Steve Gilley burning up Gateway Tour

By SCOTT MARTIN

        Well beneath the personal jets, luscious living, extreme pampering and free golf balls for life on the PGA Tour, lies the soft underbelly of professional golf - the mini-tours. Some are superbly organized, others routinely visit strong golf courses, some have sex appeal (the Hooters Tour comes to mind) but the reality remains: a mini-tour is only slightly removed from legalized golf gambling. In most cases on most mini-tours, the purse is simply the entry fees collected from the field plus a little extra thrown in by a sponsor. If the sponsor is a steak house, then the little extra might just be an extra side of onion rings when the players come in to eat.

        In Michael Bamberger’s excellent book To the Linksland (Penguin, 1992) Bamberger and his wife temporarily relocate to Europe so that Bamberger can caddie for the slightly eccentric American Peter Teravainen on the European Tour. In the book Teravainen describes how crossing the Rubicon into professional golf means that golf is no longer fun: it’s work and it’s pressure.

If there’s a professional golfer in the United States who understands this perhaps it’s Steve Gilley.

Gilley, 31, was born in Eden, grew up in Martinsville and played out of Lynwood Country Club. After a solid college career at (the final two years at Virginia Commonwealth University), he turned pro and has been playing on various mini tours and working club jobs ever since. He currently lives in Atlanta. Just a few weeks ago, Gilley walked into his bank and borrowed $17,000 so that he could play on the Myrtle Beach swing of the Gateway Tour.

“I said, ‘Give me $17,000, I’ll pay it back in a month,’” Gilley told the Myrtle Beach Sun News. “I’ve done it in the past two or three times. That’s pressure. A lot of people don’t know what pressure is until you borrow $17,000 from the bank and base it on your performance. It makes you practice. It will keep you from sitting around all the time.”

        Thankfully for Gilley (and his banker), the investment has paid off: Gilley has been the star of the Gateway Tour’s Myrtle Beach swing, winning $48,821.38 in seven events, winning big cardboard checks in three events. Gilley’s worst finish came at the Johnson Bank Invitational where he finished ninth. Other results included a tie for second, a tie for fifth and a tie for fourth.

        Lest anyone should think that these results took place on soft courses against weak fields, Gilley’s three victories came at Myrtlewood, Arrowhead, and the Norman Course at Barefoot Landing – solid, non-pushover tracks replete with white stakes, swamps, thickets, beverage girls on beverage carts and other routine hazards.

        To dominate this, the Myrtle Beach Swing of The Gateway Tour, Gilley has routinely gone low. At the IOMEGA Classic, it was 67-67-68. At the Murray Brothers Caddyshack Classic, it was 64-67-67: three days of “Oh honey, I’m hot today” golf. At the Epson Classic, it was 62-68-68. Numbers like that on the PGA Tour, or even the Nationwide Tour, and you’re booking jets to fly from event to event.

        Needless to say, Gilley is hoping to make it to the big show with a good showing at PGA Tour Qualifying School this fall. Competing on the Gateway Tour has helped. The tour, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., has not only the corporate support of Gateway but also the influence of several tour stars including Phil Mickelson, Tim Herron and Tom Lehman, all of whom sit on the Board of Advisors.

        Gilley says that the superstars might not necessarily notice his play until they look on the scoreboard and see one of those 65s.

        “My game is very consistent,” he says, with no hint of understatement. “I drive the ball extremely well, not incredibly long but I’m accurate most of the time. I also putt well. When my putter gets hot I usually shoot pretty low. Over seven years of playing I guess I figured out that in order to play well you have to drive it in the fairway and wedge it good and make a few putts.”

        Gilley works with Mike Cook at Sea Island in Georgia. Gilley’s next step is to finish as well as he started on the Gateway Tour and then get to Q school with the same seam of form that has fueled great results in Myrtle Beach. He strongly believes he can thrive at the next level.

“It’s all about feeling comfortable in your environment,” he says. “I believe I’ve got enough game to compete out there it’s just a matter of getting out there to prove to myself that I can play with those guys.”

        These must have been the sentiments last year of a young golfer named Ben Curtis, whose last victory before winning The Open Championship at Royal St. George’s was a Hooters Tour event at Myrtle Beach during the 2002 season.

        If Gilley can continue his low scoring, perhaps the corporate jets, non-stop pampering, and Cinderella stories are just a few months away. It should certainly make his bank manager happy.