David Lingmerth's long road back: Renewed confidence on the greens sparks return to PGA Tour

ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. — There have been times in the past five years that David Lingmerth had to remind himself about the player he used to be.

The Ponte Vedra Beach resident and Swedish native stood on the 17th tee of the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass on Sunday in the 2013 Players Championship with a chance to take Tiger Woods to a playoff.

He won the 2015 Memorial in a three-hole playoff with Justin Rose and finished at the top of a leaderboard with a pack of other major champions such as Francesco Molinari, Jordan Spieth, Jim Furyk, Hideki Matusyama and Keegan Bradley.

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Lingmerth lost in a playoff at the 2013 American Express in Palm Springs, Calif., in his second professional start, and had a chance again in 2016, losing to past PGA champion Jason Dufner.

So it's never been a case of a stage too big for the two-time All-American at Arkansas.

It was a matter of getting that kind of confidence back — not easy when you've lost your PGA Tour card, can't seem to find a green, can't seem to make a putt and then sustain a series of injuries to further hamper any comeback efforts.

But Lingmerth, all of 5-foot-7 and with more heart than height, didn't get to the Tour in the first place by backing down to anyone or any situation.

After reaching a low point in 2021 when he missed 11 of 20 cuts on the Korn Ferry Tour and was 161st on the points list, he rebounded last season with a stunning week at the Korn Ferry Tour Finals Nationwide Children's Hospital Championship.

Lingmerth not only won wire-to-wire — starting with a course record 62 at the Ohio State University Scarlet Course — but he birdied the 72nd hole to hold off Paul Haley by one shot, win his first tournament since The Memorial and post his first top-10 finish in a combined 117 starts on the PGA Tour and Korn Ferry Tour.

That victory gave Lingmerth the PGA Tour card back he had lost in 2018. After a few blips on the radar with three missed cuts to start the season, he tied for 11th in Bermuda, with four rounds in the 60s, tied for eighth at World Wide Technology Open at Mayakoba, Mexico, his first PGA Tour top-10 in 82 starts, and put himself squarely in contention at the RSM Classic this week at the Sea Island Club with opening rounds of 67-65 to tie for seventh through 36 holes, two shots off the lead.

"It's been some tough moments," Lingmerth said on Thursday after he shot a bogey-free 67 at the Plantation Course. "Just have had to persevere for a while. To be able to get my card and kind of get some I guess new momentum here, kind of feel a little rejuvenated. I could start over again."

Big expectations after Memorial win

Great things were expected out of Lingmerth after his brush with winning The Players as a rookie and even more after he won The Memorial. He peaked at 37th on the FedEx Cup standings and 40th in the world in 2015, and while he didn't do anything spectacular over the next two seasons, he played well enough to keep his card.

Lingmerth started a downward spiral in 2018 when he finished 143rd on the FedEx Cup standings. He still had conditional status but it got worse in 2019 when he finished 228th.

The following season Lingmerth sank as low as 915th in the world (he's back to No. 224 this week) and found himself tagged with the dreaded four words: conditional Korn Ferry Tour status.

Lingmerth, usually accurate off the tee, found that he couldn't hit enough greens to keep up. He was 168th on the Tour in greens in regulation in 2018 (.630), which negated his 14th in driving accuracy (.689).

Since he faced so many par putts to stay alive, his stroke and confidence on the greens started to suffer. It was a devastating lather-rinse-repeat cycle.

Injuries certainly didn't help, and Lingmerth had a slew of them, such as tendinitis in his right arm and left wrist issues.

An avid hockey enthusiast who played the sport on a junior level in Sweden until he was 16 (he's a die-hard Washington Capitals fan), Lingmerth also fractured a kneecap two years ago when he was playing in a pickup hockey game at Community First Igloo off U.S. 1.

Earlier this year he was healthy but his status was tenuous and he barely qualified for the Korn Ferry Tour finals.

Knox was a huge help

Enter fellow PGA Tour player Russell Knox. The two play frequently when both are home in Ponte Vedra and Knox knew that Lingmerth was a better player than his numbers on the PGA Tour and Korn Ferry Tour were showing.

Knox had been having success with a putting grip in which the right hand is low but turned so the back of the hand faces to the right. Lingmerth began adopting the grip and came up with his own variation he calls "the hammer" -- holding the club with an inverted baseball grip.

"It's been a lot of trial and error with different methods of putting and just getting my mind right and not putting too much pressure on myself," Lingmerth said. "Russell was very helpful and I changed a few weeks back and it really seems to be working."

Talk about trial and error: Lingmerth went back and forth between using the grip on a conventional length putter and a slightly longer putter with split grips. He was so unsure that he used two putters at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship (throwing out is 6-iron) and eventually one-putted a slew of greens with the split-grip wand.

He tied for eighth in putts per round in Bermuda (27.0), tied for third at Mayakoba (25.0) and needed only 52 putts in the first two rounds at Sea Island.

Knox praises Lingmerth for grinding

Knox said the grip seems to be helpful in terms of rhythm.

"If it can help me, it can help anyone, I promise you that," he said.

Knox said he had the sense that Lingmerth was poised for better things.

"We all go through our struggles in this game," Knox said. "David obviously wasn't happy that his lasted quite that long but he was always positive and when I played with him, he was always playing good, grinding way. He never quit, that's for sure. It's great to see some success for him starting the season and hopefully, it will continue."

Lingmerth is only 35 and said he's a few Sunday moments from feeling he can be a consistent contender again.

"I'm just happy to be back out here and getting starts, and obviously playing a lot better," he said. "Hopefully I can put myself in some fun situations in some tournaments moving forward.

"I still think I'm the type of player that can get in those situations and not be afraid. I think I can hang and try to push my limits as far as possible and hopefully, that will be good enough to get a couple wins. That's always the goal."

Contact Garry Smits at gsmits@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @GSmitter

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: David Lingmerth's long road back: Renewed confidence on the greens sparks return to PGA Tour