PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Steve Stricker was laying in bed in his home in Naples in southwest Florida at 6:45 a.m. Thursday when the phone rang.
He woke up in a hurry.
Stricker got word he had moved up to first alternate for the Players Championship when Harris English withdrew with a bad back.
“I’m coming,” Stricker told the other end of the phone.
And with that, the U.S. Ryder Cup captain shifted into overdrive. The day before when he moved up to second alternate he talked to a local guy who would allow Stricker to use his plane to fly to the northeast of the Sunshine State.
He was already packed. And then called and asked English’s caddie, Eric Larson, who had carried Stricker’s bag in the past, if he wanted to pick up his bag. The answer was yes.
And out the door Stricker went.
Players Championship: Leaderboard | Photos
“They scrambled the pilots together and I actually got in the air at about 8:30, quarter to 9,” said Stricker, who then got word in the air during the 50-minute flight that he was in the tournament after Justin Rose withdrew with a bad back.
Stricker landed in St. Augustine, with a car waiting for him at the airport. A half hour later he was in the PGA Tour’s testing facility for COVID-19. In less than four hours after waking up, he was on the back range at the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass waiting for results of his test.
Negative.
And then, with a new caddie on his bag, he shot 2-under-par 70 on a day full of carnage on Pete Dye’s diabolical track to finish in a tie for 12th.
And then he had to figure out his accommodations.
“I actually didn’t even play or hit a ball Monday or Tuesday at home or back in Naples. I played Bay Hill last week (in the Arnold Palmer Invitational) and that kind of beat me up a little bit, especially on Sunday,” Stricker said. “I just got some rest, played about 14 holes yesterday, didn’t even hit any balls. I played with my wife and so I came here with not a lot of expectations.
“But excited to be here and I know my game is in decent form, so I was excited to come here to a place that I have played a bunch before. The hard part was just trying to get the speed of the greens, the chip shots, how they’re going to roll out, all that kind of stuff. How you play those shots out of the rough.
“That was the hard and challenging part.”
He figured it out quickly. He birdied four consecutive holes on his first nine to get on the first page of the leaderboard. But he made two bogeys in his last 10 holes and didn’t add to his birdie column but all things considered, he was one happy guy when the round ended.
“I made four birdies in a row and I wasn’t trying to get ahead of myself or anything like that,” Stricker said. “I think I just kind of was running out of gas on the other side, just trying to make pars at that point and get it to the house.”