by Jeff Berlinicke
George McNeill knows he can play. He’s also proven that practice doesn’t make perfect.
The Naples resident and graduate of North Fort Myers High School has a PGA Tour win to his credit and has come achingly close several other times. He has game. He knows his way around a golf course.
If only he put in the callous-inducing practice sessions that the stars of the PGA Tour go through every day. McNeill isn’t one of those guys who pounds balls from morning to midnight with a tournament round in between.
“I hate to practice,” McNeill said after finishing in a tie for twelfth place at the Honda Classic in South Florida early in the 2010 season. “I just hate practicing. I like to play. I have always been that way, but I know that I can play the game.”
McNeill, age thirty-five, spent much of his earlier years honing his game at local clubs such as Fort Myers Country Club, Eastwood Golf Course, Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club, and LaPlaya Beach & Golf Resort. He knows he needs to spend a few more hours on the practice range, but he’s been pretty successful doing things his own way.
He won his first tournament in 2007 when he came out of nowhere to win the Frys.com Open in Las Vegas. That was the first time he had ever been in contention at a PGA Tour event. It also gave him a two-year exemption to any event on the PGA Tour. Since then, he’s been close, but he’s still waiting for the next trophy. In 2009, he caught lightning at the end of the season and ended up with two second-place finishes, including a loss in the play-off at the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, once again in Las Vegas.
Las Vegas has been kind to McNeill, but his heart is in Naples, where he still lives, and the state of Florida in general. After high school, he headed off to Florida State University to play golf. And only veteran golfer Jeff Sluman can match McNeill’s interest in Florida State football.
“I guess you could say I’m a bit of a fan,” McNeill says. “A huge fan. It’s tough playing on Saturdays in the fall when FSU is playing. I kind of have to block it all out and concentrate on my game.”
McNeill wasn’t hooked only on golf at the start. Actually, he was hooked on just about every sport. Growing up, he excelled at tennis, basketball, baseball, and, of course, golf. He got his first set of clubs from his grandfather at the age of three. Golf was fun, but it wasn’t everything. Baseball was actually his sport, and Hall of Famers Cal Ripken and Mike Schmidt were his heroes.
Golf simply came naturally. The golf swing requires perfect coordination of dozens of body parts, but McNeill mastered that easily.
“I had the hands and the body that just created a natural swing,” he says. “I don’t even remember how it all started, but it was fun and it never seemed too hard. I never practiced too much, though. Maybe I should have. I just wanted to play. It seemed like the main thing was just to get the ball into the hole. I didn’t have to practice all day to do that.”
But McNeill did start to take golf more seriously, not necessarily with the intent of making money on the PGA Tour but as a vehicle to get to college. He started emulating the big names on the Tour, especially Fred Couples and Jack Nicklaus. He got plenty of attention in high school and was off to Tallahassee, but the Tour was still a long way away. He played in some PGA events on exemptions, but with little success, and spent time as an assistant professional at the Forest Country Club in Fort Myers in 2006. That job lacked the glamour and perks of the life of a professional golfer.
“I was there four days a week, open to close,” McNeill says. “I was there at 6 a.m. and I left at 6 p.m. It was a lot of fun, but I never want to do that again. That’s what drove me and got my competitive juices flowing. I had a different mindset when I came back [to the Tour].”
McNeill had already bounced around golf’s outbacks plenty of times. Outside of the PGA Tour, there are several minor tours that require patience and a lot of driving from site to site. There are no courtesy cars, and accommodations tend to lean more toward Motel 6 than the Ritz. McNeill played the Nationwide Tour and other lesser tours before finally earning his PGA Tour card for good in 2007.
“It’s been a battle all the way,” he says. “They are so good out here, and if you don’t look out, someone’s going to jump up and bite. It’s easy to lose your card out here.”
The “card” is what every golfer needs to play in a PGA Tour event. The way it works is, the top 125 money winners from the previous year are exempt for most tournaments the following year. Otherwise, it’s off to Qualifying School, a nightmare of three stages of elimination that culminates in six rounds of golf in five days for those who advance, where only the top twenty-five receive a card for the following year.
McNeill endured the torture nine times before sticking on the Tour in 2007. He knows he’s in a precarious position. He’s come close to the dreaded 125 spot on the money list several times. He was at 123 when he won in Las Vegas, which earned him a two-year exemption. Last year, he went to the final tournament of the year at Walt Disney World clinging onto the 115 spot. He was tied for the lead in the final round and finished second to put him safely at number fifty-seven.
“It’s tough worrying about keeping your card every week, but I tend to get hot in the fall, and I know I can step it up when I have to,” McNeill says. “I play well early and late and tend to fade in the summer. It’s not the way I want it, because it gets a little stressful, but I believe in myself and I know I can get it done when I have to.”
With that, McNeill said he was going to the practice range. Maybe practice does make perfect.
Jeff Berlinicke is a sportswriter who covers the PGA Tour on a regular basis and writes about sports for many local and national news outlets, including the Tampa Tribune and the Associated Press. He lives in Tampa with his wife, Elisa.