Long Way Home

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS | For ardent followers of golf, the name Roland Thatcher is probably rattling around the recesses of your brain.

Maybe it’s buried there because Thatcher made 152 starts on the PGA Tour, scaring the winner’s circle a few times. Or perhaps you remember the story of how Thatcher, fresh out of Auburn University, needed a par on the final hole of Q-School to clinch his card for 2002. He airmailed the green with his approach, hitting a cart path that catapulted his ball over the clubhouse roof, never to be found again. He made a triple.

Or it could simply be that no other golfer shares the name Roland or Thatcher, a name more worthy of a Shakespearean actor than a professional athlete.

No matter the case, the name has been lodged in a cranny somewhere. So, it comes as a surprise to learn that Roland Thatcher hasn’t been in a PGA Tour field since his last start seven years ago at the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals Classic, a tournament that no longer exists.

That is, until this week at the Valero Texas O...