Nine years later, Vaughn Taylor plays another Masters

Turned pro: 1999

How qualified: Won 2016 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am

Best Masters finish: 10th (2007)

Best stat: Putting average (putts per hole) 1.699 (4th)

It would be imprecise to say that Vaughn Taylor’s swing had left him.

More explicitly, Taylor’s game stole his car, vanished down a dark country road one night and left no forwarding address. Once a two-time winner on the PGA Tour, he lost his tour card three years ago and then, remarkably, also lost his full Web.com Tour exemption. He didn’t win anything for 10 years.

At one point, his world ranking dwindled to No. 569. From time to time, he would break down in tears while on the course, once while he was lining up a putt. Then two years ago, he almost drown in a fishing accident near his Augusta home.

He was 39 and going nowhere.

“I was unsure of where I was going with the game, but I knew I was a golfer and this is what I do well and this is what I want to do,” he said Monday. “I never gave up hope. It was what I always wanted to do.”

Such blind faith was rewarded nine weeks ago when out of nowhere, he cranked out a 65 on Sunday at the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am and came from six shots back to edge Phil Mickelson for his first win since the 2005 Reno-Tahoe Open. Which explains his presence at Augusta National, where he and his father had used come to watch the Masters when he was a kid and where, in 2007, he even led the tournament with 21 holes to play.

Last year, he had brought his toddler son Locklyn to watch a practice day because, frankly, he was uncertain he’d ever be back as a player.

“When you’re younger, you expect to play well and you kind of take things for granted,” he said. “I kind of thought I would be in every year but that was just being kind of young and dumb.”

Asked when the lowest point in his decent came, Taylor replied, “Probably the week before Pebble.”

Taylor had been working on a list problems for years. His core strength had dwindled as he reached middle age. A bout of vertigo had led to a shift in the balance in his neck and hips. His swing had become right-side reliant.

While he had seen gradual improvement in his scoring, he had nothing to show for it. The week before Pebble Beach, Taylor was playing the Web.com Tour’s stop in Colombia and nothing went right. His first round was halted by rain. He got sick back at the hotel. In a game-changing decision, he withdrew and headed for Pebble Beach, where he wasn’t even in the field but stood a good chance as a first alternate. (His first stroke of luck: Carl Pettersson withdrew.)

A string of six birdies over the closing nine got him the lead on Sunday. Mickelson’s birdie try on the 72nd hole, which would have forced a playoff, spun out of the cup.

“It was one of those when-you-least-expect-it moments,” Taylor said. “Experience in golf for me was when I was struggling or in a bad place, it seemed to take a long time to turn around. And it turned around quickly in one week.”

Full disclosure: In his four events since his drought-breaker, Taylor hasn’t made a cut. But he said he is comfortable surroundings — he lives 15 minutes from the course — and can recall some pleasant history here. His birdie on No. 15 on Saturday in 2007 gave him an all-too-brief lead.

Within a couple years, he was in professional free-fall.

“Always believe in yourself, no matter what your game feels like or where you’re at playing and what’s going on,” Taylor said. “So you’ve always got to have that belief that this will be your week and things will turn around. And it actually happened. It was pretty amazing.”