He walked this course as a kid. Tampa’s Jimmy Stanger returns as a pro
PALM HARBOR — The sun has yet to rise, and already the golfer has a putter in his hands.
No one is around at Innisbrook Resort — at least no one tasked with shooing them away — so the father pulls his car around and turns the headlights on so his son can practice putting in the dark.
If you want to begin the story of how a kid from Tampa found his way onto the PGA Tour, this might be the best place to start.
With 10-year-old Jimmy Stanger practicing in the predawn hours before junior events here nearly 20 years ago, and then returning to Innisbrook on Thursday and shooting a first-round 70 in the Valspar Championship.
“Being here is special, and it’s amazing to have all of these people I know out here following,” Stanger said. “But in the end, when you go back to the heart of the game, it’s all those times I spent with my dad, and trying to compete against him and beat him as an 8, 9, 10 year old. Those are the memories.
“Ultimately, that’s what I’m still doing out here. We’re just playing golf, and there happens to be a slightly larger spotlight.”
That spotlight seems to be growing by the week. After six hard years of prepping on the Korn Ferry Tour and repeatedly coming just short of earning his PGA Tour card, Stanger, who turns 29 on Saturday, is on a bit of a roll in his rookie season. He’s made the cut four weeks in a row, finished third in the Puerto Rico Open and then got the final spot in the field at the Players Championship (when Tiger Woods pulled out) and finished 35th against some of the best players in the world.
“He was ready for this tour, and he knew it,” said his caddie, Wyatt Spencer. “But he never got frustrated on the Korn Ferry. People complain no matter what job they have, but that was never Jimmy. He’s just not that guy. He’s always looking at the bright side. That’s his M.O. What do I have to do to take care of business? That’s how he thinks. It’s impressive, and such a pleasure to be around.”
Maybe that’s because the life of a pro golfer was a dream but not necessarily an obsession for Stanger, who grew up playing at Avila. He may have been a hotshot junior golfer around Florida — he was the 2012 Hillsborough County Player of the Year at Gaither High — but the idea was to get a college scholarship.
Once that was accomplished with a free ride at the University of Virginia, Stanger assumed he was heading towards a career in finance. He did an internship at Raymond James, where his father Jim is a financial advisor, and another at the Federal Reserve in Washington D.C.
It wasn’t until he won the prestigious Southern Amateur in 2016 and followed up as Virginia’s first player to earn first-team All-America honors that Stanger began seriously plotting a PGA career. Ironically, his time at the Federal Reserve was a huge help.
“When they found out he was the captain of the golf team at the University of Virginia, they all wanted to play with him on the weekends,” his father explained. “They would come back to work on Monday and he would be fretting over this shot or that shot. Meanwhile, he said all the other guys, the only thing they remembered was the one or two good shots they hit. They didn’t remember any of the bad ones. He said, ‘That’s when I decided to change my attitude.’ ”
It hasn’t always been easy. And nothing is guaranteed for a first-year player on the PGA Tour. That was obvious on Thursday when tournament organizers misspelled his name — they called him Stranger — on the back of his caddie’s vest.
Stanger, who grew up a Bucs fan, compared it to Baker Mayfield’s NFL journey. You don’t see a lot of No. 1 picks stumble as badly as Mayfield and then find themselves again later in their careers, he said. That’s the kind of perseverance that served him well all of those years on the Korn Ferry Tour.
It’s all part of the journey that brought Stanger full circle back to the same tournament where he was a standard bearer as a schoolboy, carrying around the sign with all the names and scores of players in a group. He talked earlier this week about how kind PGA pro Jerry Kelly was to him that weekend.
“That stuck in my brain,” Stanger said. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘If I ever get a chance to be out here, I want to be like that.’ ”
Sure enough, at the end of Thursday’s round, Stanger stopped the standard bearer as they walked off the 18th green. He thanked him and asked some questions while autographing a ball for him.
Years before he got his PGA Tour card, Stanger began a charity called Birdies for Hope that builds churches/shelters in impoverished areas. He donates money for every birdie he makes and has gotten others to follow suit. The foundation is already responsible for eight churches in Colombia and another in Panama.
“He loves golf, and he loves to compete, but he’s got a thankful heart,” his father said. “I see it in him all the time.”
John Romano can be reached at jromano@tampabay.com. Follow @romano_tbtimes.
