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Furyk not worried about slow pace to begin season as he defends Transitions

By Doug Ferguson
Published on
Furyk not worried about slow pace to begin season as he defends Transitions

Coming off the best season of his career, Jim Furyk was determined to start his PGA Tour season much better than he has in previous years.

He finished 10 shots behind at the season opener in Kapalua. He missed two cuts. A strong finish at Riviera allowed him to wind up only 11 shots behind the winner. And he was eliminated in the first round of the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship.

“I probably have done a very poor job preparing in the offseason, something I need to address,” Furyk said. “I thought I would address it this year. But obviously, I didn’t.”

He started the year at No. 5 in the world and is now at No. 12 and falling. The Masters is around the corner.

Furyk isn’t worried.

A year ago, he didn’t crack the top 15 in any tournament until winning the Transitions Championship at Innisbrook, which starts Thursday. Except for the year he won Kapalua, he rarely gets off to a strong start.

“Only thing to do is keep plugging away and work hard, which I had been doing,” Furyk said. “Eventually, I’m old enough to know that we’re in the middle of March -- not a time to push the panic button. It’s a long season. I have a lot of events to play well this year, whether that’s this week or next week or whatever it may be.

“Right now, I would like to play well here and at Bay Hill, and gain some confidence going into Augusta.”

Last year at Innisbrook, he had gone 2 1/2 years without winning when he strung together four rounds in the 60s on one of the toughest tracks in Florida and held on with a bogey at the 18th to beat K.J. Choi. That set in motion a year in which Furyk won three times, capping it off with the Tour Championship and the $10 million FedExCup bonus.

It’s easy to look for other causes of the pedestrian play for Furyk.

He made a modest equipment change from last year in which he has a corporate deal for his cap and another one for his bag. He has switched to a TaylorMade driver and golf ball, although he is free to put anything else in his bag. For the moment, he still uses the Srixon irons by choice.

It is rare for a top player to fill most of his bag with anything, and he’s done some testing.

“There’s good tinkering and there’s bad tinkering,” Furyk said. “Having that open bag is wonderful other than the fact that everyone knows that you have an open bag and you can have a lot of toys in there at times. I’ve been testing and I’ve been going through things it. It would be better to do it at home, but quite honestly, there’s no conditions like tour conditions.”

The Transitions Championship is one step closer to the Masters, and the fields are getting stronger by the week.

Innisbrook has the No. 1 player in the world for the first time since Vijay Singh in 2005. This time it’s Martin Kaymer, and there is plenty of company in the world ranking, more reflected in its depth.

Among the top players are Nick Watney, coming off his big win last week at Doral, along with the likes of Paul Casey, Geoff Ogilvy and Bubba Watson. Filling out this field is a wonderful display of youth -- U.S. Amateur champion Peter Uihlein, 17-year-old Matteo Manassero and 19-year-old Ryo Ishikawa, trying to bring some happy news to Japan.