Fred Funk stayed course during a wild, wet week

Funk used his accuracy in the fairways and into the greens to outlast the field during a week hampered by one rain delay after another

• Fred Funk, known for his accuracy off the tee, won the 2005 Players Championship at the age of 48.
• Funk’s victory came in challenging weather conditions, with heavy rain and strong winds throughout the tournament.
• Despite being one of the shortest hitters on Tour, Funk’s accuracy and strong short game proved to be key to his success.

Fred Funk never felt he was at a disadvantage at the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass because he was among the shortest hitters off the tee on the PGA Tour. 

He was also the straightest, and never had to be shy about hitting his driver.

“I hit the driver everywhere,” said the native of Maryland and long-time First Coast resident. “The big hitters had holes where they had to lay back a little bit but I was always able to hit where they were because I was so straight. To me, it was never a drawback in The Players.” 

Especially not 20 years ago in 2005, when Funk became the oldest winner of The Players at the age of 48 with a one-shot margin over three other PGA Tour veterans, Tom Lehman, Scott Verplank and Luke Donald. 

Funk was true to form that week. He led the field in driving accuracy, hitting 85.7 percent of his fairways (48 of 56) and that set up an 80.6 percent greens in regulation number, which also led the field. 

He was 80th in the field in driving distance among the 82 players who made the cut (253.4 yards per measured drive) but the historical lesson in more than four decades of The Players at the Stadium Course is that distance matters the least. 

Still, 2005 was the beginning of the “bomb and gouge” era of golf in which big hitters such as Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh and Davis Love III learned that a wedge from the rough was better than a 7-iron from the fairway.  

And playing that style, Woods, Mickelson, Love, David Duval, Fred Couples, Greg Norman and Craig Perks were among the long hitters who won a Players. 

But there’s always room for players such as Funk, Tom Kite, Webb Simpson and K.J. Choi, who have won The Players with short, but controlled drives. 

Funk was the poster boy for driving accuracy and was the Tour leader in the category five times. 

He could hit a fairway the width of a city sidewalk. It was Funk’s rep, and he embraced it.

Fred Funk one of the most popular players on Tour 

Funk had established himself as a solid PGA Tour winner long before the 2005 Players, with six victories in 12 years. Along the way he became one of the most popular players with fans, his fellow pros and the media for his self-deprecating personality and his working-class roots growing up in suburban Washington D.C. 

Funk was a club professional and the golf coach at the University of Maryland before finally getting his PGA Tour card at the age of 34. And 10 years before the 2005 Players, he moved to Ponte Vedra and lived in a house just off the 10th tee of Dye’s Valley, which became a hub of social activity during the week of The Players. 

His legion of friends and admirers even banded together to form a fan club: Funk’s Punks. Their T-shirts could be seen throughout any gallery at The Players. 

Before the 2005 tournament, Funk had one top-10 finish, a tie for seventh at the rain-shortened Nissan Open in Los Angeles. He tied for 27th the week before at the Arnold Palmer Invitational but no one really saw him coming. 

However, Funk felt he was on the verge. And he had made 13 of 14 cuts in The Players entering that season, with a tie for 10th in 2004. 

“I thought I was hitting the ball well,” he said. 

Funk on fire in the first round 

In the first round, Funk did better than play well. He was near-flawless, missing only one fairway and three greens. Funk fired a bogey-free 65 to finish one shot behind Steve Jones. 

It was the last good weather day of the week. Friday’s second round was completely washed out. Saturday and Sunday saw the field only get in partial rounds. 

The Stadium Course, 25 years old at the time, was not draining well (there would be a renovation the next year) and the grounds crews were unable to keep up with the volume of rain. 

The second round wasn’t completed until 11 a.m. on Sunday. The field got in less than three hours of golf before Sunday was suspended. 

When players returned on Monday, some had only played a few holes of their third round. The plan was to get in as much golf as possible and hope they could beat darkness so there wouldn’t be an unprecedented Tuesday finish. 

 Funk was facing 31 holes.

‘I’ve got it … I’ve got it today’ 

Through the stop-start nature of the week, veterans such as Funk, Lehman, Donald, Verplank, Joe Durant, and past Players champion Steve Elkington, Love and Adam Scott gradually rose to the top. 

On Monday, which dawned sunny but with wind gusts as high as 35 mph, tournament officials didn’t even regroup the players after the third round ended at 12:26 p.m., sending them back onto the course to start their fourth rounds without a break. 

However, Funk felt something. His first shot upon returning on Monday was his second shot on the difficult par-5 fourth hole in his third round. The wind was howling and Funk had to hit a 5-iron into the green. 

He made par. 

Funk then had to hit a trick 8-iron into the sixth green, with the wind behind him, and he found the green and made another par. 

Those two irons shots felt so good, and he was able to control their trajectory in the wind so well, Funk turned to long-time caddie Mark “Seve” Long and said, “I’ve got it … I’ve got it today.” 

Funk posted a 71 in the third round, with his only bogey at No. 18. That left him four shots behind Donald but without regrouping the players and ShotLink still in its infancy, it was difficult to keep track of leaderboards. 

Funk said the only approach was tunnel-vision golf. 

“The fairways were still wet … you were getting no carry,” he said. “Then the wind was brutal and the rough was high. It brought a lot of guys back into it and I knew I could be one of them.” 

Slowly, Funk chipped away at the lead. 

3-iron shot at 16 was the difference 

Funk had an early setback with a bogey at No. 3 but he birdied two difficult holes, Nos. 7 and 8. He turned and birdied Nos. 12 and 13. 

Funk bogeyed the 14th and 15th holes but everyone else was having trouble. Lehman bogeyed No. 8 and 15. Verplank doubled the 11th. Donald doubled No. 4, bogeyed Nos. 7 and 9 and shot 40 on the front nine. 

Funk knew he was in the tournament in the 16th fairway and pulled a club that had worked well all week: a TaylorMade 3-iron he was boring through crosswinds. 

“It was a little beefed up,” Funk said of the club, which was bent to a 2-iron loft. “Great club.” 

Funk also used a Strata ball that he was able to control in the wind. 

He hit the green with the club at the 16th and two-putted for a birdie and a two-shot lead. 

Funk then three-putted No. 17 for a bogey and went to No. 18 with a one-shot edge. He pulled his second shot into the greenside bunker, blasted out and then sank a 5-foot par putt for finish off another 71 and a 72-hole total of 9-under 279. 

Funk then had an agonizing wait while two groups finished. Zach Johnson was one shot behind Funk with two to play but hit his tee shot in the water at No. 17 for a double and bogeyed the last. Durant could have forced a playoff with a birdie at No. 18, but bogeyed. And Donald needed a birdie for the tie and missed. 

Fred Funk was The Players Champion.  

Funk’s rep might have been misplaced 

There has likely never been a Tour player with a bad word to say about Fred Funk, who maintained his good-guy, affable club-pro image throughout his career. 

But Jim Furyk said that it’s unfair to say Funk’s Players victory was any kind of an upset, a surprise or a case of an underachiever rising to the occasion. 

“I think that actually does a disservice to Fred and his overall game,” Furyk said. “He’s getting to the same spots everyone had to get to on those fairways and if he’s doing with the driver while they need 4-iron, so what? And after he got to his drive, he hit greens and made putts, like you need to do. Freddie deserved every bit of credit for winning that tournament without saying, ‘well, short hitters can win there too.'” 

Funk won one more PGA Tour event, the 2007 Mayakoba Classic at the age of 51. He then had a stellar PGA Tour Champions career, with nine victories and three senior majors, highlighted by the 2009 U.S. Senior Open. 

Funk made a combined 995 starts on the PGA Tour and Champions Tour and earned $34.1 million. He hasn’t played much recently because of injuries but that 1,000th career start is waiting. 

Except for a brief period when he and his wife Sharon moved to Texas, then returned, Funk has been anchored on the First Coast. He and his wife raised two children (Taylor and Peri) in Ponte Vedra Beach and they have been active in numerous charities, especially the J.T. Townsend Foundation.

He’s always been comfortable in his own skin and never minded being known as a grinder.

“I don’t mind being known as the short hitter who hit a lot of fairways,” he said. “The one thing I learned early on was that I had to be straight and I had to have a pretty good short game. Short and crooked was never going to work.” 

But straight, regardless of how short, made him a winner during that long, wet, windy week in 2005.