For all of his adult life, 52-year-old Tim O’Neal has strived to join the ranks of famously successful millionaire golfers such as Ernie Els, Bernhard Langer, Justin Leonard, David Toms, Stewart Cink and so many more.
O’Neal, a Savannah, Georgia, native who played his college golf at Jackson State, has played all over the world, played on every mini-tour imaginable, and suffered heartbreak after heartbreak. Through it all, he kept working, kept dreaming and never gave up.
“I always thought I had it in me, I always thought I could win,” O’Neal said in a phone conversation this week from his home in Savannah. “There were times, I began to wonder, times I had my doubt.”
Then came Sunday, Oct. 20, the final round of the Dominion Energy Charity Classic at the Country Club of Virginia in Richmond. Three shots behind starting the final round of the PGA Champions Tour tournament, O’Neal fired a remarkable, 7-under-par 65 to earn the victory and the $350,000 top prize that came with it.
In a tearful Golf Channel interview afterward, O’Neal put it this way: “For me to get it done when I had to just means a lot.”
To do it, O’Neal had to beat all those guys listed in the first paragraph and many more, most of whom have won and won often on the PGA Tour and the Champions Tour while O’Neal could only dream and continue to work
Said O’Neal in a phone conversation from his home in Savannah this week, “It really is a dream come true and it was a long, long time coming. Those guys I beat are guys I have looked up to my whole life. It’s hard to describe how much it meant.”
We can only imagine.
Randy Watkins, owner of three Jackson-area golf courses and once a PGA Tour player himself, can come closer to imagining than most of us. Watkins, who watched O’Neal play when he was at Jackson State, was watching on TV when O’Neal won at Richmond.
“When you think of all the roadblocks that guy has faced, all the times golf has kicked him in the butt, all the disappointments he’s experienced in 30 years of trying, oh my gosh,” Watkins said. “I’ve just got tons of respect for him. I can tell you for sure a lot of people would have given up a long time ago. A lot of people have.”
Eddie Payton recruited O’Neal to Jackson State in 1994. All O’Neal did was win the SWAC championship all four years. This will tell you something about O’Neal: As a senior he qualified to play in the NCAA Championship as an individual, but the Jackson State team was not invited. O’Neal turned down his invite, saying, “If the team doesn’t go, I don’t go.” O’Neal instead led JSU to a fourth straight National Minority College Championship. He won 16 college tournament in all at Jackson State.
He remembers his time at JSU and Eddie Payton fondly. He remembers watching Steve “Air” McNair playing football for Alcorn State and he remembers Lindsay Hunter playing on some fantastic Jackson State basketball teams. And, of course, he remembers the JSU halftime shows with the Sonic Boom. Said O’Neal, “Who could forget?”
Likewise, Watkins remembers watching O’Neal when the team would play at Watkins’ Whisper Lake Country Club. “Tim was fundamentally so sound,” Watkins said. “His swing was perfect, and he was a ball striker. Man, he hit the ball hard. His technique was so freaking good.”
And Watkins has followed O’Neal’s professional career from afar, including all the times O’Neal failed to qualify for the PGA Tour.
“I remember one time he came to the final hole of the final stage of PGA Tour Qualifying and double-bogeyed the last hole to miss by a shot,” Watkins said. “Some guys would never recover from a crushing disappointment like that. That kind of stuff eats at your soul.”
Last year, O’Neal did qualify for the Champions Tour, which in many ways is more difficult than qualifying for the PGA Tour. More than 70 golfers played for only five berths on the tour. O’Neal finished third and got his card.
His rookie season had been only minimally successful until the Richmond stop. Going into the tournament, O’Neal ranked 55th on the Champions Tour points list. The top 54 qualify for next week’s season-ending Champions Tour championship at Phoenix. O’Neal’s victory moved him all the way up to No. 31, just ahead of Vijay Singh, another pro O’Neal has long watched from afar.
This rookie year, at age 52, has been learning curve for O’Neal.
“I figured out pretty quickly that my short game needed to improve,” he said. “These guys are so good around the greens that it’s just incredible. I knew I had to get better to compete with them and I have. I’ve improved. I am not where I want to be yet, but I am going to work at it until I get to where I need to be.”
Don’t bet against him. Tim O’Neal has nearly a lifetime of experience at perseverance.
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