The Verizon Heritage: A Tale of Two Men Looking for Redemption

Brian Gay is leading the Verizon Heritage Classic at Harbour Town Golf Links after 54-holes, but there are two men within five strokes of Gay that are surely looking at today's round as their chance for redemption.

Lee Janzen, who will start his final round just four strokes off the lead, was one of the best players in the world during the '90s.

Janzen won seven times on the PGA Tour between 1992 and 1998 which included two US Open victories.

Like many players who were dominating the game during the '90s, Janzen was unable to quickly adjust to the new 'power game' that arrived in the late '90s and completely took the PGA Tour by storm over the next decade.

Younger players were hitting the ball a lot longer and, as a result, courses were being lengthened by several hundred yards per year.

The young, up-and-coming players had no problem with the power game; it was, after all, the style of golf they had been playing most of their lives.

However, players such as Janzen who had spent their career playing a version of golf that rewarded accuracy and great putting more than pure power were simply outgunned and began to slowly move further and further away from the PGA Tour's winners circle.

Janzen is currently playing on a past champions exemption, which means that he is only allowed entry into tournaments he has either won before or if he is lucky enough to be co-sponsored by both the PGA Tour and the event's title sponsor.

It's been 11 years since Janzen's last PGA Tour win, but he's not the only one looking for some redemption today.

When hearing the name Todd Hamilton, there is one single accomplishment that comes to mind: the 2004 British Open.

Hamilton literally came out of nowhere to in the 2004 British Open at Royal Troon Golf Club. He had won the Honda Classic just four months earlier, but that was the only win of his career at that time.

Hamilton was the prototypical journeyman golfer. He bounced around the Asian tours for years before finally earning his PGA Tour card in 2003 at the age of 38.

Over the course of the game's history, there have been occasional 'one-win-wonders' to come out of the wood-works to win a major championship and then promptly disappear again. But, in recent years there are three that immediately come to mind, Sean Micheel, Michael Campbell and Todd Hamilton.

Following Hamilton's win at the 2004 British Open, he dissappeared from golf's main stage just as quickly as he had arrived.

Since Hamilton's stunning victory at Troon, he has had just one top-10 finish in the past five years and has managed to make the cut in just 43 percent of the tournaments he has entered.

If it were not for the five-year exemption earned for winning the 2004 British Open, Hamilton would most likely not even be on the PGA Tour today, or at the very least he would have been forced to scratch and claw his way through Q-School again.

Hamilton will begin today's final round trailing Brian Gay by just five strokes, which on a course like Harbour Town, is an easily surmountable deficit.

If either Janzen or Hamilton were to come from behind to win the Verizon Heritage Classic this afternoon, the two-year exemption the win carries would certainly go a long way to ease their nerves.

But, even more important than the two-year exemption, would be the sense of accomplishment each would feel from overcoming near extinction in the game to get back into the winners circle for the first time in what would have been many long, gruelling years.