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Notebook: Always Working Dana Quigley's Perfect LifeBy Jaime Diaz
 Most tour golfers are blasé about their profession and like to tell envious working stiffs that golfing for a living ain't all it's cracked up to be. Not Dana Quigley. This New Englander wouldn't trade his life on the Senior tour for anything. Quigley's affection for golf is not simply due to the $3.8 million he has won since turning 50 in 1997. He likes to play. Every day. Last week's Boone Valley Classic outside St. Louis marked Quigley's 106th straight start on the Senior tour, a streak second only to Mike McCullough's 125. But Quigley, who tied for fourth, eight shots behind winner Larry Nelson, hardly limited his play to the three days of the tournament. The week was typical. After holing a dramatic 12-foot birdie putt to win the TD Waterhouse Championship by a stroke over Tom Watson, Quigley missed the last flight from Kansas City to St. Louis, so he and good buddy Ed Dougherty rented a car and drove, arriving in St. Louis at 1:30 a.m. Following a catnap, Quigley was playing in the Monday pro-am, a Senior tour staple that is typically devoid of name players. "To me it's not a duty," he says. "I bond with those guys." The next morning he hooked up with Allen Doyle and Bruce Summerhays at Boone Valley for their regular Tuesday game, during which the only thing quicker than their sawed-off backswings and $2 presses is their toxic razzing. "You'd think we were playing for $8 million," says Quigley. "Sometimes other guys get in, but they don't come back, because the three of us, being from the munis, have needles that are too sharp." Later that day Quigley joined the event's nine-hole celebrity shootout, and that night he attended a Cardinals game at Busch Stadium. On Wednesday he played in another pro-am and again took in the Cardinals. On Thursday he followed the pro-am with an afternoon of gambling on a riverboat casino. His wife, Angie, and their two children, Nicole, 18, and Devon, 15, joined Quigley in St. Louis that night, and the entire family attended the ball games on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday, after the final round, the Quigleys wound down at the hotel by watching the Red Sox-Yankees game, and on Monday the cycle began again, in Nashville, site of the BellSouth Senior Classic. "A perfect day for me would be to play a tournament round during the day and go to a Red Sox game at night," says Quigley. "Actually, that's pretty close to what I do now. Seriously, I wish there were more than three days of competition a week. In fact, I wouldn't mind seven." Quigley does not argue with fellow pros who say he's deranged, except to point out that he is merely following his metabolism and his muse. "All my life I've been a guy who could go all day," he says. "I think the players who call me a weirdo envy my passion. I never wake up and not want to play." For most of his years as a pro, Quigley didn't feel the same way about himself. After graduating from Rhode Island in 1969, he knocked around as an assistant pro until finally making it to the PGA Tour in 1978. He never won more than $32,000 in a season and by '83 had taken a job as a club pro. His extroverted personality made him popular, as did his penchant for buying rounds in the clubhouse until closing time. "Everything I do, I go overboard," says Quigley. "I couldn't have just one drink. I had to drink everything behind the bar. It took me a while to realize that I've had low self-esteem my whole life." Quigley went through rehab, but the drinking didn't stop for good until Feb. 1, 1989. After a day of golf and drinking at his adopted home course of West Palm Beach Municipal, Quigley was driving on I-95 to meet his buddies at a bar when he had an epiphany. "I don't know why, but I thought, What am I doing? I pulled over and decided, That's it, man. I've had enough." Then, in '92, through his friendship with fellow New Englander Brad Faxon, he met sports psychologist Bob Rotella. "I told him, 'Look out when I turn 49, because I'm coming to see you,'" says Quigley. Sure enough, in '96 Quigley spent three days with Rotella. After the session he won five times in 11 starts on the PGA Tournament Series in Florida. The next year he earned his Senior tour exemption by Monday-qualifying for the Northville Long Island Classic and beating Jay Sigel in a three-hole playoff for the title. He hasn't looked back. Quigley remains more Stuart Smalley than Tony Robbins. Ask him about being No. 3 on the money list, and he's quick to answer: "I don't feel like I belong among the top players. I'm a schlepper, a club pro, and I'll always be a club pro. Everybody says I'm too self-effacing, but it keeps me working hard. Of course, for me, this isn't work."
Snead's Secret Nick Faldo hadn't had much luck with icons. In 1992 he made a pilgrimage to Fort Worth, Texas, to ask for Ben Hogan's advice on how to win the U.S. Open, and the great man had told him, "Shoot the lowest score." So he wasn't sure what to expect when he called on Sam Snead recently. Faldo has long admired Snead's fluid, powerful swing, and went to Hot Springs, Va., to learn what he calls Snead's "absolute musts, the key things he thinks about and feels during the swing." In the process he also learned that Hogan and Snead were very different men. "It was a great day," says Faldo. "Sam is very generous. As he watched me hit balls, I told him I've been trying to gain more leverage. Right off he suggested that I grip the club a little tighter with the little finger of my left hand. He also emphasized starting the downswing by pulling with the upper left arm. If Sam had a secret, I believe that was it. He was massively strong in the shoulder area, and that was why he was able to generate so much speed with a such a compact action. I really feel as if I've been given some gems." Faldo says that he will put the insights gleaned from the visit into an expanded edition of his instruction book, A Swing for Life. It should be noted, however, that he didn't ask Snead how to win the Open.
Jaime's Top 10 Predicting which college players will be successful pros has always been an inexact science. In 1992, for example, three members of NCAA champion Arizona -- David Berganio, Harry Rudolph and Manny Zerman -- were seen as can't-miss prospects, and no one thought their teammate Jim Furyk had a chance. Nevertheless, because many experts feel this year's talent pool is the deepest ever, here are the 10 players most likely to succeed.
1. Paul Casey, Jr. , Arizona State.
2. Charles Howell, Jr. , Oklahoma State.
3. Luke Donald, Jr. , Northwestern.
4. Bryce Molder, Jr. , Georgia Tech.
5. Jess Daley, Sr. , Northwestern.
6. Edward Loar, Sr. , Oklahoma State.
7. David Gossett , Soph., Texas.
8. Lucas Glover , Jr., Clemson.
9. Matt Kuchar, Sr. , Georgia Tech.
10. Jenna Daniels, Sr. , Arizona. Issue date: June 5, 2000
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