ESPN Golf

With a little cash having burned a hole in his pocket, a cell phone in his hand and a swing on the mend, life seemed good to Ted Purdy at Colonial CC. Purdy has just one top-10 finish this year, a T-9 at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, so you might think the 2005 Byron Nelson champion would see the glass as half-empty, but Purdy is pretty much a half-full kind of guy.

Jordin Sparks, the daughter of his buddy at Moon Valley CC in Phoenix, former NFL cornerback Phillippi Sparks, had just wowed Simon Cowell et al. en route to an "American Idol" walkover. And Purdy was convinced that among the roughly 74 million votes cast, the 100 or so he managed to stuff into the ballot box by text message put the 17-year-old singer over the top.

Meanwhile, working with his teacher -- Mark Winkley, who learned his craft under the tutelage of Davis Love Jr. -- Purdy's swing was starting to show some positive results, too. "I tend to get my hands to chase away," he said. "[Winkley] wants my hands to stay on the plane during the whole swing. Any time you make a little swing change, it's difficult getting it to the golf course, but I've got it now and it's effortless. It feels like I can aim and shoot." After an opening-round 64, Purdy shot rounds of 71-72-68 to finish T-36 at the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial.

Purdy knew he wasn't quite there in his last appearance before Fort Worth, a T-16 at the Players. "I had trouble at 2 and 16, where everybody else was making birdie," he said of the pair of par-5 holes. "I was having trouble because I'd hit one snap hook, and I couldn't turn it over the rest of the week. I just couldn't trust myself. Probably cost myself eight shots on those two holes for the week because you should birdie them every day."

Still, he managed to find some positives. Purdy took the cash from the year's richest tournament and bought a house on Possum Kingdom Lake about 70 miles from Fort Worth -- as if a lake with a name like that could be anywhere except Texas -- where Chad Campbell, J.J. Henry and Rory Sabbatini also have homes away from home. He decorated the new house with a Chaparral 256 SSi for water skiing.

The boat was a significant addition to his toy collection, which also features a No Good Gophers pinball machine, autographed by Byron Nelson, purchased at a charity auction on eBay. That one's back in Arizona. "It's a 'Caddyshack' theme," he said. "You hit the ball at the gophers. They steal the ball. It's a cool game." Yes, it is.