Pembroke's Johnson gets back in the swing

He would be lying if he said he didn't think about other options. Kevin Johnson had all summer to do nothing but.

"It was awful. I kept saying to myself, 'Do I want to keep doing this?' " said the Pembroke native and arguably one of the best golfers to come up through the Massachusetts junior ranks. Whereas his spirits had been buoyed by his fourth career win on the Nationwide Tour one year earlier, last summer was quite the opposite.

Sidelined for three months with back pain that has been persistent throughout his career, Johnson watched the Nationwide Tour go on without him. To measure the pain, Johnson could only watch his boat sitting in the water. His cherished boat was of no use to him in his adopted home of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

On one hand, Johnson's back bothered him so much he couldn't sit out on the motorboat for an extended period of time. On the other hand, Johnson realized where his true passion sat, so once the back felt better he was determined to polish his golf game, which would preclude him from spending much time on the boat. Either way, it made sense to sell it, which was easily done, because someone made him a terrific offer.

The return to competitive golf was hardly as smooth; he missed the cut in his first eight starts after his three-month hiatus. "I returned because I was itching to play, but I was weak. I didn't have any speed or strength," said Johnson. "I was just playing to play."

Long stretches away from his wife and two daughters, now 7 and 5, hardly made the bad play easier to take, so Johnson doesn't deny it was easy to think about giving up. But always, the thought would gnaw at him. "When I'm healthy, I know I can play well."

That shined through in the last regular-season event on the Nationwide schedule, the Miccosukee Championship in Miami. Johnson played 72 solid holes in 8 under par and finished joint eighth. Nice as that was, it only helped him finish 142d on the money list with $28,550. The truer test, Johnson knew, would be the second stage of the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament, so in light of the way he performed in Dade City, Fla., it's easy to appreciate the full cycle to his mood.

"I'm jacked, absolutely I am," said Johnson, whose trips of 67-72-65-70 -274 earned him a fifth-place finish and a breeze into the final stage of qualifying (Wednesday through Dec. 3). "I played well. Normally, this time of year you're worn out and dreading Q School, but I'm rested, feeling good, and rarin' to go."

It's perhaps the best opportunity Johnson has had to return to the PGA Tour. (He had his card in 2001.) He knows the courses, Crooked Cat and Panther Lake at Orange County National Golf Center & Lodge in Orlando, Fla., and has had success there.

A gifted junior player who won the Mass. Open as an amateur in 1986 and followed with victories in the Mass. Amateur the next two summers, Johnson was an All-American at Clemson, and a member of the Walker Cup team in 1989, alongside, among others, Phil Mickelson and Robert Gamez. He turned pro later that year and while there have been flashes of great play, Johnson has been sidetracked by back pain.

"At times I've thought that I'm probably nuts to keep trying," said Johnson, "but when I play well, it makes sense and it feels great. I'm headed with one thought in mind, and that's to earn my PGA Tour card again."

Highs and lows

The PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament once again offered up a wide range of emotions for youngsters and veterans. There was the success enjoyed in Panama City, Fla., by a pair of former Mass. Open winners - Pat Bates, who spent his teenage years in Manchester, and Geoff Sisk of Marshfield - who advanced by finishing third and 13th, respectively. In Dade City, there was a different story. Weymouth native Andy Morse, the longtime grinder along the minitour trail, finished one shot too high, as did Plainville's Jim Renner, just getting his feet wet in the pro golf world. Renner roared up the leaderboard on the final day, needing just 30 strokes on his outward nine. But he shot 37 on the back to finish at 283, like Morse sitting one shot on the wrong side of the cut. The Q School quest also ended in disappointment at Dade City for former URI standout Michael Sims (286), Fran Quinn Jr. of Holden (286), Jamie Neher of Weston (289), and Jason Caron of South Yarmouth (292). At Panama City, North Quincy native Michael Welch opened with a 77, then withdrew, while three Rhode Islanders - Rodney Butcher (291), P.H. Horgan (296), and Jeff Martin (WD) - also failed to advance. In Kingwood, Texas, Kevin Silva of New Bedford shot 290 to finish tied for 36th, which wasn't good enough to make it to the final stage . . . In some respects, the six second-stage sites resembled PGA Tour events. Among the notables who made it through were Dicky Pride, Spike McRoy, Ian Leggatt, Bob May, Greg Chalmers, Chris Riley, Jerry Pate, Esteban Toledo, Tag Ridings, Duffy Waldorf, Notah Begay, Hunter Haas, and Scott Gutschewski. Colt Knost, the US Amateur champ who surrendered spots in the Masters and US Open by turning pro, is guaranteed of his Nationwide Tour card after breezing into the final stage on the strength of a second-place finish in McKinney, Texas. There were, however, misses by notable players, such as Neal Lancaster, Bill Glasson, Len Mattiace, David Gossett, Jim Gallagher Jr., Mac O'Grady, Bryce Molder, Keith Clearwater, Mike Heinen, Gabriel Hjertstedt, Bob Burns, Brent Geiberger, Mark Brooks, Jeff Brehaut, former US Amateur champ Ricky Barnes, and heralded youngster Pablo Martin . . . Rick Karbowski (T-3), Mike San Filippo (T-19), and Kirk Hanefeld (T-29) all got through the final stage of the Champions Tour Qualifying Tournament, but it sounds better than it is. They don't have playing status; they merely earn the right to enter Monday qualifiers in 2008 . . . The final stage of LPGA Tour qualifying starts Wednesday and among the participants will be former Duke standouts Anna Grzebien of Narragansett, R.I., and Liz Janangelo of West Hartford, Conn. Kelli Kuehne, Jenna Daniels, Beth Bauer, and Jane Park will also be in the field.

Limited flight

Fairway news: The European Tour announces a season-ending tournament in Dubai that will feature a $10 million purse, with $1 million going to the winner. The player who wins the money title would earn a $2 million bonus. That's a possible $3 million payday, so what do you say about playing the minimum 11 events to become a member of the European Tour, Mr. Tiger Woods?

Clubhouse view: He says he won the Tour Championship for $1.26 million and the FedExCup for $10 million, an $11.26 million payday - and he only had to fly 90 minutes to Atlanta to do it.

Worthy champion

The LPGA Tour season finale, the ADT Championship, ended in a most fitting manner: Lorena Ochoa a winner for the eighth time this season. Given that she had dominated the season, it shouldn't have ended any differently. Surviving the quirky format - the 32-player field was cut after 36 holes, then again after 54, so only eight players remained, and their scores were wiped out so all were starting at level par - was poetic and when Ochoa pocketed the $1 million prize, she was not only the first player in LPGA Tour history to surpass $3 million in earnings in a season, she was the first to crack $4 million, too. (To be exact, she won $4,364,994.) What makes it all the sweeter is the fact that Ochoa might just be the most gracious and charming personality in the sport today, male or female . . . There's something about Pebble Beach that brings out the best in Ronnie Black, which makes you wonder why he skipped the AT&T event there all those years when he was a card-carrying member of the PGA Tour. Sitting in the on-deck circle for the Champions Tour (he'll turn 50 May 26), Black finished second at the Callaway Golf Pebble Beach Invitational, a 72-hole pro-am played over three courses on the Monterey Peninsula that is modeled after the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Shooting a pair of 68s in his two rounds at Pebble, Black was at 14-under 274, tied with Rocco Mediate, both two behind Tommy Armour. Though he rarely played at Pebble during the height of his PGA Tour career, Black won the Callaway event there in 1995, which must have encouraged him to visit more often, because as his status on Tour diminished, he made it a point to play in the AT&T. He was tied for fourth in 1999 and fifth in 2001 . . . Onetime LPGA Tour player Angie Rizzo made her pro debut with her married name, Angie Oberholser, but she missed the 54-hole cut at Pebble. Her husband, Arron, won the AT&T in 2006 . . . From megastars like the original foursome of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, and Tom Watson, to behemoths such as Greg Norman, Woods, and Mickelson, the 26th edition of the Skins Game has come down to - and try to keep your emotions in check, here - Fred Couples, Stephen Ames, Zach Johnson, and Brett Wetterich. Coming to a TV near you this weekend, the Skins Game will not gather much viewer interest. The only player with appeal is Couples - and he hasn't played a competitive golf shot since the Masters, so what's with that? Then again, he hasn't lost anything off his fastball when it comes to being quotable. Consider what he said in a pretournament press conference: "I've made a lot of bonehead shots and a lot of brilliant shots. And that's really what you want to do in these things," he said . . . But the top quote goes to 84-year-old LPGA Tour legend Louise Suggs. While surveying the scene at the ADT Championship, where $1 million went to the winner, Suggs told the Associated Press: "I wish like hell I could have played for this kind of money. But if not for me, they wouldn't be playing for it, either."

Good works

With the accountants having signed off, officials from several tournaments are free to dispense lucrative payouts to the charitable causes they support.

The Deutsche Bank Championship's "Birdies for Charity" program raised more than $300,000 for 23 local programs and the Tiger Woods Learning Center. Partners for Youth With Disabilities and the Clarke School for the Deaf were just two of the charitable organizations that benefited from this second-year initiative at the PGA Tour event at TPC Boston in Norton. As part of the program, patrons could guess as to how many birdies would be made and Amy Lichtenstein of Franklin won the top prize: Red Sox season tickets for 2008.

The annual Bank of America Championship announced that $377,500 had been donated to area charities, to be distributed by Nashawtuc Charities. That sum boosts to nearly $5 million the amount directed to charitable causes by the Champions Tour stop at Nashawtuc CC in Concord.

Jane Blalock's tireless work is charity's gain, because the BJ's Charity Championship at Granite Links GC in Quincy raised $1.3 million for needy programs. The Legends Tour event featured former LPGA Tour greats such as JoAnne Carner, Pat Bradley, Patty Sheehan, Rosie Jones, and Jan Stephenson, and now 420 nonprofit organizations throughout the BJ's Charitable Foundation will reap the benefits. The tournament has raised more than $3.6 million in three years.