Bettencourt: From kidney stones
reaching high for the brass ring
DUBLIN, Ohio –There were whoops and high-fives all around at the Bettencourt household the night of Sunday, May 3, that being the final day of the Quail Hollow Championship at Charlotte, N.C. That was, as it were, the high point of the career of Matt Bettencourt, age 34, PGA Tour rookie and dreamer. As high points go, that was modest at best, by most standards, but even so, it called for champagne, if an unpretentious vintage. Bettencourt had tied for 22nd. It was his best finish of the season so far – in fact, his best coming into this week’s Memorial Tournament -- and he won $58,593, which was his finest payday. So far, that profile isn’t looking all that impressive. Looking at it another way, it gets even worse. Think of 7-for-16. That’s the start of a new contract for a baseball player. For a golfer, that’s find-another-job stuff. In his first 16 PGA Tour starts, he made the cut only seven times. That means he missed it nine times. Now it sounds dreadful.
Given that set of recommendations, the marvel is that Bettencourt even got into Jack Nicklaus’ flagship Memorial Tournament, much less that he finds himself tied for the lead with Mark Wilson going into the final round. Nicklaus must have thought he was here to help cut the grass.
Bettencourt does not come to the Memorial or to the tour with your usual pedigree – silver spoon firmly in jaw, hours with the club pro on daddy’s dime and scholarship to, say, Florida or Oklahoma State, etc. He went to Stanislaus State and never played golf.
Bettencourt comes as a failed baseball dream (injured shoulder), hours of plugging away in the amateurs, and then there were the 35 amateur wins over two years in Northern California. That spawned the notion that, hey, maybe I can take this game on the road.
“So I thought I would give it a shot,” he said. “I thought it would be fairly simple to jump right there.”
His education had started. The road led, instead, to the Canadian Tour, then six years on the Nationwide Tour, the developmental tour, making barely sustainable money for four years. The breakthrough came last year.
The legend in boxing is coming off the canvas to win. How about getting out of a hospital bed? Bettencourt was going to withdraw from the Nationwide Tour Championship last year, so grievously was he suffering. Doctors were puzzled at first, then diagnosed kidney stones. They nursed him to his feet, and next day he shows up on the first tee and goes on to win. That capped a drive of four top-5 finishes in his last six events that carried him to the top of the Nationwide money list ($447,863) and a spot in the big time, the PGA Tour, where he’s just been schlepping along.
“It hasn’t gone as well as expected,” Bettencourt conceded. There was the adjustment – lots of different courses, big crowds and the like, and mostly the grass. “I grew up playing on bent grass,” he said. But he got an almost steady diet of Bermuda grass, which meant grainy texture that takes some getting used to. Muirfield Village, perhaps significantly, is of bent grass, as was Quail Hollow. And so he has shot 71-68-68 and is at 9-under 207, a shot in the lead, with such presences as Tiger Woods, Jim Furyk and Geoff Ogilvy reaching for him. It’s at such times that rookies spring leaks. Bettencourt issued the standard disclaimer.
“I can’t control what they do at all,” he said. “I can only play the golf course. Go out and give it my best and have a smile on my face.
It was an eventual 68 he manufactured Saturday – a bogey at No. 3 followed by four straight birdies, a bogey at the 10th followed by two more birdies, and then a closing stretch where he seemed on the brink of rookie collapse only to right himself.
The bogey at the 363-yard, par-4 14th, a vexing hole with a stream in front that demands the golfer use the correct club off the tee. Bettencourt, 5-feet-11 and 180 pounds, said the strength of his game is his length. So it would seem.
Bettencourt’s tee shot ended up just over the crest of the edge of the bank, heading down to the water. “It’s 282 yards to the water,” he said. “I hit 3-iron.”
From an awkward stance and out of deep grass, he almost ruined his round. He banged a wedge across the green and bogeyed. Unfazed, he birdied the par-5 15th, hitting his approach to the back of the green, about 80 feet from the pin, then curling his first putt up snug and tapping in.
He birdied the 17th, then at the 444-yard 18th, he put his tee shot into some awfully deep rough, which cost him a bogey.
“I hit the wrong club off the tee,” he said.” I hit 3-wood and went 350 yards.”
He can have those tales for his grandkids some day, along with the one about how he went out in the fourth round of the Memorial Tournament with the hounds after him, and he …
But that part of the story hasn’t be written yet.
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