PGA Championship 2013: Jason Dufner Faring Well with Lack of Fanfare

Even the middling fans get an unappreciative vibe on Jason Dufner.

Upon seeing him for five seconds as he finished up a par on Saturday’s opening hole at Oak Hill, my wife, Danielle—who watches golf about as often as I crochet cardigans—gave an instant analysis on the distinctive swath cut by the 36-year-old Clevelander-turned-Alabaman.    

“He looks like a schlump,” she said, sending me scrambling to Merriam-Webster to find a meaning for the Yiddish-derived term, which, incidentally, is “sloppy or dowdy person.”

“I don’t want him to win,” she said. “He’s too schlumpy.”

As harsh as it sounded coming from my typically docile better half, I couldn’t manage to argue.

Indeed, in the company of taller, more angular contemporaries like Adam Scott, Matt Kuchar and Jim Furyk, Dufner’s scraggly mane, round face and overhanging belly did make him look like a Daly-esque gatecrasher on golf day at the male models convention.

Where slow-motion replays included closeups of Scott’s rippling forearms, Kuchar’s piercing gaze or Furyk’s trim waist, they also caught the fat pinch of wintergreen chewing tobacco that stretched Dufner’s furry bottom lip like an unsightly facial kangaroo pouch.

And the more the ex-Auburn Tiger appeared on screen, the more CBS saw contrast.

Where Scott was prefaced with “the Masters champion” and Furyk was praised for years of meritorious service before nearly every stroke, analysis on Dufner focused less on the fact that he was at the top of the leaderboard on Day 3 of a major and more on the idea that he somehow didn’t belong.

A tap-in for par on the third hole, which Scott bogeyed, was greeted with “You’re not gonna get much from him, but you can’t take your eyes off his hair or his waggle” from Gary McCord. On the fourth, by which time his lead was up to three, another par was confirmed not by celebration, but with “He looks like he’s on cruise control. Even his meander is meandering,” from Nick Faldo.

Given that track record in prosperity, it’s little surprise what occurred when adversity arrived.

A rotten tee shot on the fifth wound up in a tree-covered creek past the right side of the fairway and automatically yielded an assessment from Faldo that nerves were to blame, while the production truck was ready with highlights of Dufner’s ill-fated finish to the 2011 PGA Championship.

That fifth ultimately yielded double bogey and allowed the rank and file back into the tournament, giving even more reason to laud the feats of those with lower BMIs and better profiles. Within seconds, in fact, galleries were shown roaring in approval of Rory McIlroy after birdies on 17 and 18 made him (at three under) slightly less of a nonfactor than he’d been through 52 holes.

Meanwhile, Dufner soldiered on in spite of the lukewarm love.

A pin-high drive on the sixth resulted in a par and was soon followed by a pretty drive-approach-putt for birdie on a par-four seventh that had been branded at the tee as an assessment of Dufner’s mettle. He invited more scorn by pushing a three-foot par putt past the left edge for bogey on the eighth, but quickly steadied again with a string of pars from nine to 18 interrupted only by a birdie on 10.

He and Furyk—playing a twosome ahead—danced together atop the first page for the remainder of the afternoon, with the suburban Philadelphia veteran taking the lead at 12, giving it back at 15 and seizing it again at 17.

Furyk iced the 54-hole edge on 18 with a stirring par save from the fringe, while Dufner grabbed a spot in Sunday’s final pair with a save of his own after going right off the tee.

His final par putt, in fact, rolled a fraction past the hole before gravity took over on the lip, setting up the young outsider against the old establishment for the last 18 holes.

“The greens were a touch faster today. I had to readjust the machine out there,” Furyk, who last won a major a decade ago at the U.S. Open, told CBS' Bill McAtee. “(On Sunday) I’ll have to assess the situation when I get out there. It’s a crowded leaderboard, so the goal is to go out and fire a good number and try get out there ahead.”