{"id":2174,"date":"2016-05-05T13:59:43","date_gmt":"2016-05-05T13:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theaposition.com\/teemoore\/?p=2174"},"modified":"2016-05-06T20:44:52","modified_gmt":"2016-05-06T20:44:52","slug":"stuards-tour-win-breaks-decades-long-dry-spell-for-michigan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/teemoore\/golf\/personalities\/2174\/stuards-tour-win-breaks-decades-long-dry-spell-for-michigan","title":{"rendered":"Stuard’s TOUR win breaks decades-long dry spell for Michigan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Brian<\/a>

Brian Stuard<\/p><\/div>\n

With his unexpected and stirring win at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans on Monday, Brian Stuard became the first Michigan native to win a PGA TOUR event in 21 years. The 33-year-old Jackson native and former Oakland University golfer now joins Marshall\u2019s John Morse as the last two Michiganders to win on golf\u2019s toughest Tour. It was at the 1995 Hawaiian Open when Morse, now a Michigan Golf Hall of Fame member, eagled the final hole and won the title by two shots. Like Morse, Stuard also qualified for the Masters. It has been 19 years since a Michigan professional (not an amateur like Alma\u2019s Randy Lewis) last played at golf\u2019s first major when Morse did it in 1997 thanks to his fourth place finish at the \u201996 U.S. Open at Oakland Hills. Next April and 20 years after Morse, Stuard will be driving down Magnolia Lane.<\/p>\n

Prior to Stuard and Morse, other Michigan players in recent generations winning on the PGA TOUR included Mt. Pleasant\u2019s Dan Pohl who won twice\u2014the 1986 Colonial and the 1986 World Series of Golf at Firestone Country Club. Jackson\u2019s Mike Hill won three times\u2014at the \u201970 Doral, the \u201972 Texas Open and the \u201977 Ohio Kings Open. Mike\u2019s older brother Dave won 13 times, including three tournaments in 1969 when he also won the Vardon Trophy for lowest scoring average. Of course, the Hill brothers later went on to have successful seasons with multiple wins on the Senior and Champions Tour.<\/p>\n

A couple other tidbits about Stuard\u2019s sensational win. At TPC Louisiana over the rain-shortened 54-hole event, he was perfect in his scrambling prowess, saving par in all 20 occasions when he missed the green. For the week, he was bogey free, the only player in the field doing so. With a new putter in his bag, Stuard was 46 for 46 in making putts inside 10 feet. Not surprisingly, he ranked No. 1 in Strokes Gained Putting with 2.883. He ranked 79th (of 82) in driving distance with a 265.1 yards average.<\/p>\n

Stuard’s best previous PGA TOUR finishes were a pair of second places in Mexico, one in 2010 and the other in 2014. Monday\u2019s victory was worth $ 1,260,000 and gave Stuard, who was on conditional playing status after being 126th on the \u201915 PGA Tour money list, a two-year Tour exemption. He\u2019s also automatically entered in this season\u2019s Players Championship, the PGA Championship and the 2017 Hyundai Tournament of Champions in Maui.<\/p>\n

Typical of his top-notch inside reporting, Golf Digest\u2019s<\/em> and Golf Channel\u2019s<\/em> Tim Rosaforte reported on Monday that in a recent friendly round with fellow Michigander Tom Gillis (who lost in a playoff last summer at the John Deere Classic to Jordan Spieth), a frustrated Stuard complained, \u201cI\u2019m the worst player on the PGA Tour.\u201d Prior to New Orleans, Stuard had missed three out of four cuts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of PGA TOUR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With his unexpected and stirring win at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans on Monday, Brian Stuard became the first… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":2179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,976045,17,7],"tags":[3874,4081,1036836,3708,4256,1012190,2832,1012369,2862,1012742,1036821,1012940,3873],"class_list":["post-2174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","category-tournament","category-courses-and-travel","category-personalities","tag-tom-gillis","tag-john-morse","tag-pga-tour","tag-jackson","tag-zurich-classic","tag-oakland-university","tag-terry-moore","tag-dan-poh","tag-michigan-golf","tag-dave-hill","tag-masters","tag-mike-hill","tag-brian-stuard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/teemoore\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2016\/05\/brian-stuard-full-callaway.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/teemoore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/teemoore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/teemoore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/teemoore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/teemoore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2174"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/teemoore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2178,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/teemoore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174\/revisions\/2178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/teemoore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/teemoore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/teemoore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/teemoore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}