DETROIT – Nick Watney said he was relieved to find a flaw in his golf swing.
Go ahead and read this sentence again. Yes, it was relieved.
The day after losing his 12th straight cut on the PGA Tour at the 3M Open last week, Watney traveled to Las Vegas to see swing coach Butch Harmon. The legendary coach figured out the problem almost immediately. Watney, who loves to draw a ball, opened his face from above. This forced him to use his hands more forcefully to try to square the face of the racket. Not a recipe for consistency.
After a weekend in Vegas, Watney feels like a new guy. Or the same old. Or at least a golfer recognizes it. “The ball goes where it’s supposed to go most of the time,” he said with a big smile on Friday afternoon at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, looking forward to not having to catch the flight home for the weekend.
Building on a five-under-67 opening, Watney notched a par of 72 on Friday at Detroit Golf Club, and at the age of five under 139, he made his first cut since he finished a T-66 at The Players in mid-March.
Despite recent difficulties, Watney ranks 116th in the FedEx Cup standings, relying mostly on T-2 strength in October in the Sanderson Farms Championship. Stopping the free fall – he was 43rd in the standings after the players – will certainly help him stay 125th when the regular season ends at Wyndham next week.
Watney, 41, said he was relieved by Harmon’s diagnosis because at least there was something he could work on. “If there was nothing wrong and I was playing terribly, it would have been frustrating for me,” he explained. “But you go to Butch and he says, ‘Oh, wow, that’s a big mess,’ you’re like, ‘Okay, good. Let’s fix it. I mean, where do you go from there if everything looks fine? “
He considered going home to California for a day or two after his first session with Harmon, but his wife Amber convinced him to go straight to Michigan. “She was great. I think she knows what I need,” Watney said.
If he had played decently on Friday, Watney might have climbed to the top of the leaderboard, but he lost more than two strokes on the Greens. The bright side is that he ranks ninth on the field with 36 holes in hits earned/from a tee–compared to 197 on the tour of the season in that category–and is in the first third of the field in the SG/closer to the green.
“I’m not very good at doing something different, so obviously it falls to me to do a better job figuring out these things. I mean, 17 years old here, and I should handle it better,” he said. “I’m working on things at home, then I go out to the next event and it’s the same thing, and it’s very frustrating.”
Ranked 431st in the world, Watney is a five-time PGA Tour winner, but his last win came in 2012. He’s had his share of ups and downs since then, but he looks set to reach the playoffs for the first time since 2018-19 – a welcome development He has been charged while playing this season using his one-time exemption for being among the top 50 in career earnings.
All he could think of on Friday was getting a chance to go out again on Saturday. Change is good.
“My game was good at the beginning of the year, and then I got a little bit of a rest, and getting a little bit of a rest can become a big thing,” he said. “I think it’s good to have it all behind me and now that I’m looking forward, I want to see if I can take more kicks and get up the leaderboard.”
Yes, this is better than boarding another plane.
.