text: Marion County's Potter on golf's biggest stage - News - Ocala.com - Ocala, FL
  Marion County's Potter on golf's biggest stage
  Lake Weir High School graduate Ted Potter Jr. tees off Thursday in the Sony Open in Hawaii. It'll be his first PGA Tour event after years of coming close to qualifying.
  Ted Potter Jr. has never taken a golf lesson.He was never a member of a country club; he never hired a coach; he never played on a college team.When he tees off today in Hawaii for the first time as a PGA Tour golfer, Potter might be the only player in the Sony Open field without any of those things on his resume. Instead, everything about his golf game was grown organically, either self-taught or taught to him by his father while growing up in the Ocala National Forest."He started teaching me as soon as I could walk," said Potter, now 28. "I can't remember that far back, but that's when I started playing."This, however, is not an Earl Woods-Tiger Woods tale. Potter wasn't born to be a Masters champion. His father, Ted Sr., had learned to play as a child from his own father. It was an experience he wanted to pass along."I started playing when I was 6, 7 years old," the elder Potter said. "It was just a lot of family time for me and my father."By the time Potter Jr. was born, his father had crafted a single-handicap game while working on golf course maintenance crews. Ted Jr., still in diapers, would stumble around the yard with a shag bag, whacking golf balls."As soon as he could hold a club, I had a club made for him," the elder Potter said. "He always had a nice swing. His swing hasn't changed since he was a little boy. It's a natural thing for him."Instant successPotter got good quickly and the competitive streak that burns in him today was evident back then, too.In his first year of junior golf, at age 8, he won all 13 tournaments he entered. By the time he reached Lake Weir High School, Potter began to see that his favorite sport could become something more than a weekend or afternoon pastime."I started breaking par consistently," Potter said. "I had always dreamed of making it to the PGA Tour, but that's when I realized I could probably do it."His golf path diverged from the norm after he graduated from Lake Weir. Of the 25 Nationwide Tour graduates teeing off in Hawaii today, Potter is one of just four — and the only American — who didn't play collegiately.Instead, he turned pro right off the bat, succeeded at PGA Tour Qualifying School, and was a Nationwide Tour rookie at the young age of 20 in 2004.The early results were disastrous. He missed the cut in each of the 24 events he entered that year, a losing streak that cost him his Nationwide status and drew some passing, negative attention from national golf writers.It's something he never shook. No matter how much success he later found on the Hooters Tour — he collected seven career wins and well more than a half-million dollars — he still only registered on the national golf radar as the guy who once missed 24 of 24 cuts.Potter returned to the Nationwide Tour in the 2007 and 2010 seasons and finally made a few cuts in otherwise forgettable years.A poor showing in Q-school after the 2010 season left Potter back on the Hooters Tour again in early 2011. It further fueled the reputation he was starting to develop as the best mini-tour golfer in the world — a somewhat dubious honor, akin to being the best minor league baseball player or playground basketball player who never made the big time.Those questions followed Potter around, but he said he never got frustrated or lost hope."I was having good years on the Hooters Tour so it was never a financial thing," Potter said. "I could still play the Hooters Tour and I knew I could play well out there. Just keep grinding and eventually it will come."Eventually, it did.Breakthrough victoryPotter's game was in top shape when he attempted to Monday-qualify into the Nationwide Tour's South Georgia Classic last April 25.In the six weeks prior, he had won the Ocala Open and both of the first two events of the Hooters Tour season. He stayed red-hot that Monday by shooting a 66 to claim a coveted spot in the field.Fast-forward six days and Potter's life had changed. He set a tournament record with a 72-hole score of 272 (16-under) to win by three strokes and earn $112,500 — by far the biggest payday of his career.He also was the first Monday qualifier to win a Nationwide event in five years.The victory put him back on the path to his PGA dream. The single-day earnings gave him a solid foundation on which to stage his campaign for a spot in "The 25" — each of the Nationwide's top-25 earners win PGA Tour cards for the following year. Even if he fell short of that goal, he was now assured of Nationwide status for both the 2011 and 2012 seasons."It was a relief knowing that if I didn't get my tour card, I'd have a couple more years (on the Nationwide) to try and get it," Potter said.He didn't need nearly that long.Potter scored two more top-five finishes and another top-10 by late September, when he prevailed in a three-way playoff at the Soboba Golf Classic in Southern California.His second win netted him another $135,000, which not only made him a lock to finish in the top 25, but it also moved him into second place on the money list with leader J.J. Killeen within reach.Potter finished the season in second with $402,470, about $12,000 less than Killeen, who played seven more events than Potter did.For the first time since he turned pro as a 19-year-old, Potter was going into the winter without any worries. There would be no Q-school; no driving to every corner of Central Florida for mini-tour events; no scrambling to put together a schedule for the spring.Potter would be starting the 2012 season in the exact place he'd dreamed of being since the day he picked up a golf club: at the first tee of a PGA tournament.Of coursePotter said his primary concern this week has less to do with the star golfers in the field, the television cameras, the huge galleries, or the huge paycheck that one lucky golfer will take home.Potter is more worried about grass — specifically, the type of grass, the length, the speed, the firmness of the soil below.Potter is a notoriously aggressive putter whose heavy hand has won him many tournaments, but also cost him a few crucial three-putts along the way.His coach and longtime friend, Golden Hills pro Daren Robinson, believes it was that hyper-competitive, attacking style of play that hurt him most when he failed on the Nationwide Tour as a younger player."When he was 19 there was nobody more confident than he was," Robinson said. "But he's learned to control that confidence."He'll encounter a familiar strain of Bermuda grass in Hawaii — also commonly used in Florida and around the Southeast — but that's about the only aspect of the course or conditions that will be familiar. Same goes for next week at PGA West, two weeks from now at Torrey Pines and the week after that in Scottsdale, Ariz.Each new course will present Potter a new puzzle to unlock while playing against a field of the best golfers in the world, most of them with several years of tournament experience at those courses.Can he succeed?There are many factors working against PGA Tour rookies.Start with the fact that they're playing against savvy superstars with course-specific tournament experience on a weekly basis. Then add in the massive galleries, the media throngs, the greenside TV cameras, and the highest stakes they've ever played for (the winner's share this week is $990,000).It all adds up to long odds for a golfer like Potter. But the things that separate him from the rest of the field — his long and uniquely difficult path to the top, his atypical learning process, his every-man personality — could be the very same things that allow him to succeed.Because Potter doesn't come from money, because he wasn't raised in country clubs, he's less likely to be affected by the weekly PGA riches at stake."Money can't be what it's all about," said Potter, who recently bought a home in Silver Springs and has no plans to leave the area. "You've still got to enjoy what you're doing and have fun in life."Because he spent so many years grinding on low-paying mini-tours while his PGA peers were playing on college teams, he had to win frequently in order to survive as a pro. Potter has never won a PGA tournament and it's possible he never will, but between junior golf and mini-tours, he likely has more tournament wins than the vast majority of any given PGA field.And that's what he'll lean on if he finds himself in a Sunday duel with Tiger Woods sometime this season."You've just got to draw back from past experience," Potter said. "Winning is winning, no matter what level it's at. You're still going to have the nerves running through you and you still have to try and stay calm and do the best you can."The other thing Potter can lean on is his game itself.His resounding and sustained success on the Hooters Tour and other mini-tours was no coincidence. Along the way, he routinely beat golfers like Keegan Bradley, who won the PGA Championship as a rookie last year, and Scott Stallings, another 2011 rookie winner."When he walked onto the practice green on the Hooters Tour and put his bag down, everyone stopped and watched him putt," Robinson said. "On the driving range, they stopped and watched him. There's been so many guys that he's played with that are on the PGA Tour now and he's beat them."He's going to be comfortable playing there."Contact Andy Marks at andy.marks@starbanner.com or 867-4143.