This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Back trouble is bothersome enough for anyone, but the problem is magnified for a professional golfer. So it was that Jay Don Blake once wondered if he would ever swing a golf club efficiently and without pain.
The St. George resident is feeling much better now, and his game reflects it. Blake's breakthrough on the Champions Tour came Sunday in the Songdo IBD Championship in Korea, where he outlasted John Cook on the fifth playoff hole for his first victory. Peter Senior and Mark O'Meara were eliminated on the third hole of the four-way playoff, and Blake avenged a playoff loss to Cook earlier this season in Florida.
Blake's win came 20 years after his only PGA Tour victory, in his 424th event since that triumph in San Diego. It was worth was $456,000 and, in all probability, the chance to keep playing the tour for several more years. That's reassuring to someone who has struggled to gain full access, even after a lengthy PGA Tour career.
"It's a big relief to to win and feel like I can compete again and get it done," Blake said in a tour news release.
The former Utah State golfer will turn 53 next month. He went through a period in his late 40s when even putting socks on his feet was a chore, to say nothing of swinging a club and warming up for a round of golf.
The results were predictable. "The more I practiced, it wasn't doing any good, because I was just practicing bad habits," Blake said earlier this year, prior to his induction into the Utah Golf Hall of Fame. "After so long, that golf swing just got worse and worse."
Describing himself as "devastated mentally," Blake "just had to sit back and analyze what I was doing in my life."
The conclusion was that he still wanted to play golf, pursuing the game that took him from Dixie Red Hills in St. George to the PGA Tour as the most successful Utah native ever to play at that level. The first step, just to be able to function aside from swinging a club, was to fix his back problems. Surgery would not correct the issue of three bulging disks, because his pelvic and spine were out of position.
A three-year process of realigning his right hip, retraining his muscles, resulted in Blake's not playing golf for more than a year. But the timing was good. When he was eligible for the Champions Tour, he was ready.
The remaining issue was access. There's something of a myth about the Champions Tour, in terms of how any PGA Tour veteran can easily make the transition.
Consider that having made $5.5 million on the PGA Tour, Blake still lacked eligibility for the Champions Tour via the money category. Remarkably, he Monday-qualified four times in 2009 and took advantage of other limited opportunities. In 2010, a reshuffling of exempt status helped him, thanks to his early-season play.
He had more access this season, but still felt pressure to perform and enhance his status.
"Honestly, you get nervous," Blake said. "You get tense, you get worried, you get stressed … I'd like to be stress-free sometime and see what happened."
He'll have that opportunity now that he stands 10th on the 2011 money list with more than $1 million.