Ryan Moore
Tacoma, Washington, United States
Ryan David Moore (born December 5, 1982) is an American professional golfer, currently playing on the PGA Tour.
Ryan Moore was born in Tacoma, Washington and grew up in nearby Puyallup. He is a 2001 graduate of Cascade Christian High School, a small Class 1A school which did not have a golf team. Moore competed for Class 4A Puyallup High School, where he lettered all four years. He was the runner-up in the US Junior Championship in 2000, and won the Washington high school individual championship in 2001, beating fellow UNLV golfer and Capital High School alumni Andres Gonzalez for the championship. He accepted a scholarship to UNLV, where he lettered for four seasons for the Rebels and graduated in 2005 with a degree in communications and public relations.
During the summer before his senior year of college, Moore had one of the most impressive seasons in the modern era of amateur golf. He captured multiple titles in 2004, including the US Amateur, the Western Amateur, the US Amateur Public Links (also won in 2002) and the NCAA individual championship.
Moore won the Haskins Award in 2005 as the outstanding collegiate golfer in the nation. He placed 13th at the 2005 Masters, winning low amateur and a spot in the 2006 field. (In 2003, he also made the cut at the Masters, finishing 45th at age 20.)
Moore’s final tournament as an amateur was the 2005 US Open at Pinehurst, which concluded on June 19th. He made the cut and finished tied for 57th, then turned professional, playing the next tournament at Westchester, New York, on a sponsor’s exemption, where he finished in a tie for 51st. Turning professional meant that he had to forfeit his slot (as reigning US Amateur champion) in the 2005 British Open, played at the home of golf, St Andrews. In August, Moore earned a special temporary exemption to the PGA Tour with an impressive tie for second at the 2005 Canadian Open in Vancouver.
In 2005, playing on sponsors’ exemptions, Moore earned a total of $686,250 in just 14 official PGA Tour events. This placed him the equivalent of 113th on the money list, making him the first player since Tiger Woods in 1996 to go from college to the PGA Tour in the same season without going to Q School. The only other players to do that since 1980 were Gary Hallberg, Phil Mickelson, and Justin Leonard. As a non-member, Moore needed to collect more than the 125th place finisher on the 2005 money list in order to earn his card for the 2006 season. During 2005, Moore’s world ranking improved from 718 to 142.
In 2006, he played on the PGA Tour as a regular member, and his best outing was a tie for second at the Buick Championship in Connecticut. He was sidelined for two months in the spring following surgery on his left wrist, which kept him from competing in the Masters. Moore returned to the tour in late May and finished 81st on the 2006 money list with $1,222,118. With a top ten finish (tied for ninth) at the PGA Championship at Medinah on August 20th, he broke into the top 100 in the world rankings for the first time, vaulting from 110th to 79th. He climbed as high as 68th in early September, and finished the year at 79th in the world.
In 2007, his best finish on tour was a solo second place at the Memorial Tournament, hosted by Jack Nicklaus in early June. Moore entered the event as an alternate and earned $648,000, the largest paycheck of his brief pro career. With six holes to play, Moore birdied five consecutive holes (13-17), but scored a par on the 72nd hole to finish one stroke back. Following this runner-up finish, his third as a professional, Moore climbed from 87th to 33rd on the PGA Tour money list, and his world ranking improved from 110th to 59th. Two days later he qualified to play in the 2007 US Open at Oakmont near Pittsburgh, where he shot 8-over in the first round and 3-over in the second. Moore missed the cut by one stroke and finished tied for 64th.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Ryan Moore”.
