The mayor wanted a picture with him. The owner of the local National Football League team wanted a word with him. Civic leaders simply wanted to shake his hand.
Vijay Singh was the star attraction on Monday at a luncheon where the PGA Tour announced $2,25-million in charitable donations from The Players Championship. It was another example of just how far the 41-year-old Fijian has come.
He was a club pro in Borneo in 1985, making minimum wage plus $10 a lesson and practising in his free time. He was a bouncer in Scotland two years later, stashing away money to play in a two-bit tournament in Africa, the first small step toward a European tour card, then a United States tour card.
He stood before the lunch crowd in a downtown hotel as the number-one player in the world and the first $10-million-man in golf, a rags-to-richest story unlike any other on the PGA Tour.
They listened intently when Singh was asked what he thought about this week’s Tour Championship, where he can join Sam Snead, Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson as the only players to win at least 10 times in one year.
”I’m really thinking of taking this week off,” Singh said as the room erupted in laughter.
Everyone knows better.
His work ethic is legendary, and it has carried Singh to unimaginable heights.
Despite reaching number one in the world two months earlier, Singh continued his routine of working out in the gym and on the range, sometimes before and after his round. Small wonder that he captured the Chrysler Championship at Innisbrook on Sunday, his ninth victory of the year.
It was his fourth PGA Tour victory in his past five starts. The other time he finished second.
The season finale is East Lake in Atlanta, where Singh won two years ago. The other two times he played at East Lake, he finished third (2000) and lost in a playoff to Hal Sutton (1998).
”I’m going there with a little fire in the belly now,” Singh said. ”I think my game is OK.”
There was a time not long ago when Singh and the rest of his peers would see Tiger Woods’s name atop the leaderboard and figure the tournament was over. Woods had that aura about him, having won the career Grand Slam at 24, and eight majors by 26.
Singh used to wonder how anyone would be able to push Woods aside.
”Now when I look at the leaderboard, I see everyone coming after me,” Singh said. ”It’s a good feeling.”
If he is comfortable in the lead — Singh now has won 11 straight tournaments after at least a share of the 54-hole lead — he also is more at ease in front of a large crowd.
And he is starting to give back to the community in which he lived the past 10 years.
The Singh family — including wife Ardena and 14-year-old son Qass — established the Vijay Singh Charitable Foundation to provide relief for women and children who are victims of domestic abuse.
The Betty Griffin House of St John’s County will be one of the first beneficiaries.
”It’s about time we took a step forward and did something with the community,” Singh said. ”If we can touch even one or two lives, it will make a big difference.”
Singh has said it might take him a while for the success to sink in. The season must feel like a blur at times as he goes from one tournament to the next, usually leaving with the trophy. Only Hogan, Snead, Nelson, Woods and Paul Runyan have won at least nine times in a year.
Singh has reached that level where no one is surprised to see is name atop the leaderboard. When he made consecutive bogeys early in the third round, he was six shots behind Jeff Sluman. By the end of the day, he was leading the tournament. And when it was over, Singh won by five shots, his biggest blowout of the year.
”It’s amazing,” Jesper Parnevik said. ”It’s just as amazing as Tiger was four years ago.”
PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem recalls seeing Singh in the gym around Christmas some five years ago. The Fijian was pumping weights, and Finchem asked why.
”He said, ‘I need to hit it farther. I’ve got to hit it where Tiger is if I’m going to beat him,”’ Finchem recalled. ”He’s hitting it there now, and he’s hitting it in the fairway.”
East Lake is where Singh began his big run.
He capped off the 2002 season — another year of the Tiger — with a textbook performance at the Tour Championship, missing only two greens the final round and winning by two. Singh won four times the following year and ended Woods’s five-year reign atop the money list.
This year was quite an encore, unless Singh is saving up something truly special for 2005. — Sapa-AP