16 GOLF.COM / S e p t ember 2019
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RyanYoung/
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TourPERSONAL TRAGEDY IRREVERSIBLY SHAKES SOME PEOPLE.
FOR OTHERS, IT SHAPES THEIR CHARACTER. ASPIRING TOUR
PRO JUSTIN LOWER USED GUTS (AND GOLF) TO RISE ABOVE.
HE WEB.COM TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP—excuse us, the Korn Ferry Tour
Championship—is the most brutally Darwinian tournament in golf.
Last year its very essence was boiled down to one 8-foot birdie putt,
faced by a mild-mannered, 29-year-old Ohioan named Justin Lower.
Make it and he would earn a promotion to the PGA Tour; miss it and Lower was
doomed to spend another year haunting the minor leagues, with all the
frustrations and indignities and money-related stress that entails. As Lower
stalked his putt on the 18th hole at Atlantic Beach (Fla.) Country Club,
Jim Knous was watching from a Golf Channel set a hundred yards away.
(His Twitter nickname, “Jimmy Hard K,” offers a guide to pronunciation.)
Knous had exited the 18th hole projected as 25th on the season-ending
money list, which, if it held for another hour, would punch his ticket to the
big-time. Lower was the last guy with a chance to knock Knous out of the
top 25. What made it all the more awkward is they are close friends, having
bonded over the last two seasons in the podunk towns the tour visits. They
would scour the Internet to find a local restaurant offering trivia night, and
take on all comers with a rotating cast of other players, under the team
name Grip It and Sip It. “We kinda stunk,” says Knous. “We were all very
knowledgeable about sports but not literature and politics. Except Justin.
T
Lower Digs Deep
Clubhouse The Knockdown with Alan ShipnuckHe was our MVP. He’s like Rain Man
when it comes to anything involving
U.S. Presidents.”
Now the lives of these two friends
would change with one putt. Thanks
to the on-course scoreboards and the
crackling tension in the air, Lower
knew what was at stake as he stood
over his 8-footer. He hit what he
thought was a perfect putt but under-
read the break fractionally, his ball
burning the edge of the cup. Lower
stumbled off the green in a daze but
somehow had the presence of mind
to find his pal and pull him in for a
hug. “It was a jumble of emotions,”
says Lower, “but for sure I wanted to
congratulate Jimmy. When your good
friend makes it to the Tour, you have
to be happy for him.”
Says Knous, “I’ve never heard of
that. To miss out on your Tour card
by a couple of hundred dollars and
be that gracious? That says a lot about
his character.”
Lower’s broad perspective was born
of family tragedy. When he was 15, he
was waiting to be picked up at Lyons
Den Golf Course, in Canal Fulton,
Ohio, but his father, Tim, and brother
Chris never made it. In the wake of their
fatal car accident, Justin lost himself
in the game. Lyons Den became his
sanctuary. He was given a key to
the shed where the range balls were
stored and he hit them by the hundred.
“I wasn’t working on anything,” he
says. “It was just therapeutic.”
With golf and sorrow so inextri-
cably linked, Lower had a heavyFOR MUCH
MORE FROM
ALAN
SHIPNUCK
GO TO GOLF.COM/
SHIPNUCKIn 1990, the
PGA Tour’s
“develop-
mental” Ben
Hogan Tour
was launched.
It’s since been
renamed
five times:
NIKE TOUR
(1993-1999)
BUY.COM
TOUR
(2000-2002)
NATIONWIDE
TOUR
(2003-2012)
WEB.COM
TOUR
(2012-2019)
KORN
FERRY TOUR
(2019-20??)A Brief
History
of the
What’s-
It-Called
TourLower launched his 2019 campaign at Sandals Emerald Bay in the Bahamas.