Regaining amateur status not the right decision

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I was a fill-in at the last minute on a friend's softball team a couple of years ago in New York. When I think of league softball, I think of fat guys in t-shirts with the name of a bar on the front and a high school nickname on the back. I think of pulled hamstrings, gray temples and cold beer on warm summer nights. Boy, was I wrong. In the first inning a guy on the other team hit one so far over my head in center field that by the time I ran it down -- this can take a while -- and threw my arm out trying to get the ball back into the infield, he was rounding third.

John Maginnes

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After the inning mercifully ended with a couple more errors, my buddy told me that the guy who hit the ball to New Jersey had actually played for the Yankees. In fact, two guys there had cups of coffee in the big leagues. They were stockbrokers and venture capitalists now but to everyone there they were the pros. Once a pro, always a pro.

I thought of that story a couple of weeks ago when I sent in my application for today's U.S. Open qualifying. As you read this, I am probably 6 over on the first nine of the Duke University golf course trying not to shoot a number so high that I have to write a letter to the USGA asking if I can try to qualify again next year. On the application, there are boxes to check for pro and amateur. Believe it or not, though, there is a third box for professionals who are asking for reinstatement as an amateur.

I spent the last year trying to decide whether or not to file for reinstatement. Ultimately, I decided against it for a couple of reasons. One reason is simply pragmatic and the other is more a matter of principle. If I happen to squeak through a qualifier or play well in a pro-am, I want to get paid. Not to worry though, no one is betting on that. On the other side, I just don't think that it is fair for a guy who supported his family for more than 16 years as a pro and is fully vested in the PGA TOUR retirement plan to be allowed to compete with the amateurs.

If I had decided to ask for reinstatement, turns out I would have been eligible in 2009 after two years without competing as a pro. While I was deliberating, I was thinking if I did get reinstated, I could win the U.S. Mid-Amateur and play in the Masters in a couple of years. Yeah, right. Like a guy who plays 10 rounds a year can compete with those guys. Heck, the last time I played with the good amateurs in North Carolina I had to take out a second mortgage. Apparently, gambling winnings don't jeopardize your amateur status. Or, maybe I have found a loophole in paying those boys.

The point is I am not going to forget what I learned about the game because my status is different according the USGA. I am not going to discount all that if I played in a few amateur tournaments. There have been guys who played at the highest level who returned to the amateur ranks and were then berated for winning golf tournaments. I don't blame the players but certainly the system has been called into question in recent years.

Amateur golf and all of its romance has a beautiful history within the game. To allow players who have won on the PGA TOUR or even spent years among the best players in the world somehow diminishes that. I could be wrong but as someone who looks back with reverence on his collegiate and amateur career and with pride on my PGA TOUR career, I don't think so.

So for the 10 or 15 rounds a year that I manage to play these days, I am still a pro. Not a good one, mind you, and not a particularly competitive one, but my golf game is still a little better than my ability to play softball. In neither sport do I even have warning-track power. Besides, can you imagine the headline: PGA TOUR veteran and three-time winner on the Nationwide Tour wins Mid-Am? There is no romance in that -- as a matter of fact, it doesn't even make sense. And besides, I wouldn't make any money off the win so I would probably have to write the headline anyway.