D.A. Points enjoying comeback in Houston

HUMBLE, Texas – D.A. Points got a text from Bill Murray this week. The message from his partner in winning the 2011 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am: It’s about time you made some putts. Way to go. Points, who captured his third PGA TOUR victory at the Puerto Rico Open last weekend, comes into this week’s Shell Houston Open as more than just a recent winner and a past champion of the event (2013). He is also the latest example of a golfer who survived his own misguided ambition. “After 2013, when I won here, finished second in New Orleans, made my first TOUR Championship, finished top 30 in the FedEx Cup, I realized I’d only had four good weeks and 25 kind of crappy ones,” Points, 40, said from outside the locker room at the Golf Club of Houston, where he received congratulations from fellow players and caddies Tuesday. “I was like, I’ve got to get better,” Points added. “So I sought a new swing instructor and a new mental coach. I figured these are guys who know a lot about a lot of stuff, and they’re going to help make me more consistent, and it just went the exact opposite direction.” In other words, Points succumbed to the age-old golf maxim: If it ain’t broke, fix it until it is. You could be excused if you overlooked golf’s latest lost-and-found tale, in which Darren Andrew Points moved from 178th to 55th in the FedExCup standings, and 634th to 254th in the Official World Golf Ranking. His reversal of fortune was easy to miss in part because of the concurrent heroics of Dustin Johnson at the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play last weekend, and in part because Points was by his own admission far, far off the radar. It turns out D.J. and D.A. are separated by more than just a letter. You know about the first guy, he of the skyscraping tee shots and three-tournament win streak. (Citing exhaustion, Johnson pulled out of this week’s tournament.) As for the second, Points made just 11 cuts and less than $400,000 in each of the last two seasons. He had no top-10 finishes. Last year he plummeted to 182nd in strokes gained: putting. He stuck with his new swing for 10 months, which he says was eight or nine months too long. “When he lost his way trying to get better, he was working on things from a movement standpoint that I don’t think fit his body very well,” said his current coach, Orlando-based Tyler McGhie. “He’s a feel player, always about trying to find his best feel for that week.” Points reassessed his golfing identity, and with his new coach got back to basics, looking at old video and photos. At the Web.com Tour Finals last year, Points did just enough to regain his TOUR card. His status wasn’t great—before Puerto Rico he hadn’t played since finishing T39 at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am—but it was a start. Then came the sea change that perhaps he was seeking all along: a new putter built by Sik Golf, which Points started using earlier this month, and a new grip. After tinkering with cross-handed putting in his regular Friday game at Isleworth, Points put the new grip into play for the first time in Puerto Rico. It worked out nicely. He went into Sunday just a shot off the lead, then reeled off five straight birdies to start his final round and seize control. “I put my family through a lot,” he said after he won, his scores of 64-69-69-66 beating Bryson DeChambeau, Retief Goosen and Bill Lunde by two. The next day, the winner tweeted, “I would like to thank my wife and kids for being so supportive, during these last few years, while I have been sucking! They never gave up on me!” The candid, self-effacing Points has received plenty of slaps on the back in Houston. “If I wasn’t going to win, I’m glad he did,” said Chris Stroud (final-round 71, T8), a friend of Points’ and a final-round playing partner. “I texted him on Saturday night. I said, ‘First one to 20 under wins the tournament. Let’s get away from the herd tomorrow. Let’s pull away from them.’” Playing alongside Stroud and fellow friend Lunde, Points did. He felt a calmness in place of the anxiety that had plagued his game as recently as last fall, and he put the exclamation point on a great week. He led the field at Coco Beach in fairways hit (47/56, 83.93%) and greens in regulation (64/72, 88.89%) while averaging 29 putts per round. “He’s been hitting it relatively good for about a year,” McGhie said, “but obviously last week was ridiculous.” “I wasn’t scared, wasn’t anxious,” Points said. “It was fun.” Fun—like winning the AT&T with Murray at Pebble Beach. A week ago, Points had such limited status he couldn’t make up his schedule with any certainty. Those were the bad, old days. With his Puerto Rico rebound, he punched his ticket back to the THE PLAYERS Championship and the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow, and took a huge step toward potentially returning to the TOUR Championship at East Lake. He’ll bring his family back to Maui for the 2018 SBS Tournament of Champions. It called for a celebration, which Points got at Houstonian Stroud’s annual wine party Monday night. In the 14,000-bottle cellar of Stroud’s friend, Dr. Devinder Bhatia, a cardiac and thoracic surgeon, Points, Stroud, Ricky Barnes and Jason Kokrak were among the guests who paired a bone-in beef shoulder with several flights of wine, including a particularly excellent pinot noir. D.A. Points, whose game had shriveled up into a raisin, was back in the grapes.

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