Minnesota’s professional golf heroes are few but another one has emerged in 24-year-old Troy Merritt who has boosted his PGA earnings to nearly $600,000 already this year and might make THE PLAYERS Championship next week.
The former Spring Lake Park High School golfer finished third last weekend in the Zurich Classic and hopes to build upon that success at this week’s Quail Hollow Championship. The third place was Merritt’s first top 10 finish on the PGA Tour, according to PGA.com.
Merritt has only been on the PGA circuit since January. His biggest payday, $435,200, came at the Zurich where he finished 14 and under, and was at one point the tournament leader.
Although Merritt had a strong start on the PGA tour, more recently he had been missing tournament cuts. Merritt learned how challenging the tour can be, and prior to the Zurich Classic he made an adjustment, according to a story by PGAtour.com contributing writer Craig Dolch.
Merritt told Dolch: “I thought about what was going on, what I wasn’t doing right. And basically, what it came down to was it was all in my head. Not committing to the shots that I wanted to hit. I was half committing to the shots that people were expecting me to hit. So I came out this week really focused on playing my game how I always played it.” https://www.pgatour.com/2010/r/04/26/troy-merritt/index.html
Merritt needs another outstanding performance (including his newly found short game) at Quail Hollow to qualify for the prestigious PLAYERS next week. Dolch points out that Merritt’s hopes rest on making it on the FedExCup rankings of top 10 players.
Merritt won the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament in December to make the 2010 tour. That’s part of a success story that began at Spring Lake Park, continued at Winona State and Boise State, and then on to pro golf in 2008.