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Silent Cink
shares top spot
Though the Georgian is one
of the world's top 10 golfers,
he's not a household name
Stewart Cink isn't as well-known as Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson or Davis Love III, but as his fellow Americans are, he's ranked in the top 10 worldwide.
The 31-year-old from Georgia displayed his skills yesterday with a bogey-free round in conditions where shooting over par was the order of the day. His 4-under 66 left him in a tie for first with Hank Kuehne, Brett Quigley and Tom Byrum after yesterday's opening round of the $4.8 million Sony Open in Hawaii.
Cink is another of those young guns on the PGA Tour flirting with stardom. A graduate of the Nationwide Tour, Cink is beginning his second decade as a professional golfer. He already has four wins on tour, finished fifth on the money list last year with nearly $4.5 million in tour earnings and opened last week with a tie for fifth with Australian Adam Scott and world No. 1 Vijay Singh at the prestigious Mercedes Championships.
But if Cink were to visit the shops and hotels in Waikiki, he'd have to show his I.D. whenever using his credit card.
"I don't turn a lot of heads when I'm not on a golf course," Cink said last week at the Mercedes. "And I kind of like that. But I also want to be the best golfer I can be."
Cink is taking an interesting path toward potential greatness. First, he procured top coach Butch Harmon to help him with his swing. He then landed Florida therapist Dr. Preston Waddington, who taught Cink he has nothing to fear but fear itself. The combination of the two took Cink from 73rd on the money list in 2002 to the top five two years later.
"I was having a lot of self-doubt out here about two or three years ago," the lanky 6-foot-4 Cink said. "And it was affecting my play. I was anxious, I was dreading tournaments and I was not looking forward to playing in front of crowds."
That's where Waddington stepped in to help Cink deal with his own internal problems so they wouldn't interfere with his play on the golf course.
"I was having trouble out there and I knew that it was something that I was not going to be able to just wipe away," Cink said. "I tried doing that for a few years. I tried to just put it away. I tried all kinds of different fixes. I see guys during these tour events do the same kind of things I was trying to do all the time. That's not the answer."
Cink found something that worked for him, freeing the up-and-coming golfer to be more of a force on the golf course. He has learned to lower his heart rate at pressure-packed moments. He has taken things buried in his past and removed them from his day-to-day life.
"The problem for a lot of us out here is we work on things that are external, not emotional," Cink said. "I see guys trying new grips, new clubs. Even in the interview process I hear the same kind of things in guys' answers all the time. If you're emotionally sort of out of whack, it's impossible."
Staying in tune with himself helped Cink down the stretch at last week's final round of the Mercedes. He had an opportunity to win the $5.3 million event, but a couple of bad moments on the back nine left him three shots behind winner Stuart Appleby.
An untimely bogey at 16 forced him to take a chance on his second shot at the par-5 18th, which led to another bogey. By the time Cink got into the Plantation Course clubhouse, he had effectively eliminated himself from the competition.
"But instead of brooding about it and being angry, I decided that the best thing I can do is to learn from those mistakes and really work on being committed on every shot and being ready to play every time," Cink said.
Perhaps that explains his eagle at the ninth and two birdies on the back with only pars in between. He was one of three golfers in the first full-field event not to shoot one hole over par.
"The eagle (at the ninth) will be matched by many," Cink said. "The no bogeys will not be matched by many. It was definitely a much more difficult task to go around that course today without making any bogeys, just challenging shots on every hole.
"This time of year is not my strongest, usually. To come from basically resting and vacationing to feeling like I'm in the middle of my summer form, it's great. I'm really looking forward to seeing what I can do the rest of the year."
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