By Tom Housenick
There is some irony that Jason Bohn's player page on the PGA Tour Web site has a picture of him blasting out of a sand trap. The 36-year-old Mifflinburg High School graduate has a pained look on his face in the photo.
Perhaps he is aware of his statistical nightmare playing out of the sand in 2009. He is 189th on tour in sand saves, salvaging par just one third of the time.
Bohn's putting isn't much better. He ranks 112th through 21 starts this season, entering this weekend's Turning Stone Resort Championship in upstate New York.
"At the end of the year, I study (the statistics) pretty hard to know what I need to focus on in the offseason," Bohn said Tuesday night. "My putting and bunker play, I'm way down on the PGA Tour. Obviously, those are my weaknesses that I have to work hardest on."
Bohn isn't waiting for the offseason. He is playing four of the five stops on the Tour's Fall Series (he's skipping the Frys.com event in Scottsdale, Ariz.), and is teaming with coach Scott Hamilton on a new device designed to work out the problems with his putter.
Bohn recently purchased the Sam PuttLab, a high-tech piece of equipment that measures the 28 most important parameters of a player's stroke.
"I've started to feel a lot more confident since I bought it," Bohn said. "I got it while on the road for the FedEx Cup. It's unbelievable the information you get from it.
"What's unique about it is that you can try something different and you see the results. You can teach yourself feel, and you can get it so that your path is good, aim is good, rotation on the putter is good.
"You see the numbers on (the graphic report) instantly."
Bohn doesn't expect instant results on the Tour, but does know that putting may be the one area that has kept him from getting more top-10 finishes and hoisting hardware late on a Sunday afternoon.
In 2008, Bohn's putting was worse. He was 161st. His bunker play seems to be an aberration in 2009. He was 24th in that stat a year ago, saving par 56.41 percent of the time. Making enough putts allowed him to play all but the last of the FedEx Cup playoff events. At the Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston, he and caddie Billy Spencer spent the back nine Sunday watching the leaderboard.
"I kept asking Billy the last four or five holes where I was in the points," Bohn recalled. "He said that you've got make a couple of birdies. I made one and was up to 76th (in points). I made another and was at 72. I made another and was at 68.
"I thought I needed one at the last hole, and when I didn't, I thought that was going to get me. But I made it through."
Advancing to the next week just outside of Chicago created another problem for Bohn: travel plans.
"I had to use tournament transportation to get to the airport in Boston," he said. "It was an odd experience because the tournament ended on a Monday, and you have to wait to see where you are going.
"The driver got me to the airport, but he asked where I was flying out of. I said that I didn't know yet, to keep driving around."
When Bohn got the word he was in for the next week in Chicago, he had to hustle to book a flight that would get him there that night, in time to start practicing Tuesday morning.
According to Bohn, the craziness of playing three consecutive weeks in the FedEx Cup playoffs (should you qualify) could change in 2010. There is a desire among the players, he said, to play two weeks, take a week off, then play two more rather than the existing three-in-a-row format.
"It's a grueling few weeks," Bohn said. "For guys playing four times in five weeks, that's a lot of golf; high-level, competitive golf. "Every week in the FedEx Cup, you might not have a next week."
Bohn secured his PGA Tour card for next year thanks to his earnings of $1,019,246 so far this season, good enough for 79th on the money list. The top 125 have full-time playing privileges for the next year.
"There's nothing like knowing you have a job for next year," the Acworth, Ga., resident said.
Bohn is playing this Fall Series for a chance to qualify for every Wednesday pro-am, every invitational event and, maybe, a two-week vacation in Hawaii to start 2010.
The Tour's first event is a winners-only tournament, followed the next week by another stop in that state.
