Golf fans who peruse the PGA Tour results from this week’s Bob Hope Classic may experience a “blast from your past” moment.
Former University of Colorado golfer Steve Jones, who last competed in a Tour-sanctioned event in August 2007, is in the field for the Hope Classic, which starts on Wednesday (Jan. 19) in La Quinta, Calif.
Jones, who turned 52 three weeks ago, has been sidelined for the last 3½ years by a case of tennis elbow in his left arm. The injury was severe enough that it was in question whether the 1996 U.S. Open champion would ever compete again on the PGA Tour, or ever make his debut on the Champions Tour.
But now, Jones (pictured with Hale Irwin in a CU photo) is putting himself to the test by playing in a 90-hole tournament, with the cut coming after four rounds.
“That’s what’s going to be interesting — it’s a lot of golf all of a sudden,” Jones said in a phone interview this week. “The last week has been pretty long, practicing five or six hours a day and pushing it. It’s like doing an all-nighter when you’re in school. That’s what it feels like.”
Though he’s been building up his practice schedule, Jones said he didn’t decide to compete until about two weeks ago.
“The only goal this week is to test out the elbow and see where it’s at,” he said. “The doctor said to stress it out for a month. If it gets worse, I may need to get more surgery. But even though it may never be 100 percent — I have a feeling it will never go away — if it doesn’t get worse maybe I can live with the pain. It’s probably 65-70 percent now and it’s been that way for four or five months. I can deal with that.”
As Jones noted a couple of years ago, tennis elbow is one of the worst things that can happen for a competitive golfer. And though the elbow is still sore “24/7″, the Colorado Golf Hall of Famer at least has gotten to the point that he’s entered another Tour event — one he won in 1989. The Bob Hope Classic is one of Jones’ eight Tour victories, all of which came in the period from 1988 through 1998, highlighted by his U.S. Open win at Oakland Hills.
Where Jones’ comeback goes from here is up in the air for two reasons. First, it depends on how his elbow holds up to the tournament grind. Second, Jones has very little status on either the PGA or Champions Tour. The Hope and possibly the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am — a tournament he won in 1988 — are the only PGA Tour events where he still has eligibility. (Tour officials have told Jones that if he makes the cut this week he would regain the past-champions status he lost due to inactivity.)
As for the Champions Tour, Jones said he’s eligible for the Senior PGA Championship, the (British) Senior Open and the U.S. Senior Open, though he’ll bypass the Senior PGA because it conflicts with his daughter Stacey’s high school graduation. “It’s a cruel world,” he said.
Jones said if his elbow feels OK, he may try to land a sponsor exemption in a March or April Champions Tour event.
As for the state of his game now, it’s understandably a little rusty. Jones isn’t hitting the ball as far as he once did, and his consistency will be tested.
“You need about a year to get your hands going” and get the distance back, he said. “I have my moments, but it’s the mishits that get you in trouble. That’s one thing lurking when you haven’t played much.”
Jones’ PGA Tour career includes 44 top-10 finishes and $6.5 million in official prize money, but the last decade hasn’t been much fun for the former resident of the eastern plains town of Yuma, Colo. His last top-10 showing on Tour was in April 2000.
Most of Jones’ problems have been injury- and/or health-related. Since he became a regular on Tour, Jones has missed six full seasons due to ailments — 1992, ’93, 2004, ’08, ’09 and ’10.
Jones’ list of setbacks runs the gamut. Over the years he’s missed time due to problems with his elbows, shoulders, fingers, thumb and ankle, as well as due to an irregular heartbeat. Suffice it to say he’s no stranger to medical facilities.
The worst of Jones’ injuries have been his recent bout with tennis elbow, and the November 1991 dirt-bike accident that sidelined him for the better part of three years. After Jones returned and won the U.S. Open after going through sectional qualifying, he was named the Tour’s Comeback Player of the Year.
“How this body has won eight tournaments, I don’t know,” Jones said in a 2005 story in the New York Times. “I can see winning eight tournaments with Tiger Woods’ body, but not with mine. I’d like to see him play with my body and see how many he could win.”
Jones, who won the 1988 Colorado Open, said his elbow problems developed over time.
“It’s something that came on, that built up over the years,” he said in 2008. “The muscle kept tearing away from the bone.”
During his most recent period away from competitive golf, Jones hosted a radio show for seven months from his home state of Arizona, and last year he established the Steve Jones Golf Academy in Phoenix, where he instructs.
“One kid I’m working with from Fort Collins said he was surprised he could book a lesson with Steve Jones with what I’ve done (on Tour),” Jones said this week. “I said, “˜Yeah, me too.'”
Jones is taking another step with the instruction gig by soon coming out with a set of short videos that he plans to promote in the U.S. and overseas. “It’s a cheap way of getting lessons,” he said. Jones also noted that his web site, stevejonesgolf.com, will be revamped next month.
Golf “is my area and I need to stick with it,” he said.
Jones, the third-oldest player in the field for the 2011 Hope Classic, is one of several competitors with Colorado ties competing this week. Also playing are Cherry Hills Village resident David Duval, who shot a 59 en route to winning the 1999 Hope Classic; Kent Denver High School alums Brandt Jobe and Kevin Stadler; and former Colorado State University golfer Martin Laird. The Hope will be the 2011 debuts for Stadler and Laird.
Another connection the Bob Hope Classic has to Colorado is that this tournament marks the first Classic in which Larry Thiel has served as tournament chairman. Thiel was the executive director of the International PGA Tour event in Castle Rock for all 21 years of its run. Thiel has helped this year’s Bob Hope tournament attract a better field than last year’s event did, but the Hope still doesn’t have a title sponsor.
