Nelson had a hand in his victory, emotional Verplank says  PGATOUR.com Contributor IRVING, Texas -- You don't put moments like these into words. You can't. One minute you think you're about to pass out. The next you're living a dream. The one you had as a kid. All you can do is let the moment wash over you, embrace it and let your emotions go. You'll have no choice. Scott Verplank knows. Well, now he does. He didn't understand until that putt found the bottom of the cup late Sunday afternoon, and, well, he lost it. He fell to his knees and pulled his cap off his head. A moment later, tears spilling over, he looked up and said thank you. This was one from the heart.  Scott Verplank was overcome with emotion after winning his first Byron Nelson title. (Stan Badz/PGA TOUR/WireImage)
From Verplank's to Byron Nelson's. Or maybe it was -- as Peggy Nelson said -- the other way around. "I think Byron had a hand in this week,'' Verplank said quietly. "(Peggy) just told me right before I came in here that he picked the winner this week. "I think he might have.'' Verplank shook his head. Almost an hour after that putt dropped, after he had come from behind and beaten Luke Donald by one shot to win the 2007 EDS Byron Nelson Championship, he still couldn't believe how it all unfolded. Yes, it was Ben Crenshaw-esque. Only this time, it wasn't Harvey Penick's hand reaching down to guide Crenshaw to a green jacket. It was Nelson's healing a cranky shoulder, straightening out a driver and getting that final putt to rattle into the hole. "I've never been that light-headed and nervous and shaky over a putt in my life,'' said Verplank. "I don't know. You know what, Ryder Cup, nothing compared to that, to me. I mean, that was a lot of fun today, but ... I don't know, like I said, I was out of ... it was an out-of-body experience.'' Maybe it's a Deep in the Heart of Texas kind of thing, but trust us. Now he understands how Crenshaw, one of his boyhood idols, felt a dozen years ago. This was the first Nelson without Lord Byron, who passed away seven months ago, but he still cast a huge shadow. It was a week of celebrating a great player and great man; a week when players recalled their favorite stories. A week when Verplank, playing in his 21st Nelson, found himself with a chance to win one for a man he called a friend for 26 years. Verplank grew up in Dallas and spent years running around the tournament when it was at Preston Trail watching Tom Watson win four times there. He was a standard bearer over there, too. And by the time it moved to Las Colinas, Verplank was on his way to winning a U.S. Amateur, an NCAA Championship and the 1985 Western Open as an amateur. And 21 years after teeing it up in his first Nelson -- and coming close four times, including losing a heartbreaking playoff to Robert Damron in 2001 -- he won the one tournament he's always wanted to win. "I guess it's like a kid peeking through the wall of a baseball stadium and wanting to be on the Yankees one day,'' Verplank said. "That's what it was like for me. I was a kid wanting to do that, and I can't believe I pulled it off. '' It was, if you had thought about Tuesday afternoon, improbable. Impossible. A reach. Verplank, the tough guy with a bum shoulder. The gritty two-time captain's pick with a 4-0-1 Ryder Cup record. A guy who's played the last year on pure guts. A player who's overcome more in his 43 years than you can imagine. He wouldn't have picked himself. In fact, he called it wishful thinking when he saw Peggy Wednesday and told her if he happened to be in the hunt Sunday afternoon, he wanted her to be at 18. Then Lord Byron stepped him and dared Verplank to believe. He decided to trade the graphite shafts in his irons -- the ones he'd been using to baby the shoulder and his elbow that's undergone three surgeries -- for steel, and he started dialing in his irons. That shoulder -- the one that forced him to withdraw from last year's event after three holes -- magically stopped hurting Thursday morning. And the numbers started coming -- 67, 68, 66. Suddenly, he was one shot back of Donald with 18 to play. Then he ran off three birdies in a row on the front nine and Donald double bogeyed the ninth hole, and Verplank took the lead. He stretched it by three, but Donald closed it to one at 16. Verplank, who beat Padraig Harrington 4 & 3 in singles at the K Club last fall, wasn't going to fold. And when he walked off the 18th tee and felt a cool breeze -- "And it wasn't cool out there,'' -- he knew something special was about to happen. He split the fairway. And Donald, one shot back, had just hit one to 10 feet. Verplank couldn't out. It wasn't an option. He hit it to 11 feet, and ran his birdie attempt 2 feet by. Donald missed his birdie, too. "I don't know, I was really calm,'' he said of the 18th hole. "I was really calm until I about passed out over the 2-footer.'' Just winning again for the first time since 2001 is huge. After all, it has been 138 tournaments, six seconds and three top 10s since he raised a trophy, and it was the first time since 1992, when Billy Ray Brown won, that a Texan has held the title. But he wasn't thinking about anything like that. He was thinking about winning the Nelson. About looking up and seeing Peggy standing outside the scoring tent. About Byron. And, yes, he was speechless. And no, he couldn't stop crying. He called home 40 minutes after that putt dropped and tried to talk to his wife Kim. "I couldn't say a thing,'' he said. He was crying. "I love you,'' she said. A few minutes later, he was trying to recall the first time he saw Nelson. He's sure it was at Preston Trail when he was a "little bratty kid running around ... Heck, he might have said hello to me before when I was a kid, but it didn't register.'' The call Nelson made to him when he was a senior in high school did. Nelson watched him hit balls and, well, the rest is history. Verplank saved every note Nelson sent him -- through good times and bad. He cherished the rounds of golf he played with Nelson and the stories he heard. And, well, those visits to Fairway Ranch. "The living room just had a big easy chair, and the one whole wall just has all his trophies, The Masters trophy, the PGA trophy, just all these ... I mean, it's just incredible,'' he said. "So you're just looking at it like a museum, looking at all the things that he did. So that's pretty neat. "I mean, that was very impressive to me as a young TOUR pro to get to go over to his house. I can't remember which Christmas it was, but when I came back here, I talked to him during the holidays or whatever, and I'd just see him or just go to his house or chat for a while.'' Lord, how he'd love to do chat one more time. Then again, he did that Sunday afternoon when lived the dream. When that putt fell. When he looked up and said thank you. Copyright 2007 PGATOUR.com. All rights reserved. |
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