Coming off 58, Jim Furyk's week gets better
You won't find many golfers who have crafted as consistently good a career as Jim Furyk. And now, at the age of 46, he might've just had his best week yet.
It began on Sunday, when Furyk shot the lowest round ever recorded in a PGA Tour event. His 10-birdie, one-eagle, no-bogey round of 58 at the Travelers Championship makes Furyk the only player to ever break 60 twice on Tour, following up on the 59 he shot at the 2013 BMW Championship.
Then to cap it off, the PGA Tour announced Tuesday that Furyk is this year's recipient of the Payne Stewart Award. The award is given to one golfer annually who, in the words of the Tour, "best exemplifies the values of character, charity and sportsmanship."
"To win an award that's named after a man I admired so much means a lot," Furyk said of Stewart, who died in 1999 when his plane lost cabin pressure and crashed in South Dakota. "It truly is an honor."
This year certainly is turning into a good one for Furyk, which is a welcome surprise considering how it looked not long ago.
Fresh off a 2015 season that included more than $3.7 million in prize money and his first PGA Tour win since 2010, Furyk was dealt a bitter blow. In February, just as the new season was about to heat up, the 2003 U.S. Open champ announced that a wrist injury would keep him sidelined indefinitely.
"This was the second major injury I've had to deal with, and the first came when I was still early in my career," Furyk said. "My game was in a good place, so it was really disappointing."
His injury kept him out of the Masters for just the second time since 1994, and he didn't return to the Tour until the Wells Fargo Championship in May. But Furyk responded by sticking to a formula that has served him well throughout his career: He kept grinding.
Two missed cuts in his first three events were followed by a tied-for-sixth finish at the U.S. Open in his hometown Pittsburgh. Another good showing at the Canadian Open saw him finish 13th, and then, last Sunday, his historic 58.
"You don't wake up on Sunday morning with an 8:41 tee time thinking that anything exciting is going to happen," he said Sunday. "On those days the most exciting thing that can happen is the group in front of you plays quick and your flight takes off a little early."
The round lifts him into serious contention to make yet another Ryder Cup team, and now news of the Payne Steward Award is the cherry on top.