The week before the ONEflight Myrtle Beach Classic, Nick Watney shot rounds of 69-69 at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson tournament in Dallas.

Sounds pretty good? Guess again.

That showing earned the 44-year-old PGA Tour veteran a missed cut and quick exit. Meanwhile, Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1 player in the world, was blowing away the field, shooting a PGA Tour tournament-record 31-under par. Watney, as was likely the case for the rest of the field, called Scheffler’s performance “amazing” and “the standard of golf, I guess.”

That’s a standard that Watney once aspired to; indeed, he was ranked among the game’s top players about a decade and a half ago. But in the life of a professional golfer, that’s a long, long time.

So Friday at The Dunes Golf and Beach Club, when Watney posted a score (9-under 133, courtesy of a second-round 67) that briefly shared the 36-hole lead with four others … well, that was pretty impressive for one of the older players in the Myrtle Beach Classic field, one far removed from his best days.

It wouldn’t last. First-round leader Mackenzie Hughes of Canada finished at 10-under, only to be overtaken by Chile’s Cristobal Del Solar, also at 10-under after a 4-under 67. But as Hughes noted after his round of 69, “There’s a bunch of guys there with a chance.”

And one of those is a guy who, even on the apparent downside of a career that seemed to stall all those years ago, isn’t quite done yet.

A five-time winner on the PGA Tour, Watney’s last victory came 13 years ago – not so surprising for a player closer to the PGA Tour Champions (age 50 and up) than his own heyday. But the soft-spoken Fresno State product believes his best days aren’t necessarily behind him.

“(Scheffler’s performance) makes you think that you have a lot of room to improve, for sure,” Watney said earlier this week. “At the same time, it’s motivating because you kind of see what’s possible. I’m not on the front end of my career, but at the same time, I think I still have some good stuff left.”

That’s despite a fair amount of scar tissue.

In 2010, he led the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits by three shots – then crumbled with a closing 81 and had to watch as Martin Kaymer out-dueled Bubba Watson in a three-hole playoff for the German’s first major championship (Watney’s collapse was overshadowed by Dustin Johnson’s blunder when he grounded his club in a bunker and was assessed a two-shot penalty, costing him a spot in the playoff).

That kind of disappointment can send a player into a confidence death spiral. Other issues – notably a herniated disc in his back in 2016, which led to a major medical exemption the following year – might explain why, in his mid-30s and at the apparent peak of his career, the Sacramento, CA native slowly but surely slipped from golf’s top ranks.

In 2011, Watney led the FedExCup standings after a record-setting win at the AT&T, made the U.S. Presidents Cup team, and finished the year third on the PGA Tour money list. A year later, he won the first leg of the FedExCup playoffs (The Barclays) and finished 22nd on the money list.

But two years later, after a winless 2014, he was 106th in earnings, and hasn’t returned to the top 50 since. Entering this week’s tournament, he was ranked 1,006th in the Official World Golf Rankings.

And yet, here he is, older by a decade than most of his competition this week but still in contention heading into the final two rounds.

So what’s behind this week for him?

“I’ve kind of been thinking about that, and there wasn’t really an ‘aha’ moment, to be honest,” Watney said. “Throughout my career, I’ve been kind of like a gradual improver. I didn’t really burst on the scene or anything. And that’s been the same with this.”

He grinned and added, “I’m very pleased with my position and try not to think about how old some of these cats are and how old I am. I’m trying to have fun and see where we end up at the end.”

Watney didn’t go into detail about what he thinks caused his career to slip, or how this week figures in his slow-but-steady plan for success.

“There’s not really like one specific moment of where I kind of thought, oh, man, I’m starting to struggle,” he said. “It was kind of a gradual thing.

“Then there hasn’t really been one specific moment of, like, oh, man, I’m back, because in my career anyway … I got on tour, and I didn’t win until my third season because it was like a gradual thing, getting comfortable and understanding what I need to work on and how the best guys did certain things.”

Just getting into the Myrtle Beach Classic required the Monday withdrawal of former U.S. Open winner Webb Simpson, thus making Watney the third-from-last player in. He arrived with, shall we say, modest ambitions.

“I just wanted to come and continue to improve,” he said. “I’m trying not to think about what a (top) finish would mean what. I’m aware of it … but I’m just trying to really enjoy myself and soak in my opportunity. That’s pretty much my expectation.

“I’m super, super impressed when guys come out and win their rookie year or, you know, first few events,” he said. “But for me it’s always been kind of a work into it. There hasn’t been one acute moment of, oh, man, I got it. It’s just been slow, gradual improvement.”

Can that late-career improvement continue, or were this week’s first two rounds just a momentary flashback?

Watney seemed unconcerned about what the answer might be. For now, he’s just soaking it all in.

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