Hayes: Eagles' Donnie Jones can relate to Mr. 58, Jim Furyk

MR. 58 TEES OFF at 8:10 a.m. Thursday.

Eagles punter Donnie Jones, the oldest player on the team, will be in Pittsburgh on Thursday preparing for a preseason game. Still, he will be following what Jim Furyk does at the Wyndham Championships. So will the rest of the golf world.

Because, the last time he played, Furyk shot the lowest score in the history of the PGA Tour.

"Golll-eee, man!" said Jones, a Louisiana native. "I've never even shot even par! My best golf day was probably the day I shot 76. Jim Furyk, if you're listening: That was a hell of a round, man."

Among the four major American sports, kickers and punters tend to be the best golfers. The psychology, physiology and function of kicking and punting translate well to golf. Furyk, a standout schoolboy athlete, would have made a fine punter . . . though he's done pretty well with the sticks.

Furyk will start on the No. 10 tee at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, N.C., alongside bombers Rickie Fowler and Hideki Matsuyama. Fowler is a gunslinger ranked No. 8 in the world. Matsuyama, 20th, is part of the hyper-talented global youth movement that buoys the PGA Tour's popularity.

Furyk, on the other hand, is a 46-year-old oddity. He's ranked 22nd, despite being a short hitter with an ugly swing who generally eschews new-fangled golf practices, such as employing a golf coach (other than his dad) and using video to analyze his swing. Not coincidentally, Furyk has won only once since 2015.

Furyk was born in West Chester, lived outside Pittsburgh and then moved back to Philadelphia's suburbs. He has had his day: 17 Tour wins, the 2003 U.S. Open, the 2010 FedEx Cup Championship and its $10 million. He is $433 shy of $67 million in career earnings, fourth all-time behind Vijay Singh, whom he probably will overtake before hitting the Champions Tour in four years. Golf is the ultimate game of numbers: yardages and strokes-gained and money lists and ranking points.

In this moment, though, the only number that matters is 58.

"The greatest player of all time in my mind is Jack Nicklaus, with 18 major championships. I know Tiger has won 14," Furyk said last week. "Everyone has a number attached."

Furyk's 58 in the final round of the Travelers Championship came on a Sunday morning, Aug. 7, with Furyk firmly out of contention at par-70 TPC River Highlands course in Connecticut. It came three years after Furyk joined five others in the 59 club. It also came two days before Furyk was scheduled to be selected as winner of the Payne Stewart Award for sportsmanship and benevolence; as though the 58 was a bonus for being such a good guy.

"The 59 was a great accomplishment. I'm a little flabbergasted that I had the opportunity to break 60 again and was able to do so and to do it with a 58, it's amazing," he said at the ceremony. "I'm still kind of pinching myself that I'm going to have to wake up and still play that Sunday round."

Furyk didn't win at the BMW Championship in 2013 with his second-round 59, and he didn't the Travelers, either. Still, now Furyk has the last two lowest scores on the Tour.

With what does 58 compare?

Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game? Like the Travelers, Wilt's Philadelphia Warriors' win over the Knicks in Hershey was a late-season affair with no great significance. Unlike Furyk's, Wilt's feat was accomplished in a team setting with teammates complicit in striving for the number. Unlike Furyk, Wilt was in the prime of a dominant career. He averaged more than 50 points that season. That was like Tiger in 2000, and Furyk isn't having that sort of season.

It isn't a 4-minute mile, because that barrier spurred a flood of improvements. It's impossible to believe that he will shoot 57 or a 56 anytime soon.

The unique nature of golf - a static game of stops and starts played without a defender in an arena that changes by the second - makes any great accomplishments by its players incomparable to any sport but itself.

Perhaps the 59s by David Duval in 1999 and Stuart Appleby in 2010 are more significant, since they happened in the final round and led to one-stroke wins. Furyk's feat didn't win him anything; didn't come in a major championship; and happened the week before the Olympics, against a painfully diluted field.

Still, it happened, out of the blue, after a poor third round prompted Furyk to call his father/coach and (gasp) videotape himself on the driving range.

Furyk's 58 might have been a 56 with a little more putter luck, but then, he jarred a 135-yard approach on the third hole for eagle, so luck did not completely abandon him. And, no, he didn't feel 58 coming. That's the way it is with sports.

"My best punting day?" Jones asked. "Dallas. 2007. We played at old Texas Stadium. I was sick. Had a horrible warmup. I was so bad. Then I went out, I was hitting everything. Five-second hang time. Sixty yards, no return. A bunch inside the 5."

Indeed, Jones was exceptional for that bad Rams team, with four punts of at least 61 yards and four downed inside the 15-yard line . . . but he was 27 then. Can he continue to compete at 36?

Punters and golfers who are as committed to fitness as Jones and Furyk are seem to cheat Father Time like no other athletes. Jones' net average of 41.6 yards in 2015 was the best in Eagles history.

"Old? I hear that all the time. I think it's a bunch of BS. You do the right things, you take care of your body, you can play as long as you want," Jones said. "You're still scoring like Furyk? I feel like I'm in the prime of my career. I feel like I've got plenty left in me, and plenty other punters have done it. Just like Jim Furyk.

"We're like fine wine."

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