The road gave him time to think. He’d turned 60 on April 28. He’d had hip-replacement surgery, his second such procedure. He’d been exercising more than ever. Sutton also had been helping young players understand the mental side of tournament golf, which in a roundabout way made him miss tournament golf himself—the adrenaline, the camaraderie, the discipline, the distinct thrill of hitting that one shot that mattered.

When he watched Tiger Woods win the Tour Championship in September, Sutton says, he made up his mind.

He plans to return to the PGA Tour Champions in February at the Oasis Championship in Florida. He hopes to make as many as 20 starts in 2019, his most since 2014, when he suffered a mild heart attack early in the season and never felt the same. Sutton says he regrets the way his poor health forced his retreat from competition, as Woods’ had. (“I have felt that torment,” he says of Woods’ own struggle to return.) Sutton says he began to realize that regret in July, at the funeral for Bruce Lietzke, where other players of his generation told him how much they missed seeing him each week in Birmingham or Naples or Newport Beach.

Photo courtesy of Big Easy Ranch

By that time, Sutton already had committed to a new fitness routine, and he’s down about 40 pounds from where he was when he started his resurrection. He also had begun working closely with Chase Cooper, the director of instruction at the Hal Sutton Golf Academy at Big Easy, a remote 1,300-acre hunting ranch and executive retreat about 80 miles west of Houston. Sutton and Cooper had been teaching a handful of high school players in Houston. Sutton says part of his return to competition is a way to provide his pupils with an example. He wants them to see his commitment.

More than anything else, though, Sutton wants another chance at finishing his career on terms that are his.

“In my estimation, I quit the game as a failure,” he says. “It’s time to quit the game correctly.”

Sutton was the surest of things once. He won the 1980 U.S. Amateur the summer after his senior season at Centenary College in his home state of Louisiana. He was the PGA Tour rookie of the year in 1982. He won the 1983 PGA Championship at Riviera and 13 other tournaments through 2001. He endured a slump during which he went nine years without winning. He played on four Ryder Cup teams. No one played better golf on the 1999 squad that rallied to win on that stupendous Singles Sunday at Brookline.

He captained the U.S. in 2004 at Oakland Hills. He paired Woods and Phil Mickelson in four-ball play. They lost, the team trailed by six points after two days and the Americans lost the Cup by nine. Sutton was criticized roundly.

Then he all but vanished. Sutton made two cuts in 10 starts in 2005. He played just once in 2006. He joined the senior circuit in 2008 without much success, and then had that heart attack in 2014 during the first round of the Ace Group Classic. He withdrew and had a stent implanted. He’s made six starts in the last two seasons. But he lacked the conviction he feels now. He hasn’t won a tournament since the 2001 Shell Houston Open.

Sutton doesn’t know if he can win again. He doesn’t know if winning matters the way it used to. He does know that he feels as good now as he has in a decade. He also knows that success can take many forms. All he wants to do is give himself another chance. He wants to live that life again, see his friends, make a shot that matters. He says he’s returning for himself alone, which means the definition of success doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else.

“There’s always another hill to climb,” he says. “This last hill is a personal hill.”

Sutton was a finalist this year for the World Golf Hall of Fame. He has always been a feel player—all eyes and fingers and feet, a man who needs to see his shots before he can hit them. But he says he now understands his swing more than he ever has. Cooper brought a devotion to technology to the golf academy at Big Easy Ranch. Cooper has used TrackMan, force-plate analysis and three-dimensional motion capture to help Sutton in his preparation for 2019. Sutton was doubtful at first. No more. Cooper recently clocked Sutton’s clubhead speed at 108 miles an hour, with ball speeds approaching 158. And that’s in the cool temperatures of a Texas winter.

“Our goal is to find the best version of Hal at this point,” says Cooper, a former collegiate golfer at the University of Nevada. “He’s getting back into doing what he knows.”

Sutton thinks about that a lot on those three hours a day on the road in his Audi SUV. He says he truly enjoys his new career at Big Easy, owned by his friend and fellow Louisianan Billy Brown. Hunters book trips to shoot whitetail deer, exotic game, pheasant and waterfowl. Thirty-five bird dogs live on the property. There are fishing ponds, some of them stocked with trophy Florida largemouth bass, some with stripers, one filled with saltwater and redfish. Chet Williams, whose portfolio includes Whispering Pines in Trinity, Texas, routed the nine-hole short course. Sutton designed the range.

(Brian Morgan) Sutton after winning the 1983 PGA Championship

His work with elite juniors at the academy reminds him of how he loved the game when he was a rising star in Shreveport. His office, filled with trophies and pictures and mementos and relics from his career, reminds him of the player he used to be. He’s not trying to be that player again. He can’t. He’s trying to, in many ways, to be a better one.

“It wasn’t the successes that brought me back,” he says. “It was the failures.”

Quit the game correctly.

What does that mean? Sutton says he’ll know when he knows. The road is a long one, its end not always in sight.

(Video produced by Luke M. Hendry)

Kevin Robbins teaches journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. His second book, The Last Stand of Payne Stewart, will be published in October by Hachette.

The post Hal Sutton is returning to golf so he can “quit the game correctly” appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
There were no guarantees Colin Montgomerie would win again on the PGA Tour Champions, and he knew it.

Sure, the 54-year-old Scot had transitioned successfully to the senior circuit from his Hall of Fame career on the European Tour, winning four times, including three majors, in his first three years out. But torn ligaments in his left ankle had kept him off the course for 2½ months this spring, and age made returning to form a more tricky.

So it was that Montgomerie’s one-stroke victory on Sunday after a closing 67 at the Japan Airlines Championship carried plenty of meaning.

“I’m just beginning to play the way that I have the last three years,” Montgomerie said after shooting a 14-under 202 for the week.

Monty benefitted from a hot putter in the final round at Narita Golf Club’s in Chiba. He birdied four of the first five holes on the back nine, making a 20-footer on the 10th, a 15-footer on the 12th, a 60-footer on the 13th and a 14-footer on the 14th. But it was two key six-footers on the 16th (for par) and 17th (for birdie), that allowed him to need just a two-putt par from 50 feet on the 18th hole to hold off Billy Mayfair and Scott McCarron.

In the first PGA Tour Champions event in Japan, a significant milestone in the minds of most of the participants.

“It’s a big deal, a very big deal,” Montgomerie said. “And let’s hope that the success of this event goes forward and not only allows the PGA Tour Champions to come back and compete but also allows the PGA Tour to come and play here. It will be fantastic if that time ever comes.”

Massy Kuramoto, chairman of the PGA of Japan and among those responsible for making the event possible, topped the six Japanese players in the field, finishing T-7 after a Sunday 67.

Playing two groups ahead of Montgomerie, Mayfair put pressure with a closing 66, but missed a six-foot birdie try on his last hole.

Meanwhile, McCarron, the leader heading into the final round, was looking for his fourth title in his last seven starts. But he opened with a double bogey and couldn’t catch up, despite birdieing the last two holes for a 71.

It was Montgomerie’s first victory since he beat McCarron last September at the Pacific Links Bear Mountain Championship in British Columbia, where he’ll prepare to defend his title this coming week.

The post Colin Montgomerie holes everything on the back nine, wins first senior tour event in Japan appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.