Tway Comes Up $515.19 Short of Money Title

When he left the Professional Golfers Assn. tour to return home to Australia, Greg Norman said there was only one way he could hold his lead in the money standings.

“Bob Tway would have to break both of his legs not to pass me,” Norman said.

More than two months and seven tournaments later, Tway finished his PGA season Friday. He was still standing. He also was still in second place.

All Tway had to do to become the 1986 money leader was advance to today’s third round of the Seiko Tucson Match Play Championship at Randolph Park North.

But after struggling in a victory Thursday over Brett Upper, Tway was due for a downer. He shot a 73, three over par, in Friday’s wind-blown second round and lost by four strokes to Steve Pate.

Tway received a check for $5,000, leaving him $515.19 short of Norman.

“Poor guy,” one tournament official said as Tway left the clubhouse. “Don’t you think we should take up a collection for him?”

“Not really,” a tour official said.

In official money this year, Tway won $652,780.46.

Including unofficial money, which is money that doesn’t count to the PGA but, presumably, does to the IRS, Tway has won $1,163,923.

“I am, I guess, pretty disappointed,” Tway said after Friday’s round. “I wish I had played better to achieve the one goal I still had to achieve. I played mediocre. Mediocre doesn’t win out here.

“But if somebody said at the first of the year that I was going to do all of this, I’d have jumped up and down.”

After failing to qualify for the tour the first three times he tried, Tway, 27, was just glad to be out here last year, when he finished 45th in the money standings with $164,023.

This year, he had a goal.

“I wanted to win a tournament before the Masters,” he said Friday.

He did that.

Then he won three more tournaments, including the PGA, in which he chipped in on the final hole for a two-stroke victory over Norman.

Tway also finished first in the Vantage Cup standings, which earned him $500,000 in unofficial money, and he already has clinched PGA player-of-the-year honors.

“I guess if I’d also been the money leader, it would have been pretty phenomenal,” Tway said.

“But I can’t help but think that if I’d just made one more shot somewhere down the road . . . “

A reporter asked Tway if he could remember any shot in particular he’d like to have back.

“I don’t want to do that,” Tway said. “There’s many of them, I’m sure.”

Most of them have been within the last two months. After Norman left to play the Australia-New Zealand tour in late August, Tway needed only $30,490.96 in his last seven tournaments to become the money leader. Tway earned almost that much per tournament during the first eight months of the year.

But in the last two months, his best finish has been a tie for 12th. His largest paycheck has been $8,400.

Still, he entered the Vantage tournament last week in San Antonio, needing only to survive the cut to pass Norman. Tway missed by two shots.

This was his last chance.

On the surface, it appeared that Tway was a prohibitive favorite in the second round. Pate, whose claim to fame is that he’s not kin to Jerry Pate, is 54th on the money list with $163,600 and has missed the cut in his last two tournaments. But he shot a 64 Thursday, tying for low round of the day.

With the desert wind playing havoc with the scores, no one shot 64 Friday.

Through 11 holes, Pate, who lives in Los Angeles, felt fortunate to be at par, leading Tway by three shots.

But Tway made his first birdie on No. 12 to pull within two, then hit his approach shot on No. 13 to within eight feet of the pin.

“I was looking at a one-shot lead,” said Pate, who was standing over a 22-foot birdie putt.

But he made his putt and Tway didn’t.

On No. 14, Pate hit his approach to within two feet of the pin for another birdie and a four-stroke lead.

“It was all but over,” Tway said.

Tway doesn’t know where he lost his game, although he thinks it might have been in Abilene a few weeks ago. He adjusted his swing because of the wind conditions and hasn’t been able to readjust.

One theory is that he has burned out. Known as the Marathon Man because he has such a long schedule, Tway has played more rounds this year than all but four other golfers on the tour.

During a recent week away from the tour, Tway played two rounds at Augusta, one in Stillwater and another at home in Edmond, Okla.

As a golfaholic, he, naturally, rejects the theory.

“If I felt tired, I’d go home,” he said.

His wife, Tammie, who travels with him, would have to see that to believe it.

Although the PGA tour ends this weekend, Tway will play next week in Japan, the following week in Hawaii and then two more weeks in Japan before finishing his year at the Chrysler Team Invitational in Boca Raton, Fla.

“I’ll take a couple of weeks off for Christmas,” Tway said. “I’ll probably go skiing for one week. Then I’ll head to the West Coast to get ready for next year. That’s plenty of time off for me. I’ll be going crazy by then.”

Since Tway’s flight to Japan doesn’t leave until Sunday, Tammie was wondering Friday afternoon whether she could keep her husband off the golf course today.

“I’m going to try to take him shopping,” she said.

Think what he could have bought if he’d just won another $515.19.