Stuart Appleby

The early season standout the last few years, Stuart Appleby has become a fixture on the PGA Tour finishing fairly high on the money list with regularity. It doesn’t hurt that he’s won the Mercedes Championship the last three years.

Both Appleby’s game and his life have been forged in a fire that no one would choose for themselves. He’s emerged from his loss as a family man again and as a regular PGA Tour champion.

At the beginning of this year’s PGA Tour season Appleby made me eat my words by winning the Mercedes Championships for the third year in a row. Given his statistics at the end of 2005 I didn’t feel that he had the game to win another Merdeces. Well, I was wrong. He joined Gene Littler (1955-57) as the only two players to have won three consecutive Mercedes Championships. I heard one commentator saying that they felt Appleby is one of the greatest wind players to have ever played and I’m beginning to see the same thing.

Appleby began his professional career in 1992 on the PGA Tour of Australia but soon moved to the Nike Tour (which eventually became the Nationwide Tour). In 1995, he had two victories and one runner up on the Nike Tour. His performance was good enough for fifth place on the money list and a trip to the PGA Tour in 1996.

One of the Tour’s longest bombers, Appleby has hit at least one drive per year 426 yards since 2004 and his longest was 433. Granted he’s catching a downhill slope in a tailwind, but no matter the conditions, that is a long way. While not on pace to match last year’s average driving distance of 300.6 yards, he is hitting the ball a respectable 286.5 yards per drive in 2006. That could also mean that he’s hitting three wood on the tees being measured. His scoring average is a respectable 69.48, good enough for 7th, his sand save percentage is 65.5%, and he’s 31st in putts per round at 28.38, all of which is really helping keep his scores down.

Basically, Stuart has the kind of game where he’ll contend from time to time and play fairly consistently throughout the season. He was cut six times in 2005 and still managed to place high on the money list.

Appleby has a total of seven wins on Tour. In addition to his Mercedes Championship hat trick from 2004-2006 he won the 1997 Honda Classic, the 1998 Kemper Open, the 1999 Shell Houston Open, and the 2003 Las Vegas Invitational. He’s been on four President’s Cup teams, three Alfred Dunhill Cup teams, and played in the 2003 World Cup of Golf.

You are never quite able to know what a person is like as a television is never really going to reveal the secrets of someone’s life. However, the curtain was rudely drawn back when he was forced to say goodbye to his closest friend on their second honeymoon, his wife Renay, shortly after missing the cut at the 1998 British Open. Those who followed Appleby’s struggle following his wife’s death will remember the forty minute interview he gave prior to the PGA Championship at Sahalee CC in 1998. It was the first event that he played after his wife’s death and he did it because he felt she would have wanted him to.

You feel strangely drawn to someone who has walked through such tragedy. They’ve been places you’ve been or places you know someday you might have to be. Through it they’ve kept going… somehow. Appleby is one such individual. He’s had to walk through the terrible aftermath of sudden loss and he’s somehow made it.

An excellent golfer in her own right, Renay gave up the promise of her own career because she’d found fulfillment in supporting her husband. The loss was more devastating than Stuart could have imagined.

Stuart Appleby in the 2005 Memorial playing in the pro-am. Nice caddie!

I don’t know if one every really overcomes a loss like the one Appleby faced, but when the raw emotions and immediate pain of his grief subsided he was ready to love again. “I certainly knew that being in a relationship where you’re loving and being loved, and where you’re sharing, was important,” said Appleby in a July 2003 Golf World interview. “I wanted that. I knew it was going to happen again. I had to wait my time.”

When he was ready to give his heart away a friend introduced him to the woman who would become his wife, Ashley Saleet. The two met on a blind date and the rest, as they say, is history. Married on December 10, 2002, Stuart and Ashley have a girl, Ella, and another on the way.

While he hasn’t had great results in the majors, its easy to get the feeling that he’s won a major championship in life.

Appleby’s new nickname, of course, is the King of Kapalua for his proficiency at the Mercedes. Following his third win in Hawaii he said, “I’ve played well here before, I know what I’m doing here, keep playing, keep thinking like you almost had, you know, 12 rounds linked up together. It was like there was no break. Just put myself in the moment of the previous two years.” He’s strung 12 good rounds together at the Mercedes.

Maybe its the wind, the golf course, or a fresh season, but he’s done awesome at this event. “It was a real windy week. I mean, look at the scores. They were way worse than we’ve well, than I’ve ever been here, that I can remember.”

Look for Appleby to be in the top-25 on the money list again this year and never count him out at the Mercedes Championships.

Photo Credit: © Unknown, The Sand Trap .com.