LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- There are times along the winding occupational highway of a sportswriting career where every notebook-toting scribe has been leery of making eye contact with certain figures.
It's inevitable that in a literate society, somebody will get cross-eyed over something written, then throw some cross words, if not a right cross, in the writer's direction.
Once, a menacing and burly guy on the North Carolina basketball team named Makhtar Ndiaye actually threatened to put his size-18 Nike in my backside, which got my attention. Since he was a menacing 6-feet-9 and built like a cypress trunk, it surely would have hurt.
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| Shane Bertsch was so sure of his status that he went on an important personal trip with family last week rather than play. (Getty Images) |
He opted for neither, which perfectly underscores his situation -- sitting squarely on the fence as far as retaining his full exempt status for 2009.
Because of a poorly timed gaffe that could prove both costly and embarrassing, Bertsch believed he was sitting pretty as he stood on the Disney World practice range two days before the Children's Miracle Network Classic began. All around him, you could hear stomach linings eroding, body parts puckering and the enamel being gnashed off molars.
An hour later, when an official from tour headquarters called to inform Bertsch that, unbeknown to him, he was very much on the bubble, the 38-year-old jumped right into the stress-fest line with the rest of the nervous wrecks.
"It was just a shock," he said after an opening 71 on Thursday.
Because he didn't understand the rules of his exemption status, Bertsch made a series of potentially disastrous decisions, believing he was in the clear as far as keeping his tour card when he really wasn't.
"I had no idea," he said.
As they say in court, ignorance makes a poor defense. Bertsch entered this week mistakenly believing he had cemented his tour card for 2009, even though he stands at No. 124 on the tour money list. Only the top 125 are fully eligible next year.
It all started with a casual conversation on the practice range Tuesday night, when Bertsch explained that he wasn't grinding at all this week, because his future had already been set for '09. Uncertain about his explanation, I double-checked it with tour officials, who hurriedly called Bertsch and told him he needs to keep his foot on the gas this week, or else.
Thus, having caused his anxiety levels to ramp up to threat-level red, it wasn't clear how Bertsch would react when I saw him next, which was right after he had missed a five-footer for par on his last hole Thursday.
"No, I'm glad it happened because, I would rather know how I stand," he said.
He'd rather that it hadn't happened at all.
Bertsch suffered a bout with vertigo in 2007 and was given a medical extension this year, which allowed him 28 events to match the earnings number of the player who finished 125th on the money list last season. Once a player on a medical waiver reaches or exceeds the No. 125 dollar total in his allotted number of events, he is cleared to play for the rest of the year as a fully exempt player.
It's a clear-cut rule that has been on the books for years, but Bertsch somehow got it sideways and nobody raised a red flag until CBSSports.com tapped him on the shoulder Tuesday -- when there were five days left in the season. In short, Bertsch believed that by reaching the top 125 number from 2007, he was cleared for all of 2009, too.
Bertsch was downright cavalier about his future when asked Tuesday about whether he was agonizing over his position on the money list. It all changed with one phone call a few minutes later.
But surely, it's better than playing this week and not knowing. Imagine if the tour had been forced to call him Monday to explain that he'd happily gone about his week at Disney, missing the cut or finishing well back in the pack because he wasn't fully concentrating, to tell him he was toast.
"It's nerve-wracking, all of a sudden, after being pretty relaxed the last few weeks," he said. "Totally out of the blue. I was completely under the impression that once I had reached last year's number, I was good."
Quite the opposite of good. If two players pass him on the money list this week, which is entirely possible unless he picks up the pace Friday and makes the cut, he's going to be kicking himself, not me, for the entire offseason.
Compounding the misread, Bertsch didn't send in his application for Qualifying School, so there's no fallback option, other than playing with reduced status next season. He also skipped playing last week, unaware that others were gaining on him.
In myriad conversations with agents, players and other tour officials over the course of the year, nobody bothered to correct him, he said.
"I was always under the impression that I was totally fine," he said. "Rules are rules and I take most of the blame myself, but I wish it would have been explained to me a little bit better.
"I did get one letter from the tour that my wife read briefly, that said 'congratulations, you have earned privileges for the rest of '08.' Maybe it should have said, 'But you're not exempt for 2009 until you do this or that.'"
He didn't have much backup. Bertsch fired his agent in March.
"Everyone I spoke to about said, 'Yeah, hey, that sounds great,'" he said. "Players, agents, all the people I talked to. I had no idea."
He reached the money mark required to keep his card five weeks ago at the Turning Stone event, then put it on cruise control.
"You can never say you come into a tour event unprepared, but I wasn't really grinding like I had any pressure," he said. "Now the weight is back on me. It was real hard to play today."
It has been a rough week already. His wife is here and his brother is caddying for him. He had to give the alarming news to them on Tuesday night, too.
Making the story harder to digest emotionally is how Bertsch spent last week, when he would have been playing had he known he needed every cent he could muster. He and his family went on a trek to a spot in North Dakota where Bertsch's father used to take them years ago.
"I took seven days off last week -- I don't know if I've ever done that before in the middle of the season," he said dejectedly. "It was a real special week for us. We took the family up and laid my dad's ashes to rest.
"The only reason we did it was because it was the first time in six years where we had time to do it. Or at least we thought we did."
His mother and sister accompanied him on the trip, which was draining enough. Still wound up about his round and his predicament, Bertsch paused and took a deep breath. He needs all the oxygen he can get at this point.
"I guess I will just grind it out this week and see what happens," he said. "It's not the week we thought we were going to have here, obviously.
No doubt. After he finished his round, just to add insult to indignity, a tour official informed him that he'd been randomly selected for tour drug testing, a rather embarrassing process itself.
Bless him, Bertsch didn't take a swing at that guy, either
