Golf: It's been a year from hell says Waite

Grant Waite feels like a boxer who has been kept in the ring too long.

The New Zealander is still wiping blood from his nose after arguably his worst season as a touring professional.

He has lost his card on the US PGA Tour, and what hopes he had of clawing it back evaporated when he failed to make it past the second stage of the Tour's 2003 qualifying school last weekend.

At home in Orlando, Florida, Waite is trying to make sense of a punishing year in which he seldom looked capable of regrouping.

A Tour regular since 1990, he finished 152nd on the money-list this year, his worst end-of-year report card since 1994 and well outside the top-125 comfort zone that guarantees a return the following season.

It followed his best season in financial terms of only two seasons back, when earnings of US$1.14 million ($2.3 million) ranked him 38th on the world's toughest tour.

But unlike boxers, who often look elsewhere to apportion blame for their bruised egos, 38-year-old Waite knows he looks at the reason every morning in the mirror.

"I didn't perform at the level I needed to," he said yesterday.

"Golf is one of the few sports where you truly get what you deserve, based on your performance.

"Your money earnings are not based on reputation, they are strictly based on performance. I accept that; that's part of the business I'm in.

"To be honest, I didn't play very well at all. I did make 17 cuts [from 31 tournaments] but my weekends were just terrible.

"I never had a good weekend. Two years ago I made fewer cuts but made a lot more money.

"The PGA Tour is top-heavy with prizemoney and if you play well and finish high up you get well paid.

"If not, you keep picking up cheques big enough only to pay your expenses."

Waite's confidence has obviously taken a knock, but he is old enough and big enough to look after himself, despite the troubled times.

"Your confidence does get low because you've had nothing good to grasp hold of.

"I never got going to the stage where I passed people at the weekend. I went backwards virtually every weekend.

"My general, overall performance was below par and I could never seem to figure out what was going on."

After a year featuring just one top-10 result, when an opening-round 64 helped him to tie for sixth at the Bell Canadian Open, Waite said he would work on all aspects of his game before the New Year.

He could not identify one specific weakness that led to his year from hell; rather, everything needs serious work before he tackles next year, determined to earn back his Tour card.

One of only six New Zealanders to win on the US Tour, his triumph at the 1993 Kemper Open means he retains conditional status and that allows him to accept five or six invitations to play on the Tour next year.

As well, he will hone his game on the second-tier Nationwide Tour - formerly known as the Buy.com Tour - where he originally spread his wings in the early 1990s.

That is a double-edged sword as far as local fans are concerned. Waite is unlikely to be able to come home for the New Zealand Open in January because it clashes with the Hawaiian Open, an event he may be asked to contest depending on the volume of entries.

He will not know for certain about his availability until six days before the New Zealand tournament starts on January 16.

But Waite confirmed he will almost definitely tee off in Christchurch in March for the $1.25 million Clearwater Classic, one of two Nationwide Tour events being played in New Zealand and Australia this summer.

"I'm not where I want to be, but I accept it because I know I didn't perform well this year," he said.

"I know that if I perform well in the five or six tournaments I will get to play then I'll have the opportunity to be fully exempt again.

"My plan is to take the opportunities given to me and make the best of them.

"I've already made some adjustments and I understand what I'm doing from a physical standpoint ... It's a matter of getting my game ready to do things without having to think about them.

"From now until the start of the year I have to work on ingraining the physical side to the point where it is a subconscious act," Waite said.

It is called practice and no golfer can do without it - not even Tiger Woods.

- NZPA