LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Playing in the Fall Series has resulted in a couple of welcome consequences for veteran Davis Love III.
One was surely by design, the other more of an accidental benefit.
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| 'I want to do what I did today, to compete,' Love says. (AP) |
Meanwhile, he's making new friends in the process.
For those who haven't been paying attention, the seven fall events are considerably less-carbonated than the regular-season and strewn with players mostly seeking to retain their playing privileges for the following year. Love admitted Saturday that he doesn't know half the guys with whom he has been paired.
"I meet them on the first tee," he laughed.
After recording the low round of the day in the third round of the Children's Miracle Network Classic with an 8-under 64, Love is in position to again acquaint himself with an entity of a different sort:
The winner's circle.
Seeking his first win since mid-2006, Love continued his career-long torching of the Disney courses by recording his best 54-hole total since early 2004 and moving within two shots of leaders Steve Marino and Scott Verplank.
The veteran Verplank he knows all too well, since they were in each other's weddings and first met as teens. Some of the other players on the leaderboard, battling to keep their heads afloat occupationally, are not the usual guys he's played with over his hugely successful career.
Then again, he's played more like a journeyman than superman since breaking his ankle last season and having surgery. Love played so poorly for most of this year season that he failed to finish in the top 144 in FedEx Cup points and had an unintended month-long break in late summer.
Frustrated over how well he was striking the ball and how poorly he was scoring, his longtime swing coach Jack Lumpkin gave him a pep talk a few weeks back. The math and the message made sense, Love said.
"He said I needed to hit one more fairway, hit one more green and make one more putt," Love said. "That's what I have done this fall is take the pressure off my putter."
The last time Love shot 64 was two years ago at Disney, which should come as no surprise, really. Love ranks behind Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh in career earnings at the resort with $1.12 million, even though he's never won here.
Unless he gets run out of town Sunday on the monorail, Love will record his seventh career top-10 at Disney, tying the tournament record shared by hall-of-famers Larry Nelson and Payne Stewart.
"I've been hitting it well all week, the whole Fall Series, all season, really," Love said.
That requires some further illumination, of course.
"He's hitting it fabulously and the scoring is starting to come around," said Mark Love, Davis' brother and occasional caddie. "It's all really been about the scoring."
Hey, ain't it always?
Love had one top-20 before the FedEx series began, and didn't qualify for the playoff points race, underscoring how lackluster his numbers had been all year.
"That's when my economy went down," he cracked, "not a month later."
That could change in a hurry today. This week marks Love's lowest 54-hole total since the Sony Open in the second week of 2004, so something is clearly clicking and it's been a long time coming. Love has one victory, at the second-tier Greensboro event, since mid-2003.
His next victory would be his 20th, which would earn him a lifetime exemption, which means he'd never have to sweat out his place on the money list, like when he entered the Fall Series outside the top 125. At 44, that would be a nice hall pass to have.
As much as anything, he wants to win to demonstrate to himself that he can still do it. With $36.5 million in on-course career earnings, he's not going to be dining on macaroni and cheese or Top Ramen anytime soon, so there's no pressure there.
"I'm not really worried about the exemption," he said. "I want to win. I want to do what I did today, to compete. To myself, I have a lot to prove; to be comfortable the rest of my life, no."
There's another motivational carrot dangling, too. He played the first round this week alongside longtime running mate Fred Couples, the captain of the 2009 U.S. Presidents Cup team. The subject came up a time or 20, admitted Love, who has played on a combined 12 Ryder or Presidents cup teams.
"He reminded me that he wasn't going to pick me, that I had to play my way on," Love said, laughing.
So, in other words, he could clean up a lot of loose ends Sunday, plus take a huge step toward cementing some other
"It means so much I don't even wanna think about it," he said.
