After Graham DeLaet finished a solid 1-under Saturday round that put him in the final pairing at the Northern Trust Open on Sunday, he was asked what he had learned about playing on the biggest stages during his time on the PGA Tour. He had been there before, but had yet to close the deal.
“Patience,” DeLaet responded. “I’ve slept on either leads or final group pairings before and I know, like, laying in bed, you’re thinking about what a win can do and this and that. I’m past that now in my career.”
He also said, of the challenge of playing at a dry, fast, Riviera Country Club, “You have to get a good start out here.”
Cue the ominous music and the thunderclap.
DeLaet, the 33-year-old from Weyburn, Sask., who has for a couple of years looked liked the Canadian most likely to become a full-on PGA star, followed an opening birdie on Sunday with a double-bogey on the second hole and a bogey on the third. He started the day two shots behind leader Retief Goosen, and before he had teed off on the fourth hole, he was five shots back, dropped off the first page of the leaderboard and relegated to a role on the CBS broadcast that only saw him get camera time if he happened to walk into the frame while they were paying attention to one of his playing partners. Meanwhile, 2005 broke out on the leaderboard, with Goosen trading the lead with Sergio Garcia and, Vijay Singh (!) and Paul Casey (!!), among others.
DeLaet would manage some late birdies to threaten the lead, but ended up two shots out of a playoff. He has three second-place finishes, three third-place finishes and now 22 top 10s on Tour, but still lacks that win.
After his Saturday round, he was asked what the pressure was like “to have a whole country living and dying by your every shot hoping for you to replace Mike Weir?” If nothing else, it was a rather over-the-top way to phrase it. I would bet most of the country was unaware of DeLaet’s position in a routine February PGA stop, let alone near death on every shot.
DeLaet, to his credit, brushed off such nonsense. “What I feel more than pressure is I just feel support from the 35 million people north of the border,” he said. He said he would do all he can to try to bag a win for them on Sunday, though obviously that’s didn’t work out.
For DeLaet’s sake, one hopes those comments reflect his actual attitude about the pressure to be The Next One, since no one Canadian should think they are expected to be the next Weir, silly questions aside. One of the side benefits of the bumper crop of Canadians on Tour — six of them with full-time status this season, which as far as anyone can figure is a record — is that they should collectively share the burden of the home-country expectations a little. DeLaet doesn’t have to feel pressure to be the first Canadian since Weir to win a Tour event, for example, since Nick Taylor already did that last fall. Taylor, the 26-year-old from Abbotsford, B.C., won the Sanderson Farms Open in November in only his fifth PGA start, having graduated from the Web.com Tour at the end of its 2014 season.
Taylor presently holds the mantle as top Canadian in the young PGA Tour season, as the win pushed him into the top 30 in the FedEx Cup points race. But in addition to DeLaet, who despite injury troubles late last year has a top-10 finish at Phoenix to pair with his result at Riviera, David Hearn has flashed strong play this year, most recently with an opening 67-66 at Pebble Beach that had him poised for contention. A 71-70 weekend left him in a tie for 21st. Adam Hadwin had made three cuts and a bit of money in his rookie PGA season after winning twice on the Web.com Tour last year, and Roger Sloan, another rookie who graduated from the Web.com last year, has made it to the weekend three times. Sloan also wins the prize for self-deprecating Canadian-ness, having posted a blow-by-blow-by-blow account of his recent 11 on the 18th hole at Pebble Beach, which included three tee shots, two penalty strokes and three putts.
The one Canadian most struggling to look like the Mike Weir of old remains Weir himself, who has missed the cut in his four 2015 tournaments. When he was at his best, he really did carry the country’s hopes with him, with the odd assist from Stephen Ames, but this is a whole new kind of Canadian contingent. With this many capable pros on golf’s top circuit, it shouldn’t be rare when one takes a run at a title. It won’t likely become routine, but, at least, familiar.
