Columnist Adam Candee: PGA tour a struggle even for amateur phenom

Adam Candee

Wednesday, July 6, 2005 | 9:16 a.m.

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

Press releases flow like wine from the gods around here, and these are some snappy press releases.

One boasts "brilliant" about Ryan Moore's amateur career in touting the agency with which he signed. The next screams in a headline about the "AMATEUR PHENOM" joining the Ping staff.

So we're sparing no adjectives at Gaylord Sports Management or at Ping golf to let folks know that Moore is in the fold. And why should we? After all, we spent serious cash to make sure that we properly wooed and wowed the young man, so we need equally big words to shout about it from the mountaintops and fax machines.

Yet the sure-handed representation of Cricket Musch and the sure-gripped irons of Ping couldn't do a thing in the past two weeks to make their star into an instant professional success. On the PGA tour, it just does not work that way.

Moore didn't exactly stumble out of the gate at the Barclays Classic and Western Open, but the former UNLV star is still playing the same middling golf that has marked him since after the Masters. In college, a couple of bad rounds just meant he would finish fifth at NCAA nationals instead of winning it.

On tour, a decent Thursday and unlucky Friday pave some wide open highway on the weekend because cuts don't get made that way. Moore squeezed into the weekend in his first professional start in New York, earning more than $13,000 for a T-51 finish, before shooting 2-over in two days in Chicago to miss the cut.

Now, 2-over doesn't sound so bad. But "brilliant" and "PHENOM" don't match up with it either. And it's clearly true that Moore is not playing at the same level he did through much of 2004, be it fatigue (undoubtedly) or simply the fact that such a level is really, really hard to sustain for so long (likely too).

That's not it entirely, however. Part of the problem -- and probably part that very few considered after Moore proved his mettle with a T-13 at Augusta National this year -- is that anything less than an "A" game on tour is punished by a lot of guys with just as much talent as everyone else.

It is so easy to become swept up in the hysteria surrounding Moore's arrival from a brilliant amateur career. I feel no need to cover up the fact that I thought Moore would challenge to earn a spot in the British Open by playing well at the Western Open.

Instead, it's simply two sponsor's exemptions down, five left to try to earn enough cash to avoid the gauntlet of qualifying school. Moore will try to Monday qualify his way into some events to save a few sponsor passes for later in the year. (And it's a very good bet that one of those passes will get him into the Michelin Championship at Las Vegas.)

So it's OK to keep tossing around words like "unique", "outstanding" and "greatest" about what Moore has done up to this point. Just keep in mind that even though he made it look easy as an amateur, it wasn't, and it will be even tougher against the big boys no matter what compliments those releases attach to him.