Seamus Power: 'I’m extremely lucky. I’m 34 and I’ve yet to work a day in my life'

Seamus Power poses with the Barbasol Championship trophy at Keene Trace Golf Club in Nicholasville, Kentucky. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)

Seamus Power confessed that he never doubted himself for an instant as 10 years of toil paid off and he made all his dreams come true by claiming his maiden PGA Tour win, following a dramatic six-hole sudden-death playoff for the Barbasol Championship in Kentucky.

The 34-year-old looked to be playing for his fourth top-10 finish in his last six starts in his quest to secure his card for 2021-22 season when he slipped four shots behind overnight leader JT Poston heading down the back nine at Keene Trace Golf Club.

But as Poston suffered a late wobble, driving out of bounds to double-bogey the 15th and then three-putted the 16th, Power birdied the 16th and the water-protected 18th with a daring approach to two-feet to set the clubhouse target at 21-under with a closing 67.

The playoff was hugely dramatic with Power looking to have it won when he chipped in for birdie on their return to the 18th in sudden-death, only to see Poston roll in an 11-footer to stay alive.

They halved the next four holes before Poston found water with his tee shot on the 18th on the six-tie hole and fell to Power’s two-putt par.

The Tooraneena man picked up a cheque for $630,000 (€533,000) and a two-year exemption until the end of the 2022-23 season, as well as starts in the Sentry Tournament of Champions, The Players Championship, and the PGA Championship next year. He also jumps from 210th to 113th in the world and from 123rd to 69th in the FedEx Cup standings, guaranteeing him a spot in the first Playoff event, the Northern Trust, and putting him in with a chance of making the Top 70 who contest the second event, the BMW Championship.

This was no overnight success story but the culmination of a decade of work since he graduated from East Tennessee State University with a degree in accounting and turned professional in 2011.

Yes, it took a decade to win but Power, a contemporary of Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy, insisted his belief never wavered.

“My thought process always with golf is that if at any point I didn’t think I was good enough to win or compete at the highest level, I would have stopped playing,” he said. “I would have done something else. It’s like I think if you don’t have that way deep down, it’s one of those spots that you can say whatever you want, but it’s only you are going to know these things when you look in the mirror, and I’ve never lost that.

“I felt like I’ve always been able to win on every level I’ve been on and obviously not yet on the PGA Tour. So I felt like I could and that belief definitely never left. Thankfully, I was able to come through today.”

Having won his PGA Tour card via the Korn Ferry Tour (then the Web.com Tour) at the end of 2016, Power lost his full playing privileges at the end of 2019 and was playing out of the tenuous 126-150 category for those who fail to make the top 125 in the FedEx Points list through the pandemic last year.

It meant not knowing exactly when he was going to play, leaving him starts in only the minor events as he added to his schedule by twice coming through Monday qualifiers this year.

He had been playing brilliantly since recovering from elbow surgery late last season but did not get a chance to show it until April, by which stage he was 210th in the FedEx Cup standings.

While he was recovering from surgery, he met with psychologist Dr Bob Rotella having struggled with his putting and short game for the first time in his life. It turned out to be an inspired decision and with the knowledge he was playing well, he made a career-best eight cuts in a row and racked up three top-10s and another two top-20 finishes before achieving his life’s goal on Sunday night.

“Yeah, absolutely huge,” Power said of Rotella’s influence on the outcome of the marathon play-off and those niggling negative thoughts he had to block out. “As I said, I’ve picked up so much, so many things from some guys like Doc. Even in the play-off, you’re just trying to remember what he told you and just trying to keep it simple.

“It’s massive. He got me just back on the correct path. A lot of things have led me to this point, but that was a huge help. Coming down the stretch in tournaments and in those pressure situations, it’s absolutely huge.”

Having earned his stripes by playing for three years on the eGolf Tour mini-tour, Power established himself on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2015, then won the following season to earn promotion to the big time. He played 105 events and recorded 10 top 10s over the past five years, but while he made the FedEx Cup Playoffs just once until Sunday’s triumph, he never lost faith and considered himself a success by simply being a PGA Tour player.

“To me, it’s all perspective,” he said. “I view myself as extremely lucky. I’m 34 and I’ve yet to work a day in my life. So every time I get to play a tournament or play an extra year on Tour, to me it’s a massive bonus. I love playing golf, it’s my favourite thing to do.

“It’s easy sometimes to get into comparing mode, compare yourself to other guys who have won tournaments and this and that. You’ve just got to be happy for people who have put in the work and it’s paid off, and thankfully this week it was me.

“Even if I didn’t win, my attitude is I still would try to be very much on the positive side. It’s still golf, I still get a cheque for playing golf and I don’t have to work in an office from 9 to 5, so I’m very, very lucky.”