The curious case of David Gossett

David Gossett, amazingly enough still smiling.

If a positive attitude counted for anything, long-lost David Gossett would be back on the PGA Tour tomorrow.

Unfortunately, ugly scores keep getting in the way.

You remember David Gossett, don’t you? He was the “Next Big Thing” back in 2001, after he entered the John Deere Classic on a sponsor’s exemption and shot a final-round 66 to win by one stroke over Briny Baird. The wunderkind from Memphis was only 21 years old.

Gossett was the American Junior Golf Association player of the year in 1997. He took his game to the University of Texas and earned All-America honors as a freshman. The following summer, at 19, he won the U.S. Amateur Championship at Pebble Beach. After another All-American season as a Longhorn sophomore, and playing in the Masters, U.S. Open and British Open thanks to his Amateur victory, Gossett turned professional.

He shot 59 in Round 4 of the PGA Tour Q-School Final that fall of 2000 and tied for 68^th in the 90-hole marathon, earning exempt status on the Buy.com Tour (now Nationwide Tour).

In July 2001, with six top 10s in 12 starts, Gossett appeared well on his way to earning a PGA Tour card via a top 15 finish in Buy.com season earnings. Even though he was warned that missing a Buy.com start might jeopardize his standing on the money list, he decided to accept the Deere Classic exemption. His improbable victory paid $504,000 and came with a two-year PGA Tour exemption. Gossett was 100^th in money the following year and 84^th in 2003, notching five top-10s along the way, including co-runner-up at the ’02 Buick Classic.

But his game imploded in 2004. Gossett made only two cuts in 25 starts and lost his PGA Tour status. Since then he’s been in the money only five times in a combined 41 starts on the Nationwide and PGA tours. He won close to $2.2 million in his first three seasons as a pro but has banked roughly $41,000 since.

“I just took a detour, that’s how I view it,” Gossett said last week in the grillroom at Deer Island Country Club in suburban Orlando, where he was competing in a Hooters Tour Winter Series tournament.  “Unfortunately it’s been way too long. Such is life. You blink, and the next thing you know you’re 30 and struggling.”

Gossett won’t be 30 for another three months, but “my form is crappy,” he said. “There’s no disputing that.”

Indeed, consider his recent foray onto the Hooters Tour, a developmental circuit that‘s a notch below the Nationwide Tour. Gossett missed the cut by three shots Jan. 14 in his first Hooters Tour Winter Series start, shooting 73-70 at Forest Lake Country Club in Ocowee, Fla. He took a step forward the following week, for two rounds at least.

Gossett demonstrated his mettle on Inauguration Day. While most of America was riveted to a TV or computer screen, watching the Barack Obama festivities in Washington, Gossett was battling 35 mph winds, temperatures in the 40s and a balky golf cart during Round 1 at Deer Island. Dressed in a turtleneck, stocking cap and black rain gear to ward off the bone-chilling gusts, Gossett fashioned an even-par 72.

That left him tied for 10^th, despite missing a 2-foot par putt at his 11^th hole and hitting tee shot into a hazard on his 14^th en route to double-bogey 6. He also had to contend with a golf cart that ran out of juice and had to be pushed by his playing partners’ cart on inclines over the last four holes. (“It’s like the Flintstones,” Gossett joked as he sat behind the wheel and used his left leg to push-start the balky vehicle away from the last tee.)

All in all, it was a respectable performance on a day when 33 players in the field of 126 failed to break 80 (nine of whom withdrew afterwards, rather than subject themselves to an even colder next day).

Gossett was equally resilient in Round 2. He started at 7:30 a.m., with the temperature hovering around freezing, and birdied the last two holes for a 75, making the cut on the number.

His birdie-birdie finish was encouraging. Even a marginally improved performance over his Winter Series debut seemed to validate Gossett’s contention that his game is steadily, if slowly, improving.

“I’ve got a clear picture now of what I have to do to play good golf again,” Gossett said. “My blueprint, if you will, has become more clear. It’s been cloudy these last few years.”

Yet every time Gossett sees a break in those clouds, the patch of blue turns into a downpour.

He shot 88 in Round 3 of the 54-hole event – with three birdies. Starting on No. 10, Gossett pulled his opening tee shot into a water hazard and three-putted for a quadruple-bogey 8. It wasn’t the only “snowman” on his card; he made 8 at his 17^th hole, another par 4. His card also included a triple-bogey 7 on his ninth hole, two double bogeys and four bogeys.

 “That’s my highest score ever in competition,” Gossett said, slowly shaking his head during another interview in the clubhouse. ”Certainly as a professional.”

He finished last among the 41 players who made the cut, further indication that Gossett’s hopes of resurrecting his career on this circuit for aspiring PGA Tour players may be expiring instead. But Gossett believes otherwise.

“That’s why I’m teeing it up (on the Winter Series),” he said. “Having to put the peg in the ground and go score and compete, this is invaluable for me. It puts that fire in the belly.”

Gossett insists his swing fundamentals are sound, even though his scores suggest otherwise.

 “I shot 88 because I didn’t have the mental freedom to go out and be me,” he said. “I was putting pressure on myself to do well, then I was playing around with my swing. I totally screwed it up today.

 “It’s one of those days where I’m just gonna say, ‘’OK laugh about it. Forget it. Flush the toilet,’” Gossett said. “Something went haywire. My wires got crossed, clearly.”

His lighthearted dismissal of such a horrific performance is curious, to say the least. Is Gossett in denial? Or is he simply a Pollyanna?

“I’d rather be a Pollyanna than have a negative, piss-poor attitude,” Gossett said. “It may be Pollyanna-ish, but that’s accentuating the positive, the way I see it.

“What am I going to do? I’m frustrated. I’m disappointed. Am I going to quit? No. That’s golf. I had a rough day at the office. It was horrible.”

It’s hard not to sympathize with Gossett. He’s friendly, considerate and gracious, almost to a fault. He’s honest with his self-assessment, yet he remains upbeat. But there are hints his struggles are wearing him down.

“The mind is an amazing thing,” he said. “It’s fragile.”

Gossett attributes his demise to a common occurrence among young overachievers in golf. Consumed by the desire to improve, he lost sight of his limitations.

“I made the choice to change the formula that made me successful,” he said.

After the 2003 Tour season, and only six top-25 finishes in 28 starts, Gossett split from his longtime coach, Rob Akins, and moved from Memphis to Orlando. There he sought help from David Leadbetter, whom he had consulted while working with Leadbetter protégé Jonathan Yarwood (in conjunction with Akins).

“I told David, ‘Man, I really want to get better,’” Gossett said. “I was struggling with a fade shot and I’d won on the PGA Tour, but I finished 68^th on the money list, then 100^th on the money list and 84^th on the money list, and this just wasn’t getting’ it.”

Having excelled as a junior golfer, in college, on the amateur circuit and then winning so early in his pro career, Gossett had come to expect nothing less than victory.

“The only thing I wasn’t top in was my professional golf,” he said. “So, yes, I had high goals and dreams to want to do very well.”

The immersion with Leadbetter didn’t help. Detractors of the famed instructor call it “Lead poisoning.” But Gossett refuses to cast blame.

“I’m responsible for hitting the golf shots,” Gossett said. “I like David Leadbetter as an individual. He’s a tremendous marketer. He’s a good instructor, a good teacher. But he wasn’t a very good coach for me because he couldn’t afford the time.

“When I worked with him it was all instruction, it was all swing mechanics. It’s fine to work on mechanics, but when you have to go out there and race the car on the track, and all you’ve been doing is playing with the engine and messing around with the engine, you forget how to drive the car.”

Gossett also takes responsibility for failing to efficiently manage the accompanying demands of his notoriety. (It’s been suggested, for instance, that he devoted a disproportionate amount of time to representing the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.)

“Managing that (off-course interests) was part of the learning process,” Gossett said. “Looking back on it, knowing what I know now, I would have made some different choices. It wasn’t a major factor, but I would say it was a contributing factor.”

Gossett left Orlando in 2007 and now lives in Austin, near his old stomping grounds at UT.

“I feel like I’m in a healthy place,” he said, noting that his house and cars are paid for, he has reunited with Akins, he’s a member at two nearby clubs (Spanish Oaks Country Cub and Austin Golf Club) that have exceptional practice facilities, he’s single and he’s unencumbered.

“And I’m ready to work,” Gossett said.

After missing the cut in each of six starts on the Nationwide Tour last year, Gossett spent the late summer and fall in Memphis, tweaking his game with Akins but playing virtually no tournament golf.

“I just really got back to square one,” he said.

“I’m a little rough around the edges in my scoring game, but I feel like I’m really close to a breakthrough. It’s just pushing the envelope on just doing the work with every component of the game – putting, wedging, doing the homework and getting repetition going.

“But also there’s that side thing going on mentally,” Gossett added. “Earning my confidence back again.”

Which hasn’t been an easy task, made even more difficult at Deer Island.

Gossett’s best finish in the last four seasons is a third-place tie in an Adams Tour event in Texas, which was worth $2,275. He entered only a dozen tournaments in 2008, and his 13^th place in a Gateway Tour event boosted his season earnings to $3,995.

“I’ve seen so many bad shots, so many nasty experiences and feelings over the last, whatever it’s been, 4 or 5 years,” Gossett said. “I have to be really intentional about accentuating the positive, being positive regarding my confidence and my mindset.”

That mindset, he said, is all about simplicity.

“I think what I’ve learned from (his prolonged slump) is keeping it simple is the absolute genius thing,” Gossett said. “People who can keep things simple, stick to the program, work the plan, that’s what lasts over time.

“Chasing the almighty, elusive great swing is not real. What’s real, my definition of a good golf swing, is one that repeats.”

Larry Gossett, David’s father, was at Deer Island. He used to be a fixture at his son’s side, but this was one of the few times he has seen him compete in the last four years, a span during which David “just wanted to do it on his own,” according to the elder Gossett.

“He’s still a fighter and he still wants it,” Larry Gossett said after Round 1.  “I see good things coming . . . He’s got the bit in his mouth again.”

(He had changed his tune by the end of Round 3, expressing exasperation with his son’s seemingly nonchalant acceptance of the 88. Told of his father’s comments, David said: “I love my dad. He means well. He wants to help. I’m sure it hurts when you see your son struggle like that, someone who you’ve sacrificed for and helped to do well. Today he probably didn’t know what hit him.”)

Gossett’s plan for 2009 is to chase Monday qualifiers at Nationwide Tour events and apply for a handful of sponsor exemptions.

“I’m not holding my breath,” Gossett said of sponsor offers. “A lot of places have been kind to me in the past and I haven’t done much in the last four or five years.

 “I just have to go earn it the old fashioned way, and get that game going,” he said. “That’s what I’m interesting in doing. I can get an exemption or two, but if my game’s flat I’m not doing myself a big favor.”

If Nationwide Tour qualifying doesn’t pan out, Gossett likely will join the Hooters Tour’s summer Pro Series.

“I can eat humble pie,” he said.

Gossett is determined, however, not to make a steady diet of it. His optimism, it seems, is inexhaustible. Reminded that most pro golfers don’t hit stride until their mid-30s, Gossett smiled and said: “I’m going to go with that and run with it.”