Claxton – April 2011, page 12
Since the mid-1990s, Paul Claxton has spent much of his time on the road, plying his trade all across the U.S., with the occasional trip to Australia, Canada, and Central and South America.
Claxton’s annual itinerary reads like the lyrics of the Johnny Cash song used in an airline commercial. But for consecutive weeks in the next month, Claxton will be able to operate a little closer to home, although it’s not like he’ll be able to make daily commutes home.
The Nationwide Tour makes its annual stops in Valdosta (April 28-May 1) and Athens (May 5-8), neither of which actually represent home games for the veteran tour pro, but are definitely familiar territory.
Claxton has lived on St. Simons Island the past 13 years and his south Georgia roots extend to his hometown of Vidalia, making Valdosta a comfortable fit for Claxton’s old school Southern drawl.
The following week, the Nationwide Tour proceeds northeast to Athens, where Claxton attended college and made his name in golf as a member of the team at UGA and a State Amateur champion.
Claxton, who is playing his 13th season on the Nationwide Tour, is looking forward to both events after having already played in Panama, Colombia and Louisiana, with a stop in California scheduled shortly before the back-to-back weeks in his home state.
“It’s always fun to play close to home on courses the caliber of Kinderlou Forest and the University course; ones I’ve played a good bit.” Claxton said a few days before heading to Louisiana for the start of the Nationwide Tour’s domestic schedule for 2011.
“I get to see some friends I haven’t seen in a while and get to relax a little.”
Claxton has played well in both tournaments – the South Georgia Classic in Valdosta and the Stadion UGA Classic in Athens. He has a pair of top-10 finishes in the four years Kinderlou Forest has hosted a Nationwide Tour event and recorded two top-20 finishes when the Athens tournament was played at Jennings Mill from 2006-09.
That event moved to the UGA course last year, and Claxton turned in a respectable effort on a course that has been changed considerably since he played there during his college days in the late 1980s and early ‘90s.
“Davis did a great job,” Claxton says of the renovation of the course by Davis Love’s design firm. “When I was in the school, the course was never in good shape and we didn’t play it that much. It’s fun to see what they’ve done with it.
“It was immaculate last year and that’s all you can ask for. The changes they’ve made are good, and anything they did was going to be better than how it was. It’s exciting to see the facility in the condition it’s in and the improvements they’ve made.”
Both Kinderlou Forest and the UGA course are among the longest and strongest courses to host Nationwide Tour events, but Claxton is comfortable on both despite their length and his relative deficiency in that department.
Of the 138 Nationwide Tour players who figured in the official stats for 2010, only about 20 averaged fewer yards per drive than Claxton, although his typical tee shot (285 yards) is not short by any standard.
Claxton has made his living in golf by hitting it straight, an attribute he says is no longer highly valued.
“It’s not like when I first came out on tour,” he recalls. “You used to have to drive the ball really straight to be successful, but since Tiger and Mickelson, hitting fairways is no advantage. They just bomb it 320 and wherever it ends up, they just have a wedge in hand. That’s the way the young guys play.
“Now, it’s gotten like watching tennis. One swing and it’s over. In the old days of McEnroe and Borg, they’d hit it at least five or six times apiece.”
Like tennis, Claxton says golf is now “a totally different game,” citing the improvements in equipment, especially regarding the balls.
Golf balls from two decades ago spun more than those currently made, with the result being that off-target shots don’t go as far off line as they once did. Players can’t manipulate the current balls to the extent they used to, and Claxton says golf “is not as creative now. The young kids can hit it about as straight as I do, and it’s hard to compete against that for four days.”
Claxton has enjoyed success at Kinderlou Forest, even though it is the longest course to host a tournament affiliated with the PGA Tour. In part, he credits that success to the Bermuda grass surfaces used there.
“We don’t play a whole lot of times throughout the year on Bermuda, but that’s what I grew up on. I feel pretty comfortable there.”
Claxton doesn’t mind playing on longer, more difficult courses like Kinderlou and the UGA course.
“I like to play courses where par is a good score. Most of the time I shoot around even par, maybe two or three under. I’ve done pretty good on courses like that, more than courses where it takes 22 or 23 under to win.”
Claxton has played pretty well wherever he’s teed it up during his career on the Nationwide Tour.
In 12 seasons as a tour member, Claxton has finished below 61st on the money list just once, that coming in 2009 when he slipped to 90th. He finished as high as 10th in ’07 and was 17th in ’01, both coinciding with his two career Nationwide Tour titles.
Claxton won the early-season Louisiana event in 2001, with his last win coming in ’07 in the Prince George’s County Open, which usually comes just after the two Georgia tournaments on the Nationwide schedule.
Thanks to his longevity on the tour, and the success he has enjoyed, Claxton stands second on the all-time money list with $1.4 million, and is within range of leader Darron Stiles. He was the first player to reach $1 million, making him golf’s version of Crash Davis, the career minor league home run record-holder in “Bull Durham.”
“You can look at it either way,” Claxton says of the connotations of his achievement. “It’s how you choose to look at it and I’ve taken something positive out of it. I’ve played a lot of good golf and I know I can play at a higher level.”
Claxton has played on the PGA Tour in four separate years – 1997, 2002, 2005 and 2008. The first three times he made it through Q-school, with his last PGA Tour season the result of his career best Nationwide Tour finish in ’07.
In his first three seasons in golf’s major leagues, he finished around 180th on the money list. His last time out, he was a disappointing 218th, the start of a two-year slump which he snapped out of with a solid season in 2010.
During his four years on the PGA Tour, Claxton never recorded a top-10 finish and made the cut in just under 40 percent of the events he entered. Because he never played well on the West Coast, Claxton was never able to get into as many tournaments as he would have liked, and found it difficult to build up any sort of momentum.
“I tend to play better when I get to play four or five weeks in a row,” says Claxton, who rarely was able to do that on the PGA Tour due to his status, which did not get him in to the more elite tournaments.
Claxton, who turned 43 earlier this year, is looking for at least one more shot at the PGA Tour, and needs to play as well as he did in 2007 to have that opportunity.
“I want to be on the PGA Tour. There’s no doubt about that. I still feel I’ve got some good golf in me. Physically, I’m in good shape and I’m looking forward to getting back out there.”
Although Claxton has enjoyed the years he has spent on the Nationwide Tour, “I don’t want to play it for the rest of my career. My goal is the PGA Tour. That’s what all of us want to do.”
Claxton says if he ever gets to the point where he doesn’t think he can play at a PGA Tour level “I’ll try to do something else.”
When asked what that might be, he laughed and replied, “I have no idea. I’ve thought about it a little, but I don’t know what I could do. Knock on wood, I’ve never faced that decision.”
By Mike Blum