Veteran four tournaments from playing every event for three straight seasons
PGA Tour: CLEMMONS, N.C. (Sept. 28) -- Dana Quigley has finally lost count. Can you blame him?
Quigley will play in his 110th straight Senior Tour event this weekend at the Vantage Championship. With four more tournament to play, he could wind up playing every round of every senior event for three straight seasons.
"What would be really interesting would be to take Dana and lock him up someplace and not let him play for two weeks and see what he does," fellow player Andy North said Thursday.
"It's really pretty amazing, but Dana loves to play golf," North added. "He would play golf at home every single day if he wasn't here. So, for him to do it it's not quite as bizarre as most of the rest of us. No way I could do that. I would be in the funny farm."
Talk to Quigley for just a few minutes and it's clear he's proud of his streak , which started Aug. 10, 1997 -- the day he won his first senior event and the day his father died.
"They all think I'm nuts," Quigley said. "But I have a burning passion for this game."
No such record exists on the PGA Tour, where players routinely take time off during the season.
"I've got no swing, how can I work on it?," Quigley said. "I've got a short, choppy swing that repeats itself very well."
Quigley, 53, is one of the more accomplished players on the Senior Tour. He's fourth on the money list at $1.677 million and has a scoring average of 69.85.
Leading money winner Larry Nelson had played in seven fewer events this season.
"The thing that is amazing to me is how well he has continued to play through this whole thing," North said. "He has been able to not get totally worn out. This game is part physical and part mental."
Quigley, a former club pro in New England for 15 years, said the mental part has been easy. He used to arrive at his club before it opened at 7 a.m. and get in a quick few holes, then play two or three more times a day if he wasn't giving lessons.
"This is such a joy to me to be able to be out here with these guys playing," he said. "Where can a club pro sit here and give Arnold Palmer the business?
"It's a bonus being able to play well," he added. "When I came out as a club pro I wasn't so sure I was going to be able to earn the rights to be out here. Let's face it, to come out as a Monday qualifier, there's not a bright future there."
At 6-foot-2, 185 pounds, Quigley is one of the more fit players on a tour where aches and pains are the norm. He has to be to have such a streak. But it's not because he lifts weights or exercises on a regular basis.
He tried that once when he first came on tour. That routine lasted just one day.
"The next day I got up I couldn't walk I was so sore," Quigley said of his workout. "I said that is it. My golf muscles are well toned and that's why I don't get physically sore. I haven't had any injuries, but I don't do anything but play golf. So, it's tough to get injured. I'm not one of those guys that plays pickup basketball."
Quigley came close to missing a start when he strained a calf muscle in mid-July. But trainers worked on the muscle, and a limping Quigley was at it again the next week.
Quigley proved last season he would go to any length not to miss a round of golf. He played Friday in Nashville, Tenn., then rented a private plane to fly to Rhode Island to attend his daughter's high school graduation that night. He then returned to shoot a pair of 67s on the weekend.
It cost him $7,500 for the round trip.
"It was worth every penny to see the look on her face," he said.
Fellow pro and good friend Walter Hall thinks Quigley is just following his heart.
"If I take a week off and come home, what do I do?," Hall said. "I play golf. Dana is the same way. If he takes a week off and goes to West Palm Beach, then he plays golf. I don't have other hobbies and Dana doesn't either, so we go out and play golf."
Quigley's wife Angie has missed just three events during the streak. He has a deal with his two teen-agers.
"I told my kids if either one of them even thinks about getting married, it better be in the winter time," Quigley said.
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