Viewpoint: Forsman a Q-C champ to remember

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By Craig DeVrieze | Monday, July 14, 2008 |

SILVIS, Ill. — The list of past John Deere Classic champions is long.

With offense intended toward none, the list of genuinely grand Q-C champions is just a bit shorter.

The eternally gracious Dan Forsman (Lite QCO, 1985) would sit atop one man’s short list of the latter, standing shoulder to shoulder, perhaps, with the chronically affable Joey Sindelar (Hardee’s Golf Classic, 1990).

As such, it must not go unnoted that Forsman is less than a week shy of turning 50 and playing, perhaps, his final PGA Tour event before moving on to the lucrative senior Mulligan that otherwise is known as the Champions Tour.

He won’t commit to that quite yet, though.

“I’d like to come back some day,” he said Wednesday. “We’ll see. My game’s coming around right now, and my putter is feeling better. If things come together this week, and I can contend and go on to win the tournament, I can’t think of a better way to come back.”

Save for that, Forsman also cannot think of a better place to close out his 24-year PGA Tour career.

A five-time winner on Tour, the lanky long-hitter from Utah remembers his first ‘W’ perhaps better than any that followed, from the sound shape of his game coming into the ’85 affair at Oakwood Country Club, to the quality of his practice rounds and the camaraderie of his pairings.

Forsman prevailed in a Sunday duel with an equally accomplished, soon-to-be-senior Bob Tway, forever proof that, in golf at least, Leo Durocher got it oh-so-wrong.

Good man, Dan — an extremely accommodating, remarkably philosophical soul who, that week for certain, did not finish last.

Three years later, Forsman finished second at Oakwood to another fine past Q-C champ, Blaine McCallister, a solid showing that coincided with his 30th birthday.

That was a passage a certain scribe soon bound for 30 his ownself felt compelled to remark upon. Now, Forsman and said scribbler are closing in on AARP eligibility and are left to wonder where all those intervening Q-C golf weeks have gone.

“Yeah, amazing,” said Forsman, flanked Wednesday by son, Richard, a 23-year-old collegian who was a short-legged 3 and answering Ricky all those JDCs ago. “It happens so quick. It seems like for so long people have been saying when you’re 50, you can join the Champion’s Tour. I said ‘Yeah, but that’s a decade away.’ Now I’m on the doorstep.”

And, again, Forsman conceded, there is no better place than the Quad-Cities to close the door on his fulltime tour across world’s premier golf circuit.

“No there’s not,” he agreed. “It’s a great event, and it has meant so much to my career. Getting started on Tour, coming here as a rookie and seeing the Wall of Champions. Even our own commissioner (Deane Beman) was on that wall. Reminded me of Payne Stewart, Roger Maltbie, Scott Hoch and a lot of the other players who got their first win here, and it really catapulted their names and their games into the laurels of PGA Tour history.”

It did likewise for Forsman, who — while never quite achieving the level of fame and accomplishment acquired by the late, great Stewart — certainly forged a career worthy of remembrance.

He won in all three of his decades on the circuit, most recently at age 45 at the 2002 SEI Pennsylvania Classic.

His was a good walk — Forsman forged a friendship with the iconic Jack Nicklaus, led a Masters on the back nine on Sunday — and he has emerged, of course, unspoiled, grateful for his wondrous opportunities and ever mindful of things that matter most.

“Just the quality of life you enjoy is a blessing,” he said on the cusp of 50. “Certainly, with us in war times and realizing we have military personnel serving in harm’s way it puts things in perspective in a big way. We are blessed to have a chance to play this sport and have the freedoms we enjoy as well.”

Not to mention the friendships. The genuine friendships. On a Tigerized Tour that seems to move faster and remember less, those seem to be harder to come by.

We’ll leave it at this: The John Deere Classic has had few friends nicer — and none grander — than Daniel Bruce Forsman.

If this is goodbye, then farewell — no, fare grandly — good friend.

Craig DeVrieze can be contacted at (563) 333-2610 or cdevrieze@qctimes.com.