted to get that out of the way, break through and win a tournament.

"It’s a great feeling."

He had moderate success in his rookie season, keeping his card, though he missed the cut at Pine Ridge last summer by two shots.

He took the first-round lead here this year, and returned to that Thursday mentality when he came back Sunday morning to complete his third round.

Play had been disrupted Saturday by lightning, and delayed again Sunday morning by thick fog.

Goldberg gained a shot back early Sunday morning and on his final tally for the day, made just one bogey in 25 holes.

Now he’s the Tour’s new money-leader with $75,912 and a strong contender for another of its prizes. The top two players at the end of the season earn free passes through the first of three gruelling stages of PGA Tour qualifying school.

"Besides well-run events, the biggest perks of the Tour are getting in the Gretzky (a Nationwide event), getting in the (Canadian) Open and getting past first stage," Goldberg said. "I’d love not to have to do first stage.

"You’d like to think you’ll get through first stage every time but it’s not a given."

He closed off the victory with a confident performance on the 72nd hole. He barely missed the green at the par-4 18th to the right, and had an uphill chip of about 45 feet to the hole.

"Up a slope, very similar to that one I had earlier on nine, left that one a little short and I wanted to make sure I got this one up the slope," he said.

From three feet, there was never any doubt about the par putt.

The Canadian Tour’s all-time money-leader, Mike Grob of Montana, wound up third on Sunday, two back of the winner, while Californian Rob Grube was fourth, another shot away. Third-round leader Vince Covello shot 73 and dropped into a five-way tie for fifth.

Following Goldberg to this week’s Open at St. George’s will be fellow Americans Brock Mackenzie, Will Wilcox, and Rob Grube, Abbotsford, B.C.’s Adam Hadwin, and Rutledge, whose $28,800 second-place cheque bumped him all the way into the Tour’s last Open exemption.

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca

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