John Clare

These are the stories that I live for. (kinda of a long one) From wine on a bus in a plastic cup to a win..... John Clare has played professionally for 8 years after putting himself through college delivering pizza and picking a range, while playing golf for a D2 school. For the last four years he has had some support from Valspar that has helped him play mini-tour events. However that deal was ending and he has started to interview for jobs in case he doesn't get through Q-school. Last week he played in Brandon Matthews Pro-am in Scranton (an amazing event that does a ton for charities). On Sunday he had a flight scheduled from Scranton to Detroit and was planning to play the Toledo Open Monday. The Sunday round took a bit, so he ended up missing his scheduled flight to Detroit. In the middle of the round he called a friend who helped get him a later flight that went from Scranton to Philly and then to Detroit. After the round he headed to the airport and checked his luggage in....only to find out that his "flight" to Philly was actually an American Airlines BUS. After using points to bump up to first class on the flight he missed, and facing the fact his pro career might be over, Clare went to the convenience store and bought two mini bottles of merlot. The store didn't have any cups so he ran to the Dunkin Donuts and grabbed a plastic cup. Nothing defines mini-tour golf quite like being on a bus drinking wine out of a plastic cup after missing a flight where you had a first class ticket. Clare made his flight from Philly to Detroit, got there at 1am and got to bed about 230am. His tee time was 830, so of course he shot a bogey-free 68, having never seen the course. And you know whats coming....today he shot a 69 on the difficult layout and won the Toledo Open. The $5,000 isn't season changing, but its a HUGE help with Q-school coming up. I live for stories like these.