Rocco Mediate on A Mission to Win in Another Decade

Luckily, Timuquana Country Club has plenty of live oak trees that throw off shade. And an east wind was blowing intermittently. It just needed to turn itself up a notch and not fade so often.

Between the ropes where golfers were playing, Fred Couples, Ernie Els, and local favorite, Fred Funk, still looked cool as they finished their second rounds of the tournament. Their appearance was deceptive. There were heat warnings out. It was a particularly nasty combination of almost raining and high temps.

Rocco Mediate, who has not won in five years, and Bob Estes, who is winless on the PGA Tour Champions circuit but has four PGA Tour titles, are tied at the top at 11-under par.

Rocco Mediate has a new goal 

He wants a victory in every decade that he’s played. He just turned 61.

“I want to win in my 60s, so I have 20s through the -- that would be cool,” he said. “It's a hard thing to do, as we all know.”  

He doesn’t want the victory just for himself. He has enough hardware in the trophy case to satisfy his own needs.   

“I want it -- bring the trophy home for Francesca. That's the plan. I've been trying since she was born. She's nine,” he explained. “The one in, what was it, five years ago in '19, she was four, so didn't count. This one would be cool. She would know.”

There’s nothing more dangerous than an athlete with a need to win. It’s different than wanting to win. It’s deeper. And Mediate believes that his return to caddie Pete Bender may have been one of the ingredients that was missing. Bender, according to Mediate, is now 75 and still a great caddie.

The highly regarded Bender was on Greg Norman’s bag when he won the British Open in 1986 and on Ian Baker-Finch‘s when he won the British Open in 1991. Bender may be in his seventh decade, but he still has it. Mediate calls him a genius.

Mediate is also encouraged by his own golf shots.

“I am onto something, and I am staying with it, and I'm trusting it out there, and the cool thing is I'm getting to trust it under the gun,” he added. “There is the gun out there. You know, you're leading the tournament or right by the lead. It always matters, but now it matters even more.”

He said that he did some setup changes, and other “things that we have done for 100 years.” 

Interestingly, he now has a left-to-right shot that he trusts. Most often, he has played a draw.

“This course will destroy you if you're not in the right place. Period. So, so far, we're in the right place,” he added.

Mediate will have to get past Bob Estes who is also at 11-under and relishing the opportunity to carve out his first senior circuit win. How good can Estes be? He holed out a 60-degree sand wedge on Saturday.  

“Landed less than a foot from the hole and hopped right in,” he said matter-of-factly.

Estes, in case you don’t know him, is a Texan through and through. He is from Abilene and went to the University of Texas in Austin where he was the 1988 Haskins Award winner as outstanding collegiate golfer. But he’s a lot quieter than Mediate.

“I think he talks as much in a day as I do in a couple weeks. We get along really well, and we have conversations, and, yeah, it will be a very comfortable grouping,” Estes said about the play on Sunday.

The weather may not favor his game, however. Rain is expected before Sunday’s round, and it could also rain during the round. That impacts the distance balls will travel.

“I like a much firmer, faster golf course,” he said. “Somebody like Vijay carries the ball a long way, and so he's got a little bit of an advantage in that regard over me and Rocco who like to hit it and chase it down the fairway.”

So, who will win?  It could be Mediate or Estes as they are three ahead of Vijay Singh and Mario Tiziani. Singh has won many times in the past with 34 titles on the PGA Tour including two PGAs and a Masters. He already won five times as a PGA Tour Champions member, including the Constellation Senior Players Championship in 2018.

While Tiziani is best known as Steve Stricker’s brother-in-law, in his youth, he played for the University of Wisconsin where, for 26 years, his father was the golf coach. Tiziani is now 54. The Tiziani family is really into golf! 

Of the contenders, the victory would probably change Tiziani’s life the most. He got into the tournament as an alternate when Stricker withdrew.