“Everyone thinks Vijay practices the hardest, but I’ve been here two hours when he shows up and we leave at the same time,” Lickliter said. “I practice every day. I’m trying to get my game back. I never stopped working hard. I was just working on the wrong stuff.”
Lickliter, who grew up in Franklin, learned to play at Shaker Run Golf Course and played collegiately at Wright State, is struggling to get his game back to where it was a few years ago. It’s difficult because he has lost his exempt status on the PGA Tour and he doesn’t get to play every week.
At the age of 42, he is still eight years away from the Champions Tour, so it’s important that he make a strong comeback. A tie for 13th at Texas resulted not only in a $112,840 check, but it gave his confidence a boost.
Lickliter joined the PGA Tour in 1996 and had a great run. In 2001, at the age of 31, he won a tournament and made $1.9 million. He was eligible for most tournaments and had a bright future. He had already earned $4.7 million in prize money.
He not only wanted to win more tournaments, but he had his sights on winning major championships. Unfortunately, he didn’t think his swing was good enough to be successful in the majors. That’s why he made a decision he now regrets.
He virtually rebuilt his swing under the tutelage of Randy Sonnier, a former Walker Cup player from Texas who had worked with his buddy, Rocco Mediate.
Lickliter’s ball flight had always had a left-to-right trajectory, and he felt he needed to work the ball right-to-left to reach left-side pin positions.
He worked hard on the swing changes and believed in them. He won another tournament in 2003, but he could not find the consistency he needed with the new approach. Too many shots were going astray.
In 2005 his string of seven years among the top 100 money winners came to an end as he slid to 147th. He bounced back to win $1.6 million in 2006, but then his game fell apart and he lost his exempt status.
In 94 starts over the last six seasons he hasn’t had a single top-10 finish. He used to play in 30 tournaments a year, but he was able to make just 14 starts in 2009, six in 2010 and 12 in 2011.
“The last two years have been the toughest of my life,” he said.
This year he is attempting to get into the tour events through the brutal Monday qualifiers, where the odds are long. In Texas a couple of weeks ago, when many of the tour’s stars took the week off, Lickliter received a spot after qualifying on Monday.
“I really want to play right now because I’m hitting the ball good,” he said. “I’m eliminating the left side (from wayward shots).”
He said he’s had some help from Robby Robinson and another friend, Mike McGee, of Middletown, who visited him in Ponte Vedra, Fla., in December.
“Everything’s about getting back to the feelings I used to have, creating a shape which does not allow the ball to go left,” he said. “There’s 5-6 years of garbage I have to get around, get through, get over.”
In spite of the difficulty of getting into tournaments, Lickliter is confident that he can still be competitive, and his performance in Texas only made him more certain of it.
“I went 69 holes without anything bad happening,” he said, noting that he drove the ball left on the 70th and 71st holes, losing two strokes to par.
“I still make putts. I’m still long enough (off the tee) to play the game the way it’s played today. It’s all about the feelings I want to have and how to get back to it.”
Unless he can Monday-qualify, Lickliter won’t be eligible for the next few PGA Tour tournaments, but he expects to have some opportunities as summer arrives.
Meanwhile, he enjoys his time with his longtime companion, Diane, and their 4-year-old twin boys, Steele and Storm.
Asked about their unusual names, Lickliter said, “Steele was named for his godfather, and we needed something just as strong for the other one. We didn’t want them to be named Steele and Steve.”
Lickliter’s dad suggested that they be named Frank III and Frank IV, but that didn’t fly.
Frank II said he has used some of his energy supporting the Navy Seal Foundation with some personal appearances during which he has done some speaking.
“I wanted to see a visible difference in the lives of the people I was affecting,” he explained.
“When I was going to speech class in high school, it never entered my mind that some day I might be speaking in front of 500 people, let alone enjoying it.”
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