Ryan Blaum, Duke’s last ACC golf champion, feeling at home back in the Triangle

In any other week, Ryan Blaum would probably just have stayed home. In this case, staying home meant he would just go ahead and play anyway. And has that ever worked out for him so far.

Whatever non-COVID bug Blaum picked up from his 2-year-old son, he was still waiting for the antibiotics to take full effect after two rounds of the Rex Hospital Open. Maybe it was the best thing for him.

“Hey, be wary of the sick golfer,” said Blaum, whose 7-under 64 in Friday’s first group off the first tee made him, briefly, the early clubhouse leader at the beginning of the second round at 8-under overall. “No expectations. Just smoothin’ it out there, 80 percent swings and feeling good.”

For many Triangle-based pros, young and old, this week is a home game. Many established relationships with the Country Club at Wakefield Plantation when it was a TPC course, affiliated with the PGA Tour. Blaum is both among them and not among them.

Blaum only lives 20 minutes away in north Raleigh, but plays out of Croasdaile Country Club in Durham, a course he grew to know and love during his time at Duke, where he remains the Blue Devils’ most recent ACC champion in 2005.

Blaum and his wife and son moved back to the Triangle to raise their family a year ago after 15 years working his way up from the bottom of the pro golf ladder — his early career wins include the Kandy Waters Memorial Classic, the Waterloo Open and the Salisbury Classic — that culminated in a five-year stretch on the PGA Tour. He recorded five top-10 and 19 top-25 finishes and made the FedEx Cup playoffs twice, but saw it all fizzle when what he thought was a minor wrist injury took nine months to heal.

The injury and the limited opportunities to play during COVID have him back on the Korn Ferry Tour for the first time since 2016, trying to play his way back. He was a seasoned 32 when he first got his tour card, so at 38, there’s not a lot of hard-won advice he can give himself if he gets back.

“The injury played a big role in me not having my card right now,” Blaum said. “I was trying to play through it. I think I would know not to do that. When you’re not ready, or you’re not healthy, don’t go play. Especially when you’re playing against the best players in the world you have to have everything clicking. Going into a tournament 50 percent isn’t going to do you any good.

“That being said, I’m going into this tournament 30 percent or so, and the only reason I’m here is because I’m sleeping in my own bed.”

It’s an object lesson in the fine line on which all professional golfers stake their livelihood. One injury, one bad month, one crisis of confidence, and it can all fall apart in a heartbeat.

A second-place finish earlier in the summer has Blaum in the top 50 on the Korn Ferry points list; the top 25 get their tour cards for next year, so a top-10 finish or better at Wakefield would go a long way toward closing that gap. And the way he played Friday was a big step forward.

“I hit the ball great,” Blaum said. “I think I hit the first 14 greens and all of them were great looks. I didn’t make them all but I made enough to kind of have some momentum during the round. It was a really good ball-striking day, simple as that.”

Cashing a decent check, let alone contending, would be a huge bonus for Blaum, who would have been perfectly happy to sit this week out if it were anywhere else. He barely made it through the pro-am on Wednesday, then found that going against his own advice to himself was better medicine than any antibiotic.

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This story was originally published June 3, 2022 at 2:26 PM.

Luke DeCock

The News & Observer

Luke DeCock is a former journalist for the News & Observer.