Jeff Maggert had 13 top-10s in just 22 events on the Nationwide Tour (then Hogan Tour) in 1990. It was a season that had his peers just shaking their heads.
Tom Lehman posted 24 top-20s in just 28 events the following season, including three wins. Like Maggert the previous year, Lehman’s name seemed to be super-glued to the then manual leaderboards.
Stewart Cink made short work of his lone Nationwide Tour season in ’96 when he posted 14 top-10s in 21 events played. also including three wins.
And Zach Johnson set a single-season earnings record of just under $500,000 in 2003 when he won twice and had 11 top-10s in 20 tournaments.
In golf, nobody is ever truly unbeatable, but still, those four seasons were characterized as dominant by their fellow-competitors. However, this year Michael Sim has redefined that word on the Nationwide Tour.
In just 12 events entered, Sim has placed in the top-10 eight times. He finished third once, lost one playoff, and Sunday posted his third win of the season. In the process, he earned a ‘battlefield promotion’ to the PGA Tour for the rest of the season (bad timing there since he won’t be eligible for the PGA Tour playoffs for the FedEx Cup), and set a new earnings record of $527K. He’s also played in two PGA Tour events this year finishing T-18 in the U.S. Open, where he was paired with Tiger Woods in the final round, and a respectable 51st in the PGA Championship.
To put his year into perspective, it has simply been the most dominant in the 20-year history of the Nationwide Tour. A tour that has produced more than two-thirds of the current members of the PGA Tour.
Look for the former top-ranked amateur in the world to make some noise in the PGA Tour’s Fall Series following the playoffs, and definitely put him on your radar as a rising force in 2010.
