PLAYER RECORD
4 PGA Tour Wins: 2006 Verizon Heritage, 2007 FBR Open, 2011 Northern Trust Open, 2016 Barbasol Championship
4 International Wins: 1999 Holden Australian Open, 2000 Holden Australian Open, 2001 Holden Greg Norman International, 2007 MasterCard Australian Masters
GOOD DAYS AND BADDS
LINKS PLAYERS MAGAZINE 2017 ANNUAL EDITION
By Jeff Hopper
Winter never really comes to Scottsdale, Arizona. Winter’s people do, though. Human snowbirds flock down from Montana and Minnesota, Iowa and Idaho. Escaping the howling winds and deep snows of the season in the north, they come for the chance to be outside when their friends back home are huddling around the fire and hoping not to have to dig themselves out in the morning.
Tour players set up house in Arizona and Florida for another reason. It gives them a chance to keep up the relentless work of competitive level play during the ever-shortening off-season. To remain in the thick of the points races and money lists, you can only skip so many beats these days. The youth are coming in waves and they’ll be happy to take your spot.
Aaron Baddeley was once such a young, undaunted star. He won the Australian Open as an 18-year-old amateur, edging out no lesser names than Greg Norman and Colin Montgomerie. A year later, he repeated the win, making it all look so easy. He spoke of matching Tiger Woods, of heading to America to play, of extending his success on even bigger stages. Turns out, easy wasn’t. But all the while something was happening to Baddeley. His desires were changing, and with this change came the ability to weather the ups and downs that define the life of so many tour players.
When we caught up with Baddeley in December, it was a Saturday afternoon. We had spent three weeks trying to connect, but his parents were in town from Australia, his four kids were starting him early and sending him to bed late, and he had that game to maintain ahead of the 2017 start in Hawaii.
About that game…
The night before we talked, the Baddeleys had turned on the television to watch something the kids wanted to see. Not a Christmas special. This was more like a home movie. On Golf Channel.
The 24-hour cable clearinghouse for all things golf was doing its usual yearend run-through of final rounds from throughout the season. And that Friday night it was showing the dramatic end of the Barbasol Championship.
Baddeley had seen little success in 2015. His only top-ten finish was at Grand National in Opelika, Alabama, where the Barbasol is played. There were signs of better things to come in Baddeley’s game, but the slog was just that—slow and laborious. He felt good returning to Grand National, though. “I felt very comfortable,” he said. “I like the course, played well there.”
Jhonattan Vegas stole the early show, firing 60 on Friday to bolt to a seven-shot lead. Baddeley himself was 11 behind headed to the weekend and still needed to make up three on Vegas, who flatlined with a third-round 72, when final-round play began. Three more back was Si Woo Kim, a name that loomed larger as the afternoon progressed.
This was a second-tier event, played in the US opposite the Open Championship. With six time zones between Alabama and Scotland, however, the Stenson-Mickelson showdown across the pond was well out of the way by the time the Barbasol was taking shape.
Vegas struggled again, coming home with a second consecutive 72 and falling into a tie for fourth. Over the closing holes, the focus turned to Baddeley and Kim, with Kim posting a score that Baddeley could pass with a birdie-birdie finish. When he stuck his shot close at the par-3 seventeenth and pulled even with Kim by making the birdie, Baddeley was eying a win in regulation.
At the last, his approach stopped 12 feet from the hole. It was his first chance of the late afternoon to win. The putt burned the right edge of the hole, though, and Baddeley suffered a moment’s disappointment. Still, he was alive, and the field was narrowed to two.
“Growing up I called myself a Christian, but I never really understood the relationship side of it. If I’d had success straightaway, I’m not sure I would have sought God the way I needed to seek him.”The playoff lasted four holes. While the players matched pars on the first three, Baddeley’s chances were always better. He had two good looks at birdie that he couldn’t convert; he wasn’t bothered. “I felt like I was in control the whole time,” he recalled. “I was in good position on every hole. On the last hole, after I hit my tee shot, I said to myself, ‘I’m just going to wear him down here.’”
Woo’s approach sailed wide right of the green and chased down the hillside, winding up alongside a grandstand. He pitched it on the green within makeable distance, but Baddeley had already marked his putt, where he had another opportunity for birdie, this time from 24 feet. And this time he holed it.
“I think my reaction sort of told it all, when the putt went in.” Baddeley’s words in December were similar to what they had been immediately after that long July afternoon ended. When the putt dropped, he tore off his hat and ran around the green, clenching both fists and hollering to beat the crowd.
This isn’t the reason the Baddeleys were watching again in December. That had much more to do with Richelle and the kids, because they got their TV time too when they came out on the green and enjoyed the moment with Dad. And it had to do with the thankfulness, a deep gratitude that Baddeley first experienced 10 years earlier when he won the Verizon Heritage at Hilton Head Island on an Easter Sunday.
To say that Aaron Baddeley’s career has started and stalled several times over wouldn’t be an overstatement—it would just be the truth. His Australian Open wins came in 1999 and 2000 and his trajectory was on a collision course with stardom. Those were the budding days of the internet and the hip young player’s bag touted his own website: badds.com. It was one of the first on tour. Trouble was, Baddeley was having a hard time getting that spot on the PGA Tour, where he really wanted to play. He entered nine events in 2000 and made just one cut. It took until 2003 before he made 20 starts or more. But a second place finish that year and another the next enabled him to keep his card. In 2005, he made more than $1 million. He was finding his footing.
Baddeley will tell you this steadiness was not only about the golf. In 2002, the kid who had grown up in church began to recognize that there was another arena of faith he had not really known: the pursuit of a personal relationship with God and the experience of God’s presence in one’s life. Baddeley stopped dating for a number of months, dedicating time to the study of Scripture and prayer.
Two years later he met John Bevere, a minister and author who has had a strong influence on Aaron and Richelle in the years since. The teaching from Bevere that struck home most with Baddeley was the need to draw near to God. Baddeley took up James 4:8—“Draw near to God and he will draw near to you”—as what he calls his life verse.
In 2006, Baddeley came to Hilton Head in mid-April not having made it to weekend play since late February. But he found his game early, holed an 8-iron for an eagle two at the eighteenth to end his Friday round, and managed the tricky winds on Saturday for 66 to set up a Sunday showdown with Jim Furyk. But if Baddeley had any worries for Sunday’s competition, they were precluded by his participation in the morning’s Easter sunrise service, where he would be speaking. One reporter asked if he might change his plans to accommodate his late starting time. He responded that he’d stick to his plans. “I hold that in high regard and I’m definitely going to do that. It’s a perfect way to start the day.”
Baddeley kept his Sunday morning commitment, and his Sunday afternoon one, too, when he made two birdies late in the round and bettered Furyk by one. There was celebrating to be done—for one, it was the first winner’s kiss he received from Richelle, a year and a day after they were married. But Baddeley’s memory goes back to the morning after.
“I can honestly say that the best bit about winning was the next morning, during quiet time,” he recalled more than 10 years later. “That was my first win since I really started to seek him and spend time with him, so when I got to thank him for what he’d done and having that opportunity to win on Easter Sunday, that was the best bit.”
Baddeley won again a year later, capturing the FBR Open (now the Waste Management Open) near home in Scottsdale. But then the droughts came again.
Four years later in 2011, Baddeley took up the platform he uses often to share his faith. This time, it was a Links Players event in Los Angeles, where he told a breakfast audience about his favorite topic: Jesus. By the time the week closed, Baddeley was lifting the Northern Trust Open trophy. He was back in a year that produced more than $3 million in earnings and a spot on the International side of the Presidents Cup.
But again it didn’t stick. Each succeeding year Baddeley earned less money for his performance until he lost his full playing privileges on the PGA Tour after the 2014-15 season. He would have to rely on the entries he could secure as a past champion.
That game was coming around, though—a difference Baddeley credits to his coaches Scott Hamilton and Brad Malone. He notched a top five in the fall, then two early top tens when the calendar turned. The priority reshuffles favored him now, and he was able to get his competitive conditioning back on track—right up to that weekend in Opelika.
A PGA Tour win comes with plenty of perks. The biggest of these is a two-year exemption that allows players to set their own schedules more easily. For a family man like Baddeley, this means extra flexibility in seeing his wife and kids. Baddeley has dual citizenship—he was born in New Hampshire when his father worked as chief mechanic for Indy racer Mario Andretti, but grew up almost entirely in his parents’ native Australia—so he is used to travel. But he is also committed to pouring as much time as he can into his wife and children, the oldest of whom is just eight.
“Tom Lehman told us when we got married that he and Melissa had a self-imposed rule that they would never go more than two weeks without seeing each other,” Baddeley explains. “We’ve worked on that ever since we got married, and I think the longest stretch we’ve gone is 17 days. Even if it’s just one night, at least coming home and seeing each other for a night or so, it makes a big difference. That sort of breaks it up and reconnects you together.”
He also sees advantages in his kind of work for spending time with the kids. “In other jobs people may leave for work at 7 in the morning and they get home at 6 or 7 at night, and they only see their kids for an hour or two a day. When I’m home, I definitely get a lot of time with the kids, either before school, or I’ll pick them up from school. I get to take them to soccer or gymnastics or whatever they’re doing at the time. It’s great to be able to have the time and flexibility to do that when I’m home.”
He and Richelle recognize the uniqueness in their children, and Aaron calls this part of parenting one of the toughest to navigate. “The way you parent one kid is different than the way you do the other kid, just because of who they are, and the way God made them, their personality, how they react to different things. That’s the challenge.”
There is love waiting on the other end, though. “The kids’ love is never dependent on the score. They are always so excited when I come home. To have them come running into your arms at the end of the day, nothing is much better than that!”
Through all of what he calls the busyness of life, Baddeley guards most his time with God. It’s a discipline he has learned through the years of struggle, but one that survives even when things are going well.
“I could honestly say that if I had success when I first came over [to play professionally in the States], I probably wouldn’t have the relationship with God that I do. Not if I’d been successful straightaway.
“Growing up I called myself a Christian, but I never really understood the relationship side of it. If I’d had success straightaway, I’m not sure I would have sought God the way I needed to seek him and build that foundation of understanding and having a closeness and intimacy with him that I guess I didn’t really know was available.
“Golfwise, I would have liked to achieve more at this point, but would I exchange it for not having my relationship with God where it is today? No, I wouldn’t, because that’s far more rewarding than winning golf tournaments.”
The 2016-17 season holds professional promise for Aaron Baddeley. He has that pressure-relieving winner’s exemption and his fall start included a top 10 at the CIMB Classic. Promises haven’t always panned out for Baddeley, but he’s grown used to that. His life and his desires have changed through the years.
“When I first started, it was all about trying to be the youngest to do everything and set records,” he says. “Now I know God’s called me to play golf. I know I want to be a steward of that and play the best golf I can and work hard at it. Through the lessons he’s going to teach me, he’s going to give me the opportunity to speak into other people’s lives, whether that’s at church or on a one-to-one level.”
Easter Sunday in 2017 will again come at Hilton Head. With God’s blessing, the Baddeleys will be there. It’s a favorite place now, reminding them how much they have grown—in number and in faith.
COPYRIGHT 2017 LINKS PLAYERS INTERNATIONAL