LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- When you are in Tag Ridings' professional predicament, you don't go anywhere without a cell phone, beeper, walkie-talkie, or a box of matches and a blanket, in case smoke signals must suffice.
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| Tag Ridings got off to a good start with an opening 67 Thursday. (AP) |
Ridings this year is part of the PGA Tour underclass, a hard-working journeyman with so-called conditional status who never knows when he's going to field a frantic call from a faraway event informing him he's made the field at the 11th hour.
As a player without fully exempt status, Ridings is a textbook example of what awaits a cadre of the folks in the field this week at the Children's Miracle Network Classic at Disney World, the tour's season finale. Roughly a third of the field will be in his straits in 2008.
That is, living and dying with every phone call and hoping to get a foot in the tour's figurative locker room door.
Ridings, who is making the most of his opportunity this week and is one shot off the lead entering the weekend, got himself into this situation by finishing 149th in earnings in 2006. Players between Nos. 126-150 on the money list can expect to play in a handful of lesser events the following year, but sometimes it's on short notice.
To keep busy, if not competitively sharp, Ridings has played a 11 times on the developmental Nationwide Tour, which on a few occasions has prompted some mad scrambling when his number has been both called and dialed at the last second on the parent circuit.
A few weeks back he was entered in the Nationwide event in Knoxville when his phone rang. He had begun the week as an alternate at the PGA Tour event in Hartford, but because there were several withdrawals, he climbed the list and made the field. It was Wednesday night.
"I got a call right at 5 o clock, which is the deadline time, that said I was in the field," he said. "Then she called me back two minutes later and said, 'Oh, I forgot to tell you, your tee time is at 6:50 a.m. Are you sure you still want to come?'"
Uh, unequivocally, ma'am.
Ridings, given his status as a weekly fence sitter, had earlier researched some flights and quickly purchased a ticket. He arrived in Hartford at 1 a.m. and was at the course five hours later. That's only half the story.
While driving into town in the middle of the night, he detoured off the road to avoid a traffic accident ahead and got caught in the seedy part of town. While tooling through the neighborhood, Ridings said he saw a guy with gold and diamonds in his teeth who driving a "pimped-out" Lexus, walking with a huge wad of cash in his hand and a large bulge in the waistband of his pants.
"I'm not sure what it was on his hip, because it was dark, and I didn't stop," he laughed.
