Bill Haas showed natural golfing talent at Wake Forest, so much so that he sometimes left teammates shaking their heads.
"It's no lie, he would hit balls for about 20 minutes, and then go to the Wake football games," former teammate Chad Wilfong said Monday night. "The rest of us would bang balls forever trying to figure it out."
Haas had an impressive four-year career playing for the Deacons and his uncle, Coach Jerry Haas, and won a school-record 10 tournaments before graduating in 2004.
He won a PGA Tour tournament for the first time Monday, capping a final-round 64 with birdies on the last two holes of the Bob Hope Classic in La Quinta, Calif. The victory came in his 141st PGA Tour start and his fifth year on tour, and at the same tournament that his father, Jay, won in 1988, when Bill was 5.
Wilfong, who lives in Charlotte, spent two years on the Nationwide Tour and is still trying to carve out a living as a pro golfer. He and Jay Morgan, another former Haas' teammate, spent Monday afternoon at a restaurant, watching the Golf Channel's coverage of the final round.
"Jay and I were talking about how far Bill has come and we couldn't get over how composed he was and how under control he looked," Wilfong said.
It's not as if Haas, 27, had been struggling on tour -- the victory was worth $900,000 and raised his career winnings to $5.6 million -- but he had been longing for that first victory and said that he sometimes pressed too much.
"It's so hard to win out here," Haas said by telephone soon after the victory. "I had played so bad missing the cut in Hawaii, and I just didn't know what to expect."
Haas had his best season in 2009, winning $1.4 million and finishing 41st on the FedEx Cup points list.
Wilfong said that a key to Haas' play can be traced to caddie Michael Maness, a friend from Greenville, S.C. Maness was an accomplished junior golfer, has dabbled in pro golf and shares many of the same interests as Haas.
"I bet you can trace it back to when Mike got on Bill's bag because Bill just is more relaxed, and I think that's helped him," Wilfong said.
The paycheck wasn't the only benefit for Haas. He'll also receive an invitation to the Masters in April and will be exempt from qualifying for PGA Tour tournaments through the 2012 season.
"I really didn't even think about that until the guys at the Golf Channel mentioned it," Haas said of the spot in the Masters. "That was really one of my goals this season, to get to Augusta, so now I'll get that chance. It's just unreal how this will change things for me."
Another benefit will be more free time in his schedule, and Haas said he might skip some tournaments so he can attend more Wake Forest basketball games.
"I'll have to check their schedule," he said, "but that's something I'll definitely look at."
Wilfong said he thinks that the floodgates will open now that Haas has his first victory. Haas didn't win his first tournament at Wake Forest until his sophomore season.
"Yeah, he only won nine more times," Wilfong joked. "So I just think that now that he has won, he knows he can do it out there, and the sky is the limit. I just know the two years that I played on the Nationwide Tour there was nobody I saw who was as talented as Bill -- I think he can be a top-5 player in the world."
jdell@wsjournal.com
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