By Bob Harig
Special to ESPN Golf Online
Tuesday, March 6

The hottest player in golf is not the superstar they paid seven figures to play near the Persian Gulf, nor the one who has played in the last group for three straight tournaments.

	Joe Durant has played his last two tournaments in a combined 54-under.

Nope, this guy is just an average Joe, a guy who once quit golf to sell insurance and couldn't move a single policy, a guy who went to work in a golf store stacking boxes.

He's not looking like an ordinary Joe right now.

When Joe Durant came from four strokes back, shot 7-under 65 at Doral and won the Genuity Championship, he claimed his second tournament in three weeks and his second in a row to become the first PGA Tour player to win multiple tournaments this year. Not only that, he qualified for The Masters.

After playing the Bob Hope Classic in 36-under over 90 holes, Durant came back to play Doral in 18-under, shooting 67-65 on the weekend to secure the third victory of his career.

How do you like that Tiger Woods?

"It's a dream come true," said Durant, 36, who starting this year was not among the top 200 in the World Rankings. "I've wanted to play the tour since I was 7. To play this well is beyond what I imagined. I thought I was good enough to win out here, but until you do, you never know. But the last couple of weeks have just been unbelievable for me."

Durant earned $810,000 and jumped to No. 1 on the PGA Tour money list with $1,493,267 -- a full 17 spots and nearly $1 million ahead of Woods.

Of course, Woods has no money woes -- he was collecting a reported $2 million appearance fee at the Dubai Desert Classic -- but he has two fewer victories in 2001 than Durant.

"I don't know how long that will last," Durant said.

Durant also blew past Davis Love III, who previously sat atop the money list and was in contention to win in his fourth straight tournament. Love, however, could do no better than a 71 on a blustery day.

In fact, only four of the top 11 finishers broke 70, and Durant had the best round of the day by two shots.

"Obviously Joe played a phenomenal round of golf in those conditions; a 65 is a hell of a score," said runner-up Mike Weir. "My hat is off to him. He played a great round of golf."

"It doesn't surprise me in the least," said PGA Tour player and close friend Skip Kendall of Durant's performance. "I think actually it has been a long time coming for him to do this. Joe is probably one of, if not the best, ball-strikers on the tour. It was just a matter of him taking advantage of opportunity."

He almost didn't. Durant turned pro in 1987, but by 1991 he was sick of the game. He quit to become an insurance salesman -- and didn't sell a single policy. Needing an income, he went to work at an Edwin Watts golf store near his home in Pensacola, Fla. A few months later, he was yearning to play golf again.

But he vowed to do it with a better attitude, courtesy of his wife, Tracey.

"She put the fear of God in me," Durant said. "She said, 'Hey, look, if you do not go out with a better attitude, we are not going to do this.' I promised her, if I was going to play again, I was going to really have a positive attitude. If I played bad, I was not going to bring it home with me, leave the golf at the course.

"My wife is a very competitive person. She played college golf. She knows the routine. She knew I was being a wimp, basically. She did not want to put up with it anymore. I promised her I would not do it. More times than not I've kept my promise."

Durant attributes his improved play to better putting, and it certainly doesn't hurt that he led the field in each of his last two tournaments in greens hit in regulation. Durant hit 60 of 72 greens at Doral. He also let the field in fairways hit, a deadly combination.

It's a long way from putting clubs in a box to hitting them so proficiently.

"I just dreamed about getting back and playing golf, but certainly not at this level," he said. "From working at a warehouse, which I wasn't happy doing, to back playing golf and doing what I love to do ... I was just so happy to be back out on a golf course."

Shotlink supporter
The new ShotLink System that was to debut at the Genuity Championship -- but was only partially unveiled because of technical glitches and a less-than-stellar response from players and caddies -- has a supporter in Hal Sutton.

Now you could call Sutton a company man since he is part of the PGA Tour policy board. Sutton doesn't understand all the fuss.

The new venture will allow golf fans to get all kinds of information about players and what they did during their rounds. It will give exact distances of putts and shots and where balls landed in the fairway and just about every conceivable statistic anyone could imagine. The information will be available via pgatour.com and from television announcers who will have the information piped directly into their broadcast booth.

The hangup? Players fear distractions in trying to get information to volunteers who record the information in each group. And caddies believe they should be compensated for giving the information.

"I cannot figure that out," Sutton said of the caddies, whose request to be paid $75 a day by the tour has been said to be too costly. "They are making more money than they've ever made. It will make us a better product, which will in turn sell for money, which we will then play for more money, and then they will make more money because they all work on commission.

"It does not take a rocket scientist to do the numbers. I think it is just short-sighted on their part. ... We ought to thank our lucky stars (rather) than sit around and gripe."

As for his tour colleagues, Sutton said of the program, which reportedly has cost $15 million to launch: "All the guys need to work with it. Every system has a few flaws to begin with. When we get it all put together, we will like the end product. ... This is where the whole world is headed, and we better be geared up for it."

Coming close
Good thing Davis Love III won last month or Pebble Beach, or his agonizing streak of near-misses would be going strong.

After winning that tournament by shooting a final-round 63, Love has been in position to win three more times, playing in the final group at San Diego, Los Angeles and Miami. He lost in a playoff to Phil Mickelson at the Buick Invitational, shot a 75 at the Nissan Open in horrible conditions to miss a playoff by two strokes, and was within three of the lead at the Genuity Championship, but finished sixth after a final-round 71.

Love had gone 34 months between victories while amassing nearly 30 top-10 finishes.

"I'm playing good, not great," said Love, who acknowledged this is still a fine line between winning and coming close. "I'm just excited to be back around the lead a lot."

Augusta bound
Jack Nicklaus keeps hedging about The Masters, but it is becoming more and more apparent that he will play at Augusta National next month. It will be his 42nd Masters.

"I am going to probably play," said Nicklaus, 61, who missed the cut at Doral after shooting rounds of 70 and 73, the latter which included a back-nine 39. "I can't imagine that I am not. I played here and I think I hit the ball reasonably well. I think I controlled my game decently. I'm just disappointed I didn't finish off (the) last nine. I would have liked to have played four rounds."

Bob Harig, who covers golf for the St. Petersburg Times, writes a column every Tuesday for ESPN Golf Online.