Like most aspiring PGA Tour pros, Tim Petrovic worked countless hours on the range, forging a swing that he could trust. Arguably one of the best golfers ever to come out of the University of Hartford, Petrovic had a diligence that paid off in 1993 when he made the Nationwide Tour at age 27. But within a year, he was back at the mini-tours and one-day tournaments in his adopted home state of Florida.

"I wasn't making any headway...I wasn't breaking through," Petrovic reflects. In 1999, after six years on golf's mini-tours, and while holding such jobs as a pizza deliveryman, Petrovic began reconsidering the long odds for a successful golf career. Others might have thought about becoming a teaching pro or perhaps leaving professional golf entirely.

"Petro" decided to do something with his hands-and it didn't involve ringing doorbells. Rather, he worked on his swing. Each time he stood over the ball, he reminded himself to put more "hands" into his golf swing.

Almost immediately, shots started coming off with the correct trajectory. He found he could "shape" the ball with ease, curving the ball right or left on demand-better to hunt down pins on the greens.

Petro's Ascent

"I could always chip and putt," Petrovic says from the veranda of his home course, Lake Juvita Golf Club in Dade City, near Tampa. But once he changed his focus to "hand" work, he won his first tournament. Petrovic found that he could hit locked-on approach shots, which made it possible to rack up more birdies.

Petrovic started to climb to the top. In 2000, he was the Golden Bear Tour's Player of the Year. In 2001 on the Nationwide Tour, golf's Triple-A level, he won more than $100,000 in his first three outings. He graduated to the PGA Tour in 2002 and won just less than $800,000 to finish 86th on the money list. In 2003, he doubled his earnings ($1.7 million) to zoom to 36th.

"I don't know many guys who change their own swing-I just played with my hands a little-and then end up on the PGA Tour," adds Petrovic, now 37 and the father of two. "I've always worked at it. I'm always hitting balls and practicing. And I've learned so much since 1999, but it was fire and desire that got me here."