With a 28, Pinneo returns to Missouri
Posted on Thursday, July 17, 2008
ROGERS - Just getting to the final nine holes Monday at the Millwood Golf & Racquet Club helped Todd Pinneo get into the field for this week's stop on the Nationwide Tour in Springfield, Mo.
Pinneo, the golf professional at Lost Springs Golf & Athletic Club in Rogers, tees off today at 1: 50 p.m. in the first round of the Price Cutter Charity Championship at Highland Springs Country Club.
It's the fourth time Pinneo will play in this event. His last appearance was in 2005. The tournament has produced a winning score of at least 16-under each year during its 19-year history. Pinneo's best finish is 24 th in 2002. Past champs include Chris DiMarco, Tom Lehman and David Duval.
"It's not that long of a course and if you can drive it in play you'll have some short clubs in your hand (for an approach )," Pinneo says. "I just need to putt good; really need to get it rocking this week."
Pinneo, a Fayetteville native and a regular on the Hooters Tour, qualified for the tournament in Ozark, Mo., with a 4-under-par 66 at Millwood (34-36-70 ) during Monday's open qualifying tournament.
Pinneo, who has made the 36-hole cut in three of his last four starts on the Hooters Tour, was one of 14 golfers to qualify and he did so by one shot. There were 160 golfers competing for the exemptions.
There are two sides, however, to Pinneo's story. He and his playing partners - good friends and Hooters Tour members Brent Winston of Sheridan and Aaron Clark of Harrison - started on the back nine and none of them seemed destined to end the day with smiles on their faces.
Pinneo's 2-over 38 was the best of the bunch.
"We all looked at each other and wondered if we should even play the last nine," he joked Wednesday afternoon following a practice session at Lost Springs. "I got up at 4 a.m. to go up there so I was going to finish. But I didn't think I had a shot."
Birdies at 1, 2 and 3 started the turnaround and Pinneo completed the last nine holes with six birdies and three pars for a 28. His eightfoot birdie at the 180-yard, par-3 ninth hole kept him out of a 12-man playoff the final qualifying spot.
"He played the last five holes in 14 shots," says Nick Bryan, a Lost Springs employee and former Rogers Mountaineer golfer who caddied for Pinneo. "3-3-3-3-2. It was something else."
At the start of the year and after a disappointing 2007 season, Pinneo committed to a major swing change and enlisted a new coach, University of Arkansas women's assistant Mike Adams.
The work they've done together has proceeded ahead of schedule.
"I worked with him last Thursday and he was pretty excited at how far we'd come in 6 months," Pinneo says. "I needed to do something different at the start of the year and it hasn't been little stuff. Sometimes it clicks and sometimes it doesn't. "
If Pinneo can post a top-25 finish this week he says he'll head to Columbus, Ohio, next week for the next stop on the Nationwide Tour.
And if not ?
"I'll just take next week off; We've got our memberguest next weekend so I'll work," he says. "I told Lyle (Leach ) the only way I won't be here to help him is if I top 25 this week."
After the stop in Ohio the Nationwide Tour will visit Omaha, Neb., and Wichita, Kan., in consecutive weeks. Pinneo says he'll try to qualify for both of those tournaments.
NOTES: Mike James, one of Lost Springs' top mid-senior players, will be Pinneo's caddie this week.
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