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Countdown to Deutsche Bank Championship for PGA Rookie

It will be a homecoming at Deutsche Bank Championship for Scott Stallings.

Scott Stallings’ southern drawl might be a little misleading.

Sure, he's not fond of Yankees, but it’s only the New York variety. In fact, the 26-year-old rookie professional golfer is quite fond of northerners, especially of the New England variety.

He might have been preschool age when he left Worcester at 3 for Tennessee, but his roots are here. He sounds like a New Englander when he talks about baseball.

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That’s why after he won the Greenbrier Classic in West Virginia on July 31, one of his first thoughts was he was going to be able to play in the Deutsche Bank Champion at the TPC-Boston in Norton Aug. 30-Sept. 5. That was quickly followed by the fact the Boston Red Sox are going to be hosting those Yankees.

“Once I won, I knew I was secure through most of the Playoffs and I was going to have an opportunity to play there,” said Stallings. “That's something I was ecstatic about to be there. I love Boston, I like the golf course; I love the fact that the Yankees are going to be in town that week.  And so I had the opportunity to get to go out there and play in front of a bunch of family who don't get a chance to see me play very often.”

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One of the perks, the players in the Deutsche Bank Championship have had over the years was to be able to go to Fenway Park to see the Sox. The ball club also hosts a pro-am at the site during tournament, so there’s a strong relationship there.

Oh yeah, there’s the matter of one golfer being able to throw the first pitch before a game at Fenway.

Going into last week’s PGA Championship, Stallings looked like he was going to have the inside track to do that, but Hopkinton’s Keegan Bradley went out and won the tournament.

"We were actually joking about it on the range on Thursday about the opportunity to throw out the first pitch at one of the Red Sox games together, just both of us being diehard Red Sox fans,” said Stallings, who graduated for Tennessee Tech and joined the Nationwide Tour in 2007. “And I think I got booted after his performance last week, which I mean, he's very, very deserving of it. But I was pumped to see him win. That was great playing.”

Stallings has never played the Norton course, but he has walked around the place.

“I was out there at one point right before the tournament was played a few years ago," said Stallings, who has family in the area. “But I'll play both Pro‑Ams the (Tuesday) and (Thursday) of that week, and will have plenty of opportunities to play the course before the tournament starts. “

Although he is in his first year on the PGA Tour, Stallings has quickly experienced the ups and downs that go with professional golf.

After playing badly at the start of the season on the west coast, he has put together an impressive rookie campaign. Going ino the Barcley’s in New Jersey for the start of the FexCup, Stallings is No. 30 in the point-standings, making 10 cuts in 23 tournaments, earning $1,891,825, good enough for No. 29 on the PGA Tour money list.

“It's definitely been a year of opposites,” said Stallings. “The beginning of the year, I was so pumped to get out to the West Coast and play and start my PGA TOUR season, and you know, I got off to a terrible start, missed my first five cuts. I hated golf, hated life, just wasn't having any fun.”

A third-place finish in the Transitions Championship turned the year around for Stallings.

 “I had a lot of fun,” he said. “I learned a lot, had an opportunity to win a golf tournament and definitely kind of spurred things in the right direction for me.

“But the goals at the beginning were obviously to keep my card, to secure myself through a good amount of the Playoffs and to play in a major. And to secure myself in a position to where I was going to play in the Masters in 2012; that was the tournament that we kind of keyed on. And we didn't care how we got there. We just knew that if we got there through play in 2011, if we secured ourselves a spot in the 2012 Masters, we would have had a successful year.

 “And it's kind of funny, you set all of these goals, and it's amazing how fast you can reach them in one week. And I kind of sat back and looked, once Greenbrier was over, I had to reassess and start all over because all of the goals I set were done and the Playoffs had not even begun yet.”

Now, the next goal is to win the Deutsche Bank Championship and to see his Sox beat those New York Yankees.


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