For R.W. Eaks, playing professional golf has been a lifetime portrait in perseverance.
Nobody in the game has taken more physical blows to the body or mental hits to the head than the long-time East Valley resident, who recently moved from Scottsdale to Fountain Hills. Yet, you talk with Eaks about his bad luck and ubiquitous injuries over the past 30 years and you would never know life is anything but sweet.
The good news is Eaks is playing some of the best golf of his 55 years on the planet even if last Sunday he did lose a three-hole playoff on the Champions Tour to Brad Bryant. Still, the $140,800 check for second place pushed his career winnings to $2.3 million on the senior circuit, and moved him to ninth place on the season’s money list with $525,743.
Not bad for a guy who has fought the golf gods every step of the way.
“I just won $140,000-some thousand dollars, how could I possibly be upset about that?’’ Eaks said shortly after “Dr. Dirt’’ drained a 12-foot birdie on the third playoff hole to win the Regions Charity Classic in the heart of Alabama. “My time will come sooner or later.’’
As for the bad news, well, there is none at the moment – knock on wood! OK, so some might say that Eaks’ fourth career runner-up finish on the Champions – his second this season -- would be frustrating to say the least. But at the moment, it just isn’t so.
“I’m looking forward to this week at the Senior PGA (Championship),’’ Eaks said of the Champion Tour’s first major of the season, which will be contested at Pete Dye’s notorious Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, S.C.
“I know it’s a tough course – the toughest golf course I’ve ever played – but that’s the way I like it – the tougher, the better.
Eaks knows about toughness, and not just because he drives a Harley-Davidson as one of his main modes of transportation. He was a scrappy high school basketball player who earned All-American recognition before completing a stellar athletic career at Northern Colorado University. Then he was a caddie on the PGA Tour for a couple of years before he realized his game was better than those he working for.
But getting a degree from PGA Tour Q-School was a never-ending task for Eaks, who competed in 22 of those schools of hard knocks.
“Never made it through one of them,’’ Eaks said with a laugh. “Wait a minute! I stand corrected. I think I did make it through in 1980.’’
After chasing the little white ball all over the world, Eaks ended up on the Ben Hogan Tour in 1990, and won the first of his three Hogan-Nike tour titles. In fact, he was out there so long and played in so many events (258 starts), the younger players affectionately called him “Gramps.’’ If that wasn’t enough, Eaks survived severe head and neck injuries in a near-fatal truck wreck in 1996 as he was going from one tournament to another.
In 1997, he earned his way back on the PGA Tour after a 17-year hiatus. But a major back injury the following year at the Quad Citites Open, where he fell head first into a deep bunker and tore several major muscles, almost ended his career again.
So Eaks went into “golf purgatory’’ from 2000-02, when he finally turned 50. “But the week before Champions Tour qualifying school I tore up my back again moving a couple of French doors,’’ he said. “I had been looking so forward to the senior tour, but the injury knocked me out for the next six months.’’
But “Dub,’’ as the players call him is today – a reference to the ‘W’ in R.W. – is finally smelling the roses. And with 20 Champions Tour events still to go in 2007, he is within $25,000 of making the most money in one season that he’s ever made.
“Yeah, they don’t call me ‘Gramps’ any more, because everybody is a gramps out here on the Champions,’’ he said of his new lease on life. “But best of all, after all these years of struggling and recovering, I’ve finally figured it out.’’
So what’s the secret, Dub?
“On the Nationwide Tour, it’s all about hitting it far, and on the PGA Tour, it’s all about being really, really, REALLY good,’’ he explained. “But on the Champions, you just keep the ball in play, give yourself birdie opportunities, and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.’’
Oh, yes, and one other thing, Eaks added.
“I had Rudy on my bag last week, and I he’ll be with me again this week,’’ Eaks said of Rudy Beruman, the well-known amateur golfer from Tempe. “Rudy is a funny guy and he keeps me loose, and that’s really what I need.
“You see, if I’ve learned anything, it’s that you can’t take golf too seriously. That, and it always helps to be lucky.’’
|
