At 50, Allen playing the best golf of his life on TOUR
By Brian Wacker, PGATOUR.COM Site Producer
BETHESDA, Md. -- No one is expecting Michael Allen to win Sunday at the AT&T National, except maybe Michael Allen.
"I'm aging well," Allen says. "I'm not struggling to figure out where the ball is going to go every single day. The game is more fun for me right now."
Why wouldn't he be having fun? It wasn't long ago that Allen thought about quitting golf to work for Donald Trump. Except Allen made it through q-school and called Trump's people up, and told them they were the ones who were fired.
Since then, Allen, who turned 50 earlier this year, has had a renaissance, winning the Senior PGA Championship in his Champions Tour debut and two months later finishing in the top 15 at the Travelers Championship.
Through three rounds of the AT&T National, Allen is 9 under after a 65 on Saturday that left him one shot off the lead and one more round like that one away from victory No. 1 on the PGA TOUR.
"I think [winning the Senior PGA] helped me a lot because in a few ways it's given me some validity to what I've been doing," said Allen, who has gone 336 TOUR events without a win. "It was also a nice experience that when I won I was very comfortable in doing that and playing and hopefully if I can maintain that, I'll have a good chance tomorrow."
I suppose I have a chance at winning the lottery, too, just for buying a ticket.
The funny thing is, that's what Allen's career has been about. This guy has picked himself up off the floor more times than some politicians have checked into Washington's infamous Mayflower Hotel.
Sunday, it won't be easy with defending champion Anthony Kim and host with the most Tiger Woods in front of him on the leaderboard. Allen turned pro in 1984 -- Woods wasn't yet 9 years old, and Kim was still a year away from being born.
Yet Woods and Kim have combined for 69 career victories. So what if 67 of those belong to Woods. Allen has as many runner-ups in his career as Kim has wins.
"I've been close a few times. I think I've usually handled it pretty well," Allen said. "I usually feel like I play pretty well when it really matters."
What Allen was referring to, actually, was q-school, which he's gone through nine times. Nine times? Who is this guy, Ferris Bueller? At least it's one stat he has over Tiger and A.K. They've been to q-school a combined one time (A.K. in 2006).
"Playing for your family and your career is hard," Allen said. "I realized that to go out in the real world and try to make $100,000 a year to try to support your family is a hard thing to do."
So is winning out here, especially for Allen. So much so that he was in fact out of golf for a brief period, building homes and working at Winged Foot, among other things.
"I just got tired of the frustration," Allen said. "I realized I wasn't doing anything better and I've always felt like I'd do something else, use my mind to make a living."
Thankfully for Allen, his friends knew better. They put together some money, and one thing led to another.
"I've been playing well all year. I'm just kind of fighting it out. I'm hanging in there," says Allen, who seems to have come full circle -- almost.
"I guess since I've lost 337 times, I've overcome the fear of losing," Allen said.
Actually, that's 336 times, Michael.
For more news and insight from Brian Wacker, follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/pgatour_brianw and for all the latest from the PGA TOUR go to Twitter.com_pgatour.
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