When last Tony Finau was in Georgia, he was filming his instructional video, “How to Turn Joy to Pain in Just One Brutal Step.”
Remember the Par-3 Contest at the Masters? Remember Finau bursting into one of the great spontaneous celebrations after his hole-in-one? He’s running down the fairway, galloping with glee like a puppy let off its leash. Then he steps wrong and his ankle just folds. How could you forget? It was the kind of scene that would have made even Joe Theismann shudder.
On his return to Georgia this week, Finau’s pre-tournament routine has been far less traumatic at East Lake in the build-up to the Tour Championship. In fact, some might call it idyllic.
As a 7-year-old in Utah, he watched Tiger Woods dismantle Augusta National in 1997. As he told the Salt Lake newspaper, the Deseret News, years later: “I saw this kid who was the same color as me. I saw him fist-pumping, I saw him wearing the green jacket; he made the game look so cool. I looked at it and I’m like, man, maybe I can do that someday, maybe I can play in the Masters.”
On Tuesday, as a 29-year-old preparing to play for more money than seemed possible to him just a few years ago, Finau finally walked step-for-step with Woods. In a practice round came the long overdue opportunity for him to pair up with this once larger-than-life figure as a peer.
And Finau is not so much the established pro now that he’ll downplay the moment. No shrugging off this experience. For it was a very big deal.
“My golfing idol,” he said.
“That was a special day for me to play with him, pick his brain a little bit and just get to know him a little bit better. It’s going to be cool for us to get to know each other throughout this week, throughout next week (as Ryder Cup teammates).”
Unpretentiousness comes naturally to Finau. After all, he grew up the son of an airport baggage handler, who bought his son’s first clubs at the Salvation Army and improvised his own at-home driving range (strips of carpet on the garage floor, and an old mattress on the wall).
There was nothing financially or culturally – how many pro golfers of Polynesian descent do you know? – that suggested Finau ever would latch onto the country club sport. There was not a single guarantee when he turned pro at 17 that he one day would stand third in the FedEx Cup points standings with a very real chance to win a $10 million bonus, other than the innate ability to send a golf ball into low-earth orbit.
Especially as he failed in his first five attempts at PGA Tour qualifying school, and wandered those various minor-league tours on the bleak frontiers of pro golf.
Yet, here he is, the faith of his father rewarded and his four children quite certain that their basic needs will be met as dad already has won more than $5 million this year even before they open the fire hose of cash at East Lake.
Coming up as Finau did, there should have been little left for him to prove on the toughness front. But then came that gawd-awful moment at Augusta National, where the whole world saw him pop his dislocated ankle back into place, get up and walk to the green. At that moment, there was one person on this planet capable of looking rugged while wearing golf clothing.
“Yeah, I’ve learned I’m pretty tough,” he said Wednesday, five months after the fact. “I feel my threshold for pain is pretty high. My ankle was bothering me quite a bit, but I was able to play through that pain and still prove to myself – inside – that I had it more than physically.”
Any other tournament he would have withdrawn. But this was his first Masters, and that would have been no way to close the book on such an opportunity. Not only did Finau – who couldn’t bear weight when he got out of bed that Thursday – make it to his tee time, he walked four rounds over hilly Augusta National and finished the tournament tied for 10th.
And thus a pattern for this season was born. While Finau didn’t win – and his only PGA Tour victory of any kind remains the low-wattage Puerto Rico Open (2016) – he made a habit of rising to the moment.
He has 11 top-10 finishes this season, three of them in majors. He solidified his standing as a player capable of incendiary scoring – he’s third on Tour in eagles, seventh in birdies. During the second round of the PGA Championship this year, he tied the event record by mass-producing 10 birdies. Didn’t hurt that he was playing with Ryder Cup captain Jim Furyk at the time. The big guy knows how to make an impression.
In retrospect, Finau can look back on what might have been his worst, most embarrassing moment on a golf course and redefine it as a catalyst for a most enriching season. Because he did pop the ankle back into place. He did get up. He did play on.
“I learned about myself, and it gave me confidence moving forward in the majors and throughout the rest of the season,” he said.
“From that time until now, it’s pretty much been a miracle.”
This will be Finau’s second Tour Championship (he finished T7 last year). Then he will be jetting off to France for his first Ryder Cup. He’s rubbing elbows with Tiger Woods. And the world is just getting acquainted with its 16th-ranked golfer.
He knows it holds onto one image of him more than any other: “Oh, let me pull up his Masters ankle incident – that’s who Tony Finau is. I get that more than anything else,” he said.
He would prefer everyone out there recognize him as one of the top handful of players on the planet. When they ask themselves who is Tony Finau, “hopefully that’s the answer they get,” he said.
“But if they get the Masters one, then I’m fine with that, too.”
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