Tway Hoping This is Start of Comeback

CARLSBAD —  Bob Tway has never really been away. It just seems that way.

In 1986, only his second year on the PGA Tour, Tway burst out of nowhere by winning four tournaments and earning $652,780, second on the money list to Greg Norman. Tway became one of the tour’s hottest attractions, and the PGA named him player of the year.

After that, Tway vanished from the limelight as suddenly as he had appeared. He plunged to 47th place on the money list in 1987, and didn’t win another tournament for three years. He finally ended his famine with single victories in 1989 and 1990, but it didn’t seem as though many people noticed.

Now Tway considers himself on the comeback trail at the age of 31, and he made a move in that direction Friday when he shot a five-under-par 67 in the second round of the Infiniti Tournament of Champions at La Costa.

Tway’s round sent him into sixth place in the opening event of the year with a 36-hole total of 140. He remained eight strokes behind leader Lanny Wadkins, but he drew encouragement from tying Wadkins, Tom Kite and John Huston for the best score of the second consecutive soggy day.

“I’m still not back where I was, but I’m playing better,” Tway said. “I would like to have practiced during the winter, but the weather was so bad back home (Edmond, Okla.) that I couldn’t. Then again, sometimes you’re better off to get away from the game for a while.”

As far Tway is concerned, it would be no more than fitting if he could win this tournament. It was in San Diego County that he scored the first victory of his career, in the Shearson Lehman Bros.-Andy Williams Open at Torrey Pines in 1986. He won a playoff from Bernhard Langer after rain cut the tournament to 54 holes.

Victories in the Westchester Classic and Atlanta Classic followed, and Tway climaxed his rags-to-riches season by winning the PGA Tournament in storybook fashion at Inverness in Toledo, Ohio. He beat Norman by one stroke with a spectacular bunker shot on the 72nd hole.

“I was hitting my irons well and putting well that year,” Tway recalled. “A combination of those two factors led to winning golf.

“I had 15 top-10 finishes, and some years you might be up there that often and not win anything. There’s such a fine line between winning and not winning. A guy might be in fifth place because one bad shot cost him a chance to win.

“With me, everything seemed to go right.”

And what went wrong after that?

“My putting slipped,” Tway said, “but it wasn’t that as much as not hitting greens in regulation. I’ve been way down the list in that category.

“Because I wasn’t able to reach my goals, it got kind of frustrating. But I keep tinkering with my swing, and it’s starting to pay off a little bit. I’m gradually getting my game back.”

Friday, Tway had six birdies and one bogey en route to nines of 33 and 34. Remarkably, he birdied all four par-threes.

“It’s not very often that a guy shoots four twos,” he said. “I really didn’t know what to expect. In my practice rounds, I hit it all over the lot. But I had played considerably better the last few months of last year, so I had a good feeling coming here.”

As for the showers that fell throughout his round, Tway said, “It was kind of a miserable day out there, but the rain was more of a nuisance than anything else. The greens got very soft, and they had to squeegee a few of them, but you can adapt to that.”

Although Wayne Levi matched Tway’s 1986 output by winning four tournaments last year, Tway doesn’t expect the feat to become commonplace.

“The odds are against it,” Tway said. “I don’t think the quality of the top guys is any different, but there are a lot more good players than there used to be.

“You don’t have guys running away from the field anymore. You usually go to the last round and see a lot of guys with a chance to win.”