MAY BE I'M JUST A LATE BLOOMER

Tony Finau may be stuck on one PGA Tour win, but good things come to those who wait

- BRIAN WACKER

An old Indian spiritual leader by the name of Sri Chinmoy once said that optimism is the secret of self-reliance, self-reliance is the secret of a dynamic power and a dynamic power is the secret of an immediate success. He wasn’t talking about Tony Finau, of course, who wasn’t even born when the author, artist, poet and musician was spreading his gospel in the 1960s, but the message remains applicable. The 31-year-old one-time PGA Tour winner ticks all the boxes – a glass-always-full outlook; a background that includes honing his skills on a makeshift driving range that featured a thin layer of worn-out carpet over concrete, a net and a mattress in a Utah garage; and a victory in just his second year on tour.

Of course, when Finau will experience his next triumph has become an inescapable topic since the March day in 2016 when he won the Puerto Rico Open in a sudden-death play-off. Since then, the lanky and long-hitting cousin of NBA basketball player Jabari Parker and former NFL player Haloti Ngata has 38 top-ten finishes, including a whopping ten runner-ups worldwide. That many close calls usually results in one of two things: eventual victory or madness. Yet Finau’s million-watt smile persists, and genuinely so.

“If you would have told me that would still be my last victory, I would have thought, ‘did I get hurt or something?’” Finau says. “When you win your first event and with it being my second year on tour, I definitely would have imagined a different outcome at this point.