Golf: Waite puts bad year behind him and eyes future

New Zealander Grant Waite feels he has put his worst year on the PGA Tour behind him.

The Florida-domiciled Manawatu professional hopes the common trend of a good year on the PGA Tour following a bad year will apply to him.

Waite, 39, slogged through the final qualifying school tournament this week to regain his fully exempt status on the world's toughest tour.

He played 18 events on the full tour this year and a further seven on the secondary Nationwide Tour. He made the cut in only 10 PGA Tour events and his earnings of US$150,999 ($235,973) had him wallowing in 188th place, well outside safety of the top 125 guaranteed to retain a full card.

On the Nationwide Tour, he won US$24,440 for 130th place.

Waite was too inconsistent this year, typically shooting 67 and then a 74.

His return to the PGA Tour means he will chase a place in the field for the Hawaiian Open next month.

Because that clashes with the New Zealand Open, he might have to bypass the Auckland event. He was equal ninth in the New Zealand Open at Middlemore this year.

Although he likes to support the New Zealand Open, which he won in 1993 at Paraparaumu Beach, Waite wants to play in 25 to 28 PGA Tour events next year.

"My game wasn't good; I couldn't solve any problems," he said of his form this year.

In the past he has been able to correct his faults.

"I was not driving the ball straight at all, I kept pulling and hitting it left. I couldn't figure it out."

Two months ago he changed his coach and the tide turned.

Waite has been on the tour for 12 years and four times has had to get his card through qualifying.

He now knows, after the searing heat of sitting on the cutoff line at the qualifying school for three days, that there's no worse pressure on the PGA Tour.

He has come down the stretch leading big tournaments and, he said, that was a lot less agonising than six rounds of qualifying.

As a tour veteran, he said it was nothing like being a first-year rookie. Now he will take a week off and then ready himself for next year.

- NZPA