BOZICH | Best PGA story: How about 61-year-old rookie who quit golf for 20 years? | Sports

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Tiger Woods walked past Tracy Phillips in the Valhalla Golf Club clubhouse Tuesday morning. Didn’t say a word. Ditto for Scottie Scheffler.

Ditto for several other mega-star golfers who packed the clubhouse when rain closed the course around 10 a.m.

“They don’t know me from Adam,” Phillips said, while sitting in a rocking chair on the Valhalla clubhouse patio.

Why would golf’s biggest stars say anything to Tracy Phillips?

They don’t know his story. But they should. Everybody who watches the PGA Championship this week should know the Tracy Phillips story.

“Nobody would believe it,” Phillips said. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

But Phillips is here, a 61-year-old rookie making his first professional appearance on the regular tour in the second of golf’s four major championships.

Phillips is a former national champion junior golfer who fell so far out of love with golf that he stuck his clubs in a corner of his closet in 1988. That’s where they stayed for 20 years.

Didn’t play a round of competitive golf. Didn’t play a round of country club golf. Didn’t play a scramble. Didn’t play with friends. Didn’t really think about doing it.

“I had the driver yips and just really didn’t like the game any more,” Phillips said.

“I had a broken swing. I’d hit the ball as far left as you could imagine and then I’d hit it as far right as you can imagine.”

Get this: Phillips taught the game at Cedar Ridge Country Club outside Tulsa, Oklahoma. For several years he caddied on the women’s professional tour. He enjoyed helping others fix their swings. He had no desire to figure out how to fix his swing, which was created by a back injury.

Don’t ask him to change his mind. Wasn’t going to happen. No matter how times friends asked. And they asked.

He bought a boat. He loved catching fish, especially bass. That’s how Phillips burned through his recreation time.

Golf was in his DNA. His father, Buddy Phillips, was a teaching pro, too. His mother went into labor with Tracy while her husband play in a golf event in New Mexico. Phillips said he grew up on a golf course.

Golf Digest ranked him the No. 1 junior golfer in America in 1979. He proved the magazine right by winning the PGA junior championship in Florida in 1980. Phillips said he believes that Jodie Mudd, the best junior from Kentucky during that era, played in that event. Oklahoma State, a national power, signed him to a scholarship.

“I was 15 or 16 years old and kind of on top of the world as a junior golfer,” Phillips said. “Your aspirations are that it’s going to continue. You’re going to do great in college and you’re going to be on the tour.”

Instead, after one season at Oklahoma State, where Phillips won his first collegiate tournament and the Cowboys finished second in the NCAA championship, golf tossed him in the fairway and left him there.

For two decades.

“You have a back injury, you build a bad swing and you lose all your confidence that you ever had,” Phillips said.

Confidence is not an issue for Phillips today. Neither is disliking the game. He finally came back in 2008 with gentle encouragement from friends, one (Vince Bizik) a fellow teaching pro, another (Billy Ray Young) who enjoys addressing the psychology of the game.

Let’s play a round for fun. Phillips agreed. Had fun. Played another round. Had more fun. That was the way Phillips navigated his way back into loving golf for three years. Then he entered some PGA events in the Oklahoma region. Had some success. Entered a few more. Had more success.

By 2014 Phillips played in the Senior PGA championship. In 2022 he finished 17th in that event.

Memorable accomplishments. But that’s not playing against the world’s finest players in their prime, like this weekend, an invitation Phillips earned when he finished tied for eighth in the qualifying event at Frisco.

“I’m 5 feet 5 and 61 years old,” Phillips said. “This is a very long (7,603 yards) golf course. I’m playing a different game than most of these guys.”

He’s not here to win the PGA championship. He’s one of 21 club pros who qualified for the event in Fresco, Texas two weeks ago.

Club pros don’t win major titles. A few will be celebrated if they make the 36-hole cut and play through the weekend — the way Michael Block was celebrated when he finished tied for 15th last year.

But Phillips won plenty simply by making the trip from Tulsa to Louisville, a journey of nearly 40 years.

“My Dad’s up in heaven but I can feel his presence all the time when I’m playing in these events and I know that he would be proud,” Phillips said.

“It’s a crazy. As a kid you grow up thinking you’re going to play on the tour one of these days. Then to do and go through what I went through and then at 61 years old to come out here and play against guys that I’ve watched (on TV) year after year after year … well, nobody would believe this story.”

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