At the age of 46, long time Atlanta resident Billy Andrade came to a realistic but hard-to-accept decision regarding his PGA Tour career.
After 22 seasons, 624 starts, four victories and $12.38 million in earnings, Andrade determined he could no longer compete at a sufficient level to continue playing the tour on a regular basis.
Andrade made just two of 17 cuts and less than $20,000 in 2009, and decided to look elsewhere within the golf industry as his primary focus. Andrade spent the next three years as a broadcast golf analyst for Golf Channel, and likely could have continued in that profession. But as his 50th birthday approached, he returned to the course with his clubs instead of a microphone and a headset.
After playing only five tournaments combined from 2010 to ’12, Andrade managed seven appearances in 2013, split between the Web.com and PGA Tours. Six of those seven starts produced little in the way of results, but in just his second PGA Tour event that year, Andrade turned the clock back in Jackson, Miss., playing the way he frequently did in the two decades in which he was a highly competitive member of the PGA Tour.
Andrade shot 66-67-65 the last three rounds to tie for fifth, his first top-10 finish since 2006. He made only one more start the rest of the season, but that one week in Mississippi gave Andrade some hope that he could make a go of it on the Champions Tour when he turned 50 in January of last year.
“I took three years off to do TV and played a little bit when I turned 49, but not as much as I would have liked,” Andrade said in a media gathering prior to the 2015 Greater Gwinnett Championship, which will be played April 17-19 at TPC Sugarloaf.
“I know how to do this,” Andrade said of his return to a full-time role as a player. “But I haven’t done it in a while. How long is it going to take before I get into a groove? ”
In just his second start on the Champions Tour, Andrade tied for eighth in an event in Naples, Fla. Two tournaments later, he had a chance to win the Mississippi Gulf Resort Classic, but was edged out down the stretch by fellow Champions Tour newcomer Jeff Maggert.
Andrade’s rookie season went along quietly for the next five months before he re-emerged in Canada, where he scored one of his four PGA Tour victories 14 years earlier. Andrade and fan favorite Fred Couples engaged in one of the most spirited battles on the Champions Tour in recent memory.
Going to the final round, Andrade was three shots off the lead in a tie for 11th, with Couples four back in a tie for 16th. Both players shot 3-under on the front nine, but were still trailing when they made their moves on the incoming nine.
Couples played the first four holes on the back nine in 4-under, going eagle-birdie-birdie on holes 11, 12 and 13. Andrade, playing behind Couples, answered with four birdies on the first five holes on the final nine, as the two players moved to the front.
An eagle at the 18th gave Couples the clubhouse lead at 15-under, and Andrade three-putted the 17th for a bogey to fall two behind with one hole to play. But Andrade matched Couples’ closing eagle to force a playoff, which lasted only one hole when Andrade was unable to birdie the hole he had eagled to conclude his round.
Couples tapped in for birdie and the win, leaving Andrade to suffer the agony of defeat in virtual isolation.
“Fred is like Frank Sinatra on our tour,” Andrade said. “They had huge crowds in Calgary. After he tapped in, everybody went straight to him, and I had sort of a disease. I felt like Bill Murray in Caddyshack with the priest.
“I just walked away and nobody said good tournament. Everyone was like ‘Freddie, Freddie, Freddie’.”
Andrade played a great final round, but was not rewarded for his effort.
“You don’t usually shoot 62 on Sunday and lose,” Andrade mused. “How many times does a guy eagle the last hole and lose? I did that as well.”
Even with his near miss in Calgary, Andrade said his first year on the Champions Tour was “fantastic. The players all kind of root for each other.”
As much camaraderie as there is on the tour, Andrade discovered that the competition is no less elevated than when he was a regular on the PGA Tour.
“You have to shoot some pretty low scores and do it quickly. For 25 years when I played the regular tour, you have four days. It took me a while to figure out that Friday is not Thursday. You have to start on Friday thinking that it’s more of a sprint than a race. You can’t make a whole lot of mistakes because it’s tough to make up shots.”
Andrade played well enough as a rookie to finish 23rd on the money list and earn a spot in the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup. In his first four starts of 2015, Andrade recorded a trio of top-20 finishes, finishing outside the top 50 in the Naples tournament where he scored his first top 10 last year on the Champions Tour.
The early stage of the 2015 schedule consists of two tournaments followed by four off weeks, then two more tournaments and two off weeks.
“We have a little break before we get here and everybody will be pretty eager,” said Andrade, with the Greater Gwinnett Championship coming after the two-week break.
“The golf course here at Sugarloaf is probably one of the best-conditioned courses we will play all year on tour. I think everybody is looking forward to coming.”
Andrade made his first appearance in the Greater Gwinnett Championship last year, but was not entirely optimistic about his chances to win after what ne observed on TV the week before.
“Last year it was tough for me because I came in here watching the Masters. I’m sitting watching the Masters and going ‘How the hell am I going to beat this Jimenez guy? Or Bernhard Langer?’ They both finished in the top 10 at the Masters and I’m sitting on my couch at home.
“They both beat me. Maybe this year will be different.”
Andrade closed with a final round 67 last year at Sugarloaf to tie for 12th, finishing with a 5-under 211 total, nine shots behind Jimenez, who won by two over defending champion Langer. Only four players in the field shot lower than 7-under for the tournament.
“I like Sugarloaf because it’s hard,” Andrade said. “It gives me a better chance to win.”
Andrade, a native of Rhode Island, came south to play his college golf at Wake Forest and settled in Atlanta. He remains closely attached to both his hometown and his adopted home, hosting major charity events in both Rhode Island and Atlanta.
Prior to attending Wake Forest, Andrade was the top-ranked junior in the country and enjoyed an outstanding collegiate and amateur career, earning All-America status three times and helping lead Wake to a national championship in 1986. Later that year, he won both the Sunnehana and North and South amateur events and competed in the 1987 Masters as an amateur.
Andrade qualified for the PGA Tour in his first attempt and took about a year and a half to settle in on the PGA Tour. He closed out the second half of his sophomore season with three top-5 finishes and was a solid player on tour for the next two decades.
The first two wins for Andrade came in consecutive weeks in 1991, first in Washington, D.C., in the Kemper Open and the next week in suburban New York in the Buick Classic at Westchester Country Club. He finished a career best 14th on the money list that year and later added wins in the Canadian Open (1998) and Las Vegas (2000).
Andrade made several runs at victory after that, with what turned out to be his last hoorah coming in 2006 when he finished second and third in consecutive starts in the two events he won back-to-back 15 years earlier.