Taking a Swing at Making a Living

There have been times when Chris Anderson was so discouraged that he wanted to walk away from his professional golf career and get one of those steady, 9-to-5 jobs with a regular paycheck. But something always kept him going to the next course for the next tournament.

Now, after spending nearly two decades as a professional golfer, Anderson believes he is close to making it back on to the PGA Tour. The 38-year-old California native, who has two top 10 finishes on the Nationwide Tour this season, believes he is playing the best golf of his career entering the Melwood Prince George's County Open, which begins tomorrow at the Country Club at Woodmore in Mitchellville.

"I'm ready to play good now," Anderson said. "I've had enough of waiting for the future. I'm ready to play good now."

Anderson is the antithesis of Tiger Woods. Nobody put a golf club in his hand when he was 2. He didn't play American Junior Golf Association tournaments growing up. He didn't even play golf in college. The first time he picked up a club was at age 14, when a friend took him to a course.

"I just fell in love with it instantly," Anderson said. "It was right at that time that my dad was thinking about buying a boat. I told him how much I loved [golf]. He didn't even play golf, but somehow I talked him into joining the country club instead of buying a boat."

In high school, Anderson joined the golf team. In his first year on the team, he reached the state championship and competed against another Southern California golfer, Phil Mickelson. Anderson didn't play well in that tournament, but his poor performance didn't bother him.

"I didn't really care," he said. "I was playing just for fun."

After high school, he enrolled in Mount San Antonio College, a community college. Aside from a couple of U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur qualifiers, Anderson didn't play competitive golf. Instead, he was content to play with his friends on the weekends.

Anderson spent two years working at his father's forklift company after college before realizing what he really wanted to do was play golf for a living. With the encouragement of his father and the financial backing of a generous sponsor who gave him a car and a credit card, Anderson left California to seek his fortune playing golf.

During the next couple years, Anderson played mini-tour events -- the Hooters Tour, the Hurricane Tour and the Golden State Tour, to name a few -- wherever he could. He played on the Canadian Tour and the Nike Tour (now renamed the Nationwide Tour).

"I kind of bounced around, really," he said. "I never really had a plan."

Although he hadn't enjoyed much success, Anderson was having too much fun playing golf to consider finding a more lucrative career. Then, Anderson and his wife had their first child. Money became tight, and he decided to go back to work for his dad. But even though he wasn't traveling around the country competing, Anderson didn't abandon golf. He worked out a schedule with his father that allowed him to work from 6 a.m. to noon, eat lunch, then spend the rest of the day at the golf course. That fall, he went to qualifying school and finished tied for second, leading to his first stint on the PGA Tour.