Columnist Adam Candee: Persistence puts Barlow on Q-school honor roll

Adam Candee

Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2004 | 9:14 a.m.

Adam Candee covers golf for the Sun. Reach him at (702) 259-4085 or by e-mail at candee@lasvegassun.com.

In a year that seemed to have peaks, valleys and nothing in between, it figures that even a soak in the Jacuzzi became an adventure for our everyman hometown golf pro, Craig Barlow.

As Barlow dipped his troublesome hip into the water Sunday night at the home he rented during PGA tour qualifying school, rain began to fall in the Southern California desert. The shower got the best of Barlow's cell phone, temporarily frying the battery and knocking it out.

That's OK, Barlow said, because he got used to the phone not ringing even when it worked. It's just life as a tour pro when the putts aren't falling, like they didn't as Barlow missed three of his past five cuts and opened the final stage of Q-school by tying for dead last with an 8-over 80.

"You're either getting all the phone calls in the world," Barlow said Tuesday, "or you don't get any."

So guess how many voicemails awaited Barlow by the time the battery dried out, hours after he dropped in clutch putts on the last two holes of Monday's final round to cap a historic comeback and earn his card?

Including mine, a total of 38, and he gladly listened to each and every one.

The calls meant that he had survived another battle with injury -- this time, a flare-up of the hip pain that required surgery in 2001 and cost him seven weeks this year -- to live another year on tour. No one had ever overcome a first-day score as bad as Barlow's to make it through Q-school.

"It's a treat to get those messages," Barlow said. "I had to write down on a piece of paper all the calls I needed to return."

The perspective to enjoy those well wishes is part of the down-to-earth charm that makes Barlow easy to like. He's a native son of Henderson who fought his way through the ranks of Southern Nevada Golf Association amateur events and mini-tour drudgery while working at Pizza Hut in the mid-'90s.

Caring about Barlow's career comes naturally because, unlike so much in sports, you can imagine much of what he says coming from your own mouth.

It's not aw-shucks stuff, but there is genuine humility to Barlow's view of professional golf. When he first made the big tour in 1997, Barlow marveled at the fickle nature of life on tour in the hours after his first successful trip through Q-school:

"I can't be any more proud of this but I'm also a little mad at it. You can't believe how people throw themselves at you because you've made the tour. I've got people hounding me, now, (offering me) all kinds of money. It's what I've worked for all my life, but I am no different a player now than I was this year and last year and I was playing mini-tour golf for almost no money."

"I think I deserve it ... but to have my life change this much in two hours isn't really fair, I don't think. I'm not feeling sorry for myself because I'm as happy as can be and I've put in a lot of hard work, and I deserve the benefits. But I've just seen the other side of professional golf."

Seven years later, Barlow still casts a wary eye toward success. It's not because he doubts his natural ability; no one who has followed Barlow's career would ever do that. He made the top 125 on the tour money list to earn exempt status four times and is now 4-for-4 in getting through Q-school.

At 32 years old, with wisdom gained through nearly 15 years of battling both his mind and body in pro golf, it's just that Barlow realizes how quickly it can go away. Injuries and his admitted lack of conditioning gnawed at his game before the hip and wrist problems forced Barlow to take care of himself in the past couple of years, including the workout program that physical therapist Jeff Deets devised for him to fight this year's hip trouble.

Barlow constantly walks a tightrope. He finished No. 122 in 2001 and No. 124 in 1999 and 2002, scraping together every penny under the couch cushions to keep his card. This year, he finished No. 128 with just less than $600,000 in earnings built mostly on a strong start that offset both the injury and poor finish.

"Golf is a roller coaster ride, even for Tiger Woods, for Vijay Singh," Barlow said. "You always have days where you feel invincible and you have days when you wonder if you have ever been able to do this."

Last Wednesday's first round of Q-school was the latter, as Barlow played terribly. He admittedly needed an attitude adjustment and a break from his mind that tends to overanalyze.

His fill-in caddie and best friend, Todd, helped him find that peace of mind and Barlow fired a 7-under 65 on Thursday, the largest one-day improvement of any Q-schooler this year.

The funny part is, Barlow didn't even have to be at Q-school. Because of his injury, Barlow could have begun 2005 on tour on a minor medical extension, giving him four tournaments to make about $25,000 in order to gain an exemption.

But making it through Q-school in addition to making that money early in the year would give Barlow higher priority for getting into tour events, so he volunteered for the six-day grind that you couldn't pay most pros to endure.

Barlow totaled 6-under during the next three rounds, leaving him on the bubble. With a putter that he felt had never been hotter, Barlow went out Monday with confidence, but still needed to shave a stroke with two holes left to make the number at 7-under.

The putter, which Barlow feels held him back this year, saved him. Of course it would be the club that started the year up, dipped down, then returned that did the trick.

He claimed not to be trying to hole either the 20-foot birdie at No. 17 or the 10-foot par at No. 18 that both fell, triggering a telephonic onslaught of congratulations.

Barlow accepts that he probably wouldn't have needed to put the battery back in the phone without those putts. He's not insulted, though, accepting the ebb and flow as part of the job he fights so hard to keep -- and to keep in perspective.

Besides, Barlow said, "When you're playing bad, you don't want to talk to anyone anyway."