Golf Digest — Instead of running marathons, Justin Leonard is doing push-and-carry walk-a-thons with his children. That's what turning 40 and having a family will do for you. Golf drops down the priority list to outside the top five. "You know it defined me back then, and that was OK because I was playing great," Leonard said during a revival at the Tampa Bay Championship.
Leonard isn't playing so great anymore. His T-4 at Innisbrook Resort & GC was his first top-10 since last year's Reno-Tahoe Open. He is coming off his worst year on tour, has turned to the jumbo putter grip and spends more time at school plays, soccer practices and karate matches than he does beating balls at Royal Oaks CC in Dallas. Bad years don't eat at him anymore, and finishes like his back nine on the Copperhead Course, when he dropped shots with a chance to win, are easier to deal with.
"Well, you know, I vacillate between feeling pretty old and not feeling very old," Leonard said. "But when I get out there between the ropes, and I don't have some 25-year-old giving me grief, I feel pretty good."
Jordan Spieth is where Leonard was 19 years ago--a kid out of the University of Texas who turned pro hoping to get a tour card without going through Q school. Leonard did it on the last event of the 1994 season. Spieth, 19, is all but secure for the remainder of the 2013 season.