Woods Uses Mood Swing to Keep Leaders in Sight

LA JOLLA —  On the South Course, under a warm sun, the hottest player on the PGA Tour strikes a 300-yard drive.

Cameras click. Hundreds of jostling fans gasp. He casually drops his club and strolls off into the embrace of history.

On the North Course, against a stiff ocean breeze, the coldest player on the tour strikes a 250-yard drive.

There are no cameras, no crowd. He casually drops his club and strolls off into the embrace of . . . his 6-year-old daughter.

She runs under the ropes and into his arms. He smiles, picks her up, and together they walk down the fairway exchanging kisses.

Tiger Woods has won six consecutive tournaments.

Jay Delsing hasn’t won for 434 consecutive tournaments.

For a few glorious moments Friday, it was difficult to tell who was richer.

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When Tiger Woods finished the second round of the Buick Invitational after pulling to within six shots of the leaders, he was escorted to a mob of reporters.

“Right now, I’m not too bad,” he said.

When Jay Delsing finished the second round, missing the cut by one stroke, he wandered over to where his 10-year-old daughter was raiding his golf bag of bubble gum.

It was a fitting ending to a round during which he talked to his three children, smiled at his wife, congratulated his partners and generally acted as if the world was a six-inch putt.

“Right now, I’m great,” he said.

The reality would seem to be otherwise.

As impossible as it is to imagine that Woods has put himself in position to win another tournament, it is even harder to fathom that Delsing will not.

He graduated from UCLA in 1983, joined the tour in 1984, and hasn’t won a tournament since.

Woods’ streak has covered parts of two years. Delsing’s streak has spanned 16.

Woods’ streak equals the best in golf in the last 52 years. Delsing’s streak is the longest among the tour’s 157 regular players.

It would seem that Jay Delsing would be the unhappiest man at Torrey Pines.

But then he shrugs, flashes a smile bigger than all those losses combined, bigger than the ones made famous by Tiger Woods, and reality sails into the bunker.

“I feel totally blessed,” Delsing said. “A lot of people give up their dream by the time they are 21, but I’m still able to get up in the morning and pursue mine.”

While Woods shows us golf’s inspiration and drama, Delsing reminds us of its more enduring nobility.

It’s the only sport where the athlete’s greatest competition is himself, where legacies are built not with wins, but losses.

For all those who this week have pondered the difficulties of being Tiger Woods, think for a minute about being Jay Delsing.

Both men pulled it off.

Woods remained cool during a late-round comeback that included birdies on three of the last four holes.

Delsing remained cool despite barely missing the putts that Woods made.

He behaved so normally, at one point his 10-year-old daughter, Mackenzie, turned to a reporter, pointed to one of the fairways, and said, “You want to talk to my daddy? He’s standing right over there.”

After one tee shot, his caddie walked over to joke with the children. Delsing soon followed.

“Hang in there, baby,” wife Kathy said.

“Hey there,” he said, smiling.

She was one of 14 people in his gallery.

For 16 years she has been one of those people, witnessing the two second-place finishes, the three third-place finishes, and all those lipped-out putts.

These days, she brings their three children when she can. The harder it gets, the stronger the family grows.

Said Kathy: “If he ever won, I think I would be such a nervous wreck, I would get sick.”

Said Mackenzie: “If he ever won, I think I would cry.”

She would not be alone.

A streetwise St. Louis athlete, the son of a former baseball player who was famous for being the pinch-runner for midget Eddie Gaedel, Delsing grew up on a course that is no longer a course.

“I was a municipal player, didn’t have a lot of money, a lot of people said I would never be able to stay on tour,” said Delsing, 39. “If I ever listened to them . . . well, I could never listen to them.”

He didn’t start playing golf until he was 14 but quickly became good enough to be recruited for a UCLA team that included Corey Pavin, Steve Pate and Duffy Waldorf.

Today, those three have a combined 23 tour wins.

Delsing smiles again.

He has earned more than $2 million and is surrounded by four women who think he’s gold.

“I am blessed,” he said. “I am absolutely lucky.”

He swung his club in disgust Friday after chunking a chip on the 18th hole, a shot that could have put him in position to birdie the hole and make the cut.

But moments later he was helping his kids find that candy.

“I don’t measure myself by my scores,” he said, looking at his family. “I measure myself by this.”

As far as scores are concerned, though, his game has greatly improved in the last three years after he decided to work harder at it.

He earned a career-high $431,879 last year. He is convinced that in his 16th year, he is just getting started.

“A lot of times during the early years, being from an athletic family, I thought it was fine to just show up and play,” he said. “But I’ve gotten older. More mature. I learned it takes more than that. If you ask me, the best is all ahead of me.”

Tiger Woods left the course Friday for an important night’s sleep before yet another of the biggest weekends in his life.

Jay Delsing left for the course for a fun dinner with his family before driving all of them to Los Angeles to prepare for next week’s tournament at Riviera.

Hard to tell one leading-money winner from another.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.