Cape Codders on tap at PGA
Local pair gets a sip of big time
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. - As he walked into what could be described as a dream come true, Eric Dugas concedes that something felt amiss, even while it felt so surreal.
That's because it was never going to play out quite this way.
"We joke about that all the time," said Dugas. "When we got off the plane and were registering and he went right to the caddies and I went left to the contestants, I looked at him and said, 'This certainly isn't the way I drew up the first one, Carbone.' "
No, if this chance at a major championship was going to occur, it figured to be from another direction. Michael Carbone, after all, was the passionate junior from Brewster, Mass., who took his golf game through the collegiate ranks and into the pro world with an explosiveness that left many convinced he had what it takes to succeed. Dugas, meanwhile, was a fellow Cape Codder who took up the game almost as an afterthought and found as much joy in teaching juniors as he did teeing it up for prize money.
Fast-forward to the 90th PGA Championship, and it's the 25-year-old Dugas who'll be teeing it up alongside Phil Mickelson and Adam Scott, Ernie Els and Vijay Singh, when the $7 million spectacle gets underway tomorrow at Oakland Hills Country Club. Don't get Dugas wrong; he feels blessed to have this opportunity. But a part of him is more thankful to the boyhood friend who has come along with him.
"This is what he always envisioned for himself," said Dugas of Carbone, an aspiring pro golfer who'll carry the bag this week. "So the fact that he's put that aside and everything has been for me this week, that really shows how close we've grown as friends."
By the very nature of their job, club pros who earn spots into the PGA Championship are serious underdogs against their Tour brethren, but Dugas is even more of one. Whereas nine of the 20 club pros are 40 or older and 16 are at least 35, Dugas is the youngest, and thus one of the least experienced. He turned pro in 2005 after a collegiate career at Methodist University and not only is he playing in his first major, it's his first PGA Tour tournament - well beyond the scope of anything in which he's been involved, the closest perhaps being the Cape Cod Open.
"I finished fourth. He was tied for eighth," said Carbone with a smile, but then he turned serious. "Let's face it, the club pro doesn't get a chance to practice as much as guys like I do. That's what makes this such a great story."
The longest of long shots, perhaps, but that doesn't diminish Dugas's appearance here or the impressive manner in which he earned his chance. Having qualified for the Club Pro Championship, Dugas finished sixth in the competition at Reynolds Plantation in Georgia, his 6-under 282 including a hole-in-one. As if that in itself wasn't great enough, Dugas said the grandest part was getting to share it with people at Old Sandwich Golf Club in Plymouth, where he was hired as an assistant pro last year.
"They've taken me and it's like extended family," he said. "I couldn't ask for a better place to be."
Unless it was to be here at Oakland Hills for these star-filled days of the toughest golf competition he'll ever face. There was a whirlwind trip to play 36 holes last Wednesday, and with 18-hole practice rounds Monday and yesterday, Dugas is sure of one thing: "I don't have any questions [about the course], other than playing and executing the shots."
That, in a way, is what Carbone is here for. To help. To counsel. To be the friend he's been since they first met years ago, a time in Dugas's life that he cherishes. He had rejected the game as a youngster ("I hated it; it didn't appeal to me") but he came to find great joy in it. Part of it was the way he was nurtured by Chris Dupill, then a member of the golf staff at Captains GC in Brewster.
"He's the only reason I picked this game up," said Dugas. "He is just an absolute stand-up guy. He was like 27 or 28 when he first gave me a job and said, 'Look, learn from guys, work hard, you can chip and putt all day long. You can do whatever you want; you can play in the afternoons.' "
Within two years of falling in love with golf, Dugas played at Nauset High School.
"It was my second year of playing golf and I was on the golf team with Carbone and [Brent] Wanner, so I was exposed to a high level of golf at an early age," he said.
Two of the premier junior players in Massachusetts golf circles back then, Carbone went to the University of Rhode Island, Wanner to Wake Forest, and both followed through with dreams to turn pro. While Wanner eventually chose to head back to graduate school, Carbone is forging ahead. Playing this summer in assorted state opens, Carbone is also part of the start-up Golfers Warehouse Tour, a series of five tournaments with $45,000 purses that aren't intended to make players rich but to tune them up for the PGA Tour qualifying tournament.
One of the lures of the Golfers Warehouse Tour is that the top two money-winners earn a precious bonus - their Q School entry fee of $4,500 - and sitting at No. 7 on the money list, Carbone was scheduled to play in this week's tournament, which begins today.
"I probably shouldn't have skipped it, but I'm here for a friend," said Carbone, who hopes to lend more than camaraderie to an old high school pal. While at 28 he's not exactly a grizzled veteran, Carbone has had five years of minitour experience, not to mention that successful Monday qualifier in 2006 that got him into the
But more than that, Carbone the past few winters has caddied at famed Seminole in Juno Beach, Fla., so he feels strongly that he can get his friend going in the right direction, and Dugas confirms that it has already paid dividends.
After Dugas played solo in Monday morning's practice round, Carbone insisted he get involved in some sort of group yesterday. Leaning on his minitour experience that has introduced him to a handful of players who are here this week, Carbone went to second-year PGA Tour member Steve Marino, who invited Dugas to join in. It would be Marino and Dugas in a best-ball match with Brandt Snedeker and Johnson Wagner.
"The idea is to expose yourself to it, to get overwhelmed, then get comfortable," said Dugas. "You just try to put yourself in a situation so that the next time it comes up, you've been there."
It didn't take long for Dugas to notice the first big change. He knew he wasn't at the Cape Cod Open or even the Club Pro Championship when he glanced at crowds that were at every tee, every fairway, every putting green.
"This is the epitome of it all," said Carbone. "I mean, thousands were watching Eric play. He's never had that before. He was nervous the first hole."
Dugas laughed.
"I was nervous the first six," he said.
But after the nerves calmed, how did he do? Again, Dugas laughed.
"We got drummed," he said, and Carbone related some of the details of Snedeker's brilliant play, how two of his eight birdies were bunker shots and two others were putts of at least 30 feet. "He went nuts. It was great to watch."
But, said Carbone, it was no more impressive than the sight of his former high school teammate, his friend, and his fellow Cape Codder walking amid a landscape that might be overwhelming in nature, but has certainly been earned.
"You're trying not to make an idiot out of yourself," said Dugas. "But you realize you don't hit the ball any differently than they do - they're just used to the situation. You can't react to shots. You have to accept the outcome and continue."
Jim McCabe can be reached at jmccabe@globe.com
