Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Columnist Dean Juipe: Fryatt zeroes in on ending slump

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.

It hasn't been a problem keeping track of Edward Fryatt's golf earnings this year.

In fact, it has been a little too easy.

The lanky Las Vegan, who has spent the bulk of the year on the Nationwide Tour but has an exemption into the PGA Tour's Las Vegas Invitational this week, hasn't needed a calculator to tabulate his winnings. The number next to his name has stayed absolutely rigid.

It's zero, as in $0.

Defying logic, belief and common sense, Fryatt hasn't won a dime this year. Or even a nickel.

Wait till the IRS gets a look at his 2003 tax form. No income? "Yeah, right, let's call this guy in."

The computer will spit it out and insist upon a review or an audit.

"It's such a simple game, too," Fryatt said Tuesday on the practice green at the TPC at Summerlin, where he was using something of an innovative tool that allows the player to track his putting stroke.

He has to be interested in anything that helps, or even might help.

"You have to keep fighting," he said of his struggles. "You get to where you not only wonder why you're playing bad, you wonder how you ever played good.

"But I know it can go the other way, too. I know you can get to where you're playing so well that you can't imagine ever playing bad."

Fryatt played wonderfully well throughout the first 31 years of his life, but in Year 32 he's experiencing a drought of Death Valley proportions. A great high school player at Chaparral and on the Southern Nevada Golf Association tour and an All-American at UNLV, Fryatt was making a good living as a pro golfer until this year.

Now he's trying not only to earn a check but to get his game in order for the tour's Qualifying School, a six-day marathon scheduled for the first week of December in Florida.

"A guy in my situation has to try to get physically and mentally ready for Q-School," he said. "I need to get my game and body in shape for that."

Fryatt has not finished in the money in a golf tournament since a year ago this week, or last year's LVI. He tied for 31st and took home $29,000 in a solid showing that included a back-nine, final-round 29.

He's hoping to pick up where he left off.

"With the circumstances I'm in, I have a chance to get off to a good start and erase the past," he said of playing on familiar courses and eating at home with wife Michelle this week. "I have to try and forget what has happened and put a new foot forward."

It has to help that he knows the courses, although he says it's not as big an advantage as you might think.

"Everybody talks about a home-course advantage, but it works both for you and against you," he said. "Yes, you know the distances and what clubs to hit, but the tour won't put the pins where the greenskeeper usually has them. Normally, they're in the middle of the greens here, but the tour will put them as close to the edges as they can."

Nonetheless, Fryatt welcomes the opportunity to play on the big tour and with men he once viewed as cohorts. Three years ago he recorded a great rookie season on the PGA Tour, making 17 of 32 cuts and finishing No. 77 on the final money list with $611,632.

But he failed to stay exempt and in the top 125 the following year, forcing him back to the minor, Nationwide Tour.

This year he has only five rounds under par and his scoring average of 73.47 is indicative of a player who isn't making cuts.

"Some of it's physical and then it becomes mental," he said. "You'll be going along OK and then you hit a couple of loose shots and it's 'Boy, it's happening again.' "

Like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day," Fryatt can't escape the drudgery of repeating an unpleasant scenario over and over. He may be in a new city each week, but the results have remained the same.

It's a cruel fate and an undeserved one for such a nice guy. Playing golf for a living is tough enough without going an entire year without taking home a dollar.

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