Brandt Jobe has played 266 events on the PGA Tour and was a regular on the circuit from 1999 to 2009, but he’s the first to admit that he’s a relative novice when it comes to knowing the ways of the Nationwide Tour.
“This is my first year out here,” the Colorado Golf Hall of Famer said earlier this month. “It’s a totally different mindset on this tour. These kids have no fear. I’ve got to get a little more aggressive. I’m 45 under (par) over the last three weeks and that doesn’t add up to a lot out here.”
But at the very least, it’s a big step in the right direction for Jobe, who turned 45 this month. In his last three Nationwide tournaments, he’s finished 19th, 11th and fifth. Beyond showing progress, that’s helped him considerably in his bigger quest, which is to regain his PGA Tour card.
Injuries and an accident contributed to Jobe losing his PGA Tour exemption last year, but the Nationwide circuit may be his ticket back to the big leagues. If he can finish in the top 25 on the 2010 Nationwide money list, he’ll automatically earn his 2011 PGA Tour card.
Jobe currently stands in 30th place with $114,212, and he trails the 25th-place golfer by just $3,760. The former Colorado resident — he lived in the state from 1970 to ’99 before moving to the Dallas area — is in the field for the Knoxville News Sentinel Open that starts Thursday in Tennessee. After the tour had last week off, the Nationwide circuit will play events each of the next 10 weeks to settle who gets “promoted” in 2011. The season ends Oct. 31 at the Nationwide Tour Championship.
Jobe seems to be peaking at the right time. In his last four tournaments, his average score is a sterling 67.5, and two weeks ago he carded a 63 in the first round of the Price Cutter Charity Championship en route to a fifth-place finish.
The Nationwide Tour — where a player may miss the cut despite being 5 under par through 36 holes (as was the case with Jobe in Canada last month) — can take a while to get used to. Jobe is more accustomed to what happened in his one PGA Tour start this season, when he finished 32nd at the Byron Nelson Championship despite being just 1 under par.
The Nationwide courses tend to be not quite as demanding as those on the PGA Tour, but the Nationwide birdie-fests are impressive nonetheless. However, while the skill levels of the players on the two tours may be similar, the paydays are considerably different. In 2005, Jobe earned $2.1 million on the PGA Tour. This year, his Nationwide checks may total a tenth of that, and that’s with five top-11 finishes so far, including a third place.
The Nationwide Tour experience may have been a moot point had Jobe won once or twice on the PGA Tour instead of having so many close calls. He’s finished second three times and third twice on the big circuit.
Jobe lost in a five-way playoff in the 2005 BellSouth Classic and was the 54-hole leader at the 2002 Michelob Championship at Kingsmill before dropping to second. But the toughest “loss” almost certainly came at the 2005 International at Castle Pines, where Jobe lived during the 1990s. There, he led going into the final round by nine points in the Modified Stableford scoring format, but a 4-over-par 76 in the final round left him one point behind champion Retief Goosen.
Jobe had been hoping to add to his stellar golf resume in Colorado — one that includes victories in three CGA Match Plays, a CGA Stroke Play and the 1992 Colorado Open. A PGA Tour win would have given Jobe a two-year-plus exemption on Tour, plus past-champions status. Instead, when luck took a big turn for the worse — most notably when Jobe severely cut himself in November 2006 when a broom handle broke in his left hand while he was sweeping his garage — he had nothing to fall back on other than a medical extension from the Tour. That extension ended in early 2009, and he’s been playing on the Japan and Nationwide circuits ever since.
But that doesn’t mean Jobe is relegated to biding his time until he’s old enough for the Champions Tour. With a strong finish to this season, Jobe could find himself back in the big time early next year.
