PGA Tour rookie Rob Oppenheim explains how $101 changed his life

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Seems poetic that after traveling the back roads of professional golf chasing a dream for more than 12 years, Rob Oppenheim learned his career turned on a dime — actually $101 — at a gas station.

Filling up the tank and getting snacks for his pregnant wife, Lacey, and daughter, Zoey, 3, last fall, Oppenheim’s head was pounding with dejection. A month earlier, he had missed the cut by one shot in Portland and finished 26th on the Web.com Tour regular-season money list to fall one spot short — by $943 — of earning his first PGA Tour card.

As he pumped gas 30 miles down the road from the Web.com Tour Championship in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., where more cards were up for grabs, the journeyman who has played hundreds of mini-tour events and on pro tours named Canadian, Hooters, New England Pro, Nationwide and Cleveland, thought he had missed heading to the PGA Tour by one stroke.

Then his phone started blowing up with text messages.

He was going to be the oldest rookie on the PGA Tour.

When Lucas Glover made bogey on the 72nd hole, Oppenheim moved into a six-way tie for 12th and the extra money earned him his Tour card. By $101.

“People must have been wondering what was going on because we were all hugging and crying at that gas station,” Oppenheim, 36, said Tuesday as he played a practice round at sun-drenched Pebble Beach ahead of Thursday’s start of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. “It’s amazing how it all turned out. ...

“You’ve been grinding for so long, it just shows you how fine a line there is between playing the PGA Tour and the Web.com Tour. If Lucas makes par, I’d be playing the Web.com Tour. ... But you keep working hard and keep hoping one day something will turn your way.”

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Oppenheim said the golf gods owed him that last day of the Web.com Tour championship after years of toiling across the U.S. since turning pro in 2003. His golf career has had its ups and quite a few downs, but Oppenheim traveled the lonely road he hoped was headed toward the PGA Tour. Year after year he fell short of playing on the best tour in the world. He kept going back on the road.

“It’s a lifestyle you have to love,” Oppenheim said. “I love playing. Once I started playing I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else.

“And it’s the greatest job in the world.”

If you can keep it. Two years ago, with limited status on the Web.com Tour, he played in a Hooters Tour event in Ocala, Fla., and finished 14th. The paycheck, however, wasn’t enough to cover expenses for the week. Away from his family, Oppenheim wondered if it was time to put the clubs away for good and find another job, even if he had no idea what that job would be.

He stuck with golf, though, worked harder and then on a Monday qualified for a Web.com Tour event three weeks later and finished fourth. Later that year at the Web.com Tour Q-School, he made a hole-in-one in the last round to earn full status on that tour for 2015 by one shot.

Last year he won his first Web.com Tour title at the Air Capital Classic.

“It’s amazing the little things that change your world,” he said.

Oppenheim knows he doesn’t have it made just by having a Tour card. Ranking low on the priority list, he knows his Tour starts are limited. In five starts in the 2015-16 wraparound season he’s made three cuts and $58,930. Monday qualifiers are still a possibility. And he still plays mini-tour events on the Moonlight Tour – many one-day affairs in the Orlando area near his home that keep him sharp and competitive.

But life is very good right now. He and Lacey welcomed son James to the world Dec. 26. And his brother, Kenny, who was on the bag when Oppenheim played the 1999 U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach, is working for him this week. And he’s playing on the PGA Tour.

“It really is the greatest job in the world but I still have to go out and grind, work hard, play well and make a living,” Oppenheim said. “I have to take advantage of every opportunity I can.”

Like the one he got two weeks ago in the weather-delayed Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in San Diego. He had to return Monday to play one hole and made birdie. That red number meant about $13,000 more in his paycheck.

“That’s a huge deal for me,” Oppenheim said. “Every shot does make a difference.”

Especially the extra shot Glover needed on the 72nd hole last fall.