A Rookie Season on the PGA Tour...A Field of Dreams
Brad Adamonis from Cumberland Rhode Island to The PGA Tour
If your dream is to someday play golf on the PGA Tour then be prepared to work harder then you could ever imagine if you plan to reach your goal. For Brad Adamonis all the years of practice and playing golf have finally brought him to his dream. In January of this year he made his rookie debut as the oldest rookie, at 35, on the PGA Tour.
When you understand the odds of reaching a goal like this it becomes truly remarkable that any athlete would ever consider the journey. There are only 125 spots up for grabs each year on the PGA tour. If you are lucky enough or good enough to stay around for a while or win on the tour you will have some kind of exempt status for a period of time. (There are only 168 Players that have won 5 or more times in the history of the PGA Tour.)
There are only about 230 players in any given year that carry a PGA Tour card and qualify to play in tournaments. What makes it even more incredible is that there are over 60 million golfers playing the game and only 9 recognized tours worldwide with nearly 1500 golfers in the world ranking. At any given time there are somewhere in the area of 100,000 golfers worldwide working on a goal to get status of any kind to play golf on the PGA Tour. Quite frankly, you may have a better chance of hitting the lottery.
The Adamonis family is a golfing family and has been for years. Brads dad David Adamonis Sr. is the coach of the golf team at Johnson & Wales University in Miami, Florida, he introduced Brad and his brother David Jr. to the game at a very early age. David Jr. now runs the U.S. Challenge Cup Junior Golf Foundation. Which David Sr. founded in 1983 to perpetuate the growth of junior golf throughout the region, the U.S. Challenge Cup has now become one of the most respected junior programs in the country.
Both Brad and David Jr. played their first golf at Winnesuket Golf Course in Bellingham in Massachusetts, which is now New England Country Club. Brad won his first tournament at age 9 at the New England Junior. A few years later he won the World Junior in San Diego, California and soon after, was named the ESPN Junior Golfer of The Year. He played high school golf at Cumberland High in Rhode Island, and his college golf at Miami of Ohio, in Oxford, Ohio. After College Brad moved to Florida and worked on his game and his ultimate goal of playing on the Tour.
After years and countless events on Florida Tours as well as the North Atlantic Tour and New England State Opens Brad made 4 consecutive Monday qualifiers on the Nationwide Tour in the Carolina�s. It was real confidence builder at that point Brad Said: I knew I could play at the next level. In the next few years Brad made his way to the Nationwide Tour and for 5 years had some kind of playing status on the Tour. In 2007 after joining up with long time friend Tim Duffy on the bag Brad won his first Tour event in 2007 at the Nationwide Tour WNB Golf Classic in an 8-hole playoff. After finishing 33rd on the money list in 2007 on the Nationwide Tour, at Q School Brad finished in 9th place to secure his PGA Tour card for 2008.
It is 7am on Sunday October 19th in Las Vegas; the Adamonis family is doing what they have been doing for years, waking up at their home away from home. Brad wife Stacey and daughter Grace and son Nick are a family on the PGA Tour. Each week in a different city, they all balance life on the road and all of the challenges that go along with it.
Brad will tell you that it really is no trouble and like any other family it is all about being together. The tour provides excellent support services for families on the tour including great day care facilities at each tournament. Home is now in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida where the family lives with Brads parents David & Roberta Adamonis. The season is 10 months long and runs from January to November each year, so there is not much time off except for the holiday season and even then you must stay sharp and continue a practice routine.
The challenges may at times be overwhelming but for Brad it all is put into prospective every day. In the last three years the Adamonis family has had to deal with much more than just golf. Brads father David Adamonis Sr. has battled 3 forms of cancer over the last three years. It has been a long and frustrating journey for the family with a great deal of uncertainty through it all. Brad himself suffers from a rare condition called vertigo that causes dizziness and rapid eye movement, which has affected him in 10 events this year on the tour. He is forced to literally just sit down when a bout of vertigo hits and let it pass.
This day Brad finds himself just a few shots off the lead in 8th place heading into the final Sunday round. Each week it is all about putting together three good rounds of solid golf to stay in the hunt for the opportunity to have a chance to win. Brad has played in 27 events made the cut in 14 and had three top 10 finishes this year, in 9 out of 14 cuts he has finished in the top 50 and thus far has earned $862,000. and sits at 113 on the money list with two events left in the season. The magic number as always on the Tour is the top 125, it means you keep you full status for another year. His best finish of the year at the John Deere Classic had him tied for the lead in regulation, which he lost in a playoff to Kenny Perry, but came away with a second place finish that earned him $369,600, not a bad paycheck for a long weekend playing golf.
With just two weeks left on the tour Brad may at last get to spend sometime enjoying the Holidays with family and friends and reflect on his first season on the PGA TOUR. The best Christmas gift for this family may be to finish within that 125 and have full status for 2009. Then again if you ask Brad or Stacey they may just say a healthy family would be just as good. A perfect night for the family would be a house full of friends and family a couple of pizza�s, a Patriots win, and a good pitch game. It is still family and the simple things in life that still mean the most to them both.
