After a season that featured six former Georgia players winning oversized checks on the PGA Tour, it seems altogether parochial and fitting that one with a local address lead the biggest money grab of all at East Lake this week.
Normally, Milton’s Chris Kirk does not fit the profile of FedEx Cup points leader come Tour Championship time.
That apex has belonged to the royals, the last five being Tiger Woods (twice), Rory McIlroy, Webb Simpson and Matt Kuchar.
By comparison, Kirk is too muted.
Too common. Even if he does look a little like a clean-cut version of the “Breaking Bad” character Jesse Pinkman.
Couldn’t even get Tom Watson to throw him a Ryder Cup bone, to the disgust of his former Georgia roommate Brendon Todd. “He was playing better than those three (captain’s picks) combined. I think he really got really snubbed on that one,” said Todd, another of four former Bulldogs in this field.
But this year — in which the galleries have barked their approval from Sea Island to Augusta, from Silvis, Ill. to Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. — Kirk is simply the most apt headliner here at the wrap-up.
“It has been an unbelievable year for us Georgia guys out here,” Kirk said. “I think we all pushed each other really well when we were at school, and we still do now.
“It was one of those deals when you see one of your best friends win and it makes you want to win even more. It makes you work maybe a little bit harder.”
Trying to find the one player on Tour who most represents golf at Georgia? It wouldn’t be the famous one — Masters champ Bubba Watson had trouble making a tournament roster in college. It certainly wouldn’t be the one who passed through on his way to Augusta State, Patrick Reed. It is Kirk, whose name is liberally applied to the Bulldogs record book (lowest season scoring average, second lowest career scoring average, second most top 10 tournament finishes in a career).
It was Kirk who was of first of the Bulldog Six to win in this wraparound season, at the McGladrey in Sea Island last November.
And Kirk again who was the last of them to win, when he went head-to-head with McIlroy over the weekend at the Deutsche Bank Championship, going bogey-free his final 37 holes, to win the second of the three playoff events leading to the Tour Championship. That victory hoisted him to the top of the FedEx Cup standings, and there he remained coming to Atlanta.
It also could have been a huge launch point for the 29-year-old Kirk, being by far the biggest of his three PGA Tour victories, against the strongest field among the most elite of company.
“We’ll have to wait and see about that,” he cautioned.
“Obviously it’s going to give me a lot of confidence that I can perform under that type of pressure in that big a tournament against that type of field. And being grouped with Rory heightened things a little bit more.”
What it couldn’t do was convince Ryder Cup captain Watson to make Kirk one of his three captain’s picks. Those went to more proven players Simpson, Keegan Bradley and Hunter Mahan (with only Mahan in the Tour Championship field).
Maybe best friend Todd would fume, but Kirk refused. He was too caught up in the whole perspective thing. “I just won the biggest tournament of my career. It’s going to take a lot more than this to put me in a bad mood,” he said after Watson’s announcement.
Besides, he has tickets for the Georgia-Tennessee game that weekend.
It is not Kirk’s way to make a spectacle of himself. He seems as calm on the course as a windless day. Doesn’t call a lot of notice to himself. Just tries to treat what is a diversion to the rest of the world as a well-paying job.
Did he become a human storm front after a first-round 73 at the Deutsche Bank? Did he stomp off and beat balls on the practice range until his hands bled? No, he put away the big clubs and played putt-putt with his young son. That seemed to turn him around.
By his own count, Kirk may have fist-pumped all of two times during that big tournament victory last month. “A new personal record for me,” he said.
Todd, who shares with Kirk an Atlanta-area address (he lives in Brookhaven) and a laid-back personality, explains: “I think we feel nerves like anybody else, but we’re both even-mannered people. We have very well rounded lives with great wives and families, good support systems.
“I think we have a good perspective that golf isn’t the end-all, be-all. We’re out here competing, trying to get as many wins as we can and in order to do that we have to play with confidence and calm.”
Such an approach does not make for the most dynamic of FedEx points leaders. But, no mistake, this is among the happier ones.
Playing at East Lake is the perfect scenario kid from Woodstock, whose parents live on Lake Allatoona, with other family all around.
And while he may be the quiet type, and while he may be sharing this little plot of Georgia with Yellow Jackets as well as Bulldogs (see Kuchar and Cameron Tringale), and even as he is paired with a Florida Gator Thursday (Billy Horschel), Kirk was eagerly awaiting a releasing of the hounds at the Tour Championship.
“I hope there’s a lot of it,” he said when asked about how many yips and barks there may be at East Lake this week. He was counting on a kennel’s worth.“The more Georgia folks I can have following me out there, the better.”
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