Meet the Hooters Tour legend who beat No. 1 Dustin Johnson to win at Pebble Beach

The final Sunday pairing at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am was the walking embodiment of the you vs. the guy she told you not to worry about meme. Ted Potter Jr. was the portly, balding journeyman pro who, as CBS’ Peter Kostis put it to him after win, had been “to hell and back.”

Dustin Johnson is ... not that. He’s the world No. 1, the 6’4 athlete (have you heard he can dunk a basketball?) who hits it 400 yards and has a fiancee that is such a type of powerhouse “brand” she could really just go by her first name now. I mean, here’s a side-by-side of their current PGA Tour headshots.

Potter essentially left the game for almost three years after falling and breaking his ankle, an injury that required multiple surgeries and a bunch of screws in his foot. He is 34 now and is one of those intriguing characters we often see in golf — you know them when you see them — the ones who carry the mini-tour legend label with them. Those are the kind of characters and oddities you immediately want to dive in on and back.

Potter’s career includes a stretch of 24 missed cuts on the Web.com Tour, a discouraging give-up-the-game and go sell insurance type streak.

It also includes Hooters Tour dominance. He’s got 12 wins to his name on that tour, including a 2009 run that bagged esteemed titles at the Amelia Island Classic, Gold Strike Casino Golf Classic, and Buffalo Run Casino Classic. The Hooters Tour is now something called the “Swing Thought Tour,” but it was the Hooters Tour back when Potter was king.

At one point, the TV broadcast referred to him as a “mini-tour legend in central Florida.” How could you not back him after that? Golf Channel’s Whit Watson sent me more intel shortly after I tweeted the comment:

Ocala. Mini-tour legend. Nicknamed the Wizard. Hard luck injury. Playing with the world No. 1 who is hitting it 50 yards past him. The choice was easy on Sunday.

This is not to take away from DJ, who has busted his ass to get to where he is now. But DJ also possesses the kind of natural talent just about everyone else in the world salivates over. He can make 66s looked routine and effortless. Ted Potter Jr. does not.

It wasn’t just DJ chasing him, either. Phil Mickelson and Jason Day were also there too, eventually finishing in the logjam tie for second behind The Wizard. Mickelson has won this event four times and Day, a former world No. 1, won his last start two weeks ago. Near the end of the CBS broadcast, Jim Nantz read off the stat that those three (DJ, Day, Phil) had a combined 334 top 10s, while Potter has four, including a pre-injury win back at the 2012 Greenbrier Classic.

There’s no doubt that the stars, like DJ and Phil, are who drive this tour. But similar to last week, when Gary Woodland and Chez Reavie emerged from a loaded leaderboard full of sexier names, the lesser-known stories are what make the tour so great too. We can’t have it every week or the sport will go completely in the tank. But Potter’s win is an awesome story and one that’s possible in pro golf, where every player is absurdly good and the margins on a given day between world No. 1 and mini-tour legend can be nil.

Potter’s emotional postround interview with Kostis felt like a validation of the decision to pull for him the entire day against the top player on the planet at one of the its most famous courses.

We’re off to Los Angeles for the Genesis Open at Riviera, which may just be the best event of the year (multiple years?) on the PGA Tour. So the notes this week will be quicker as we hustle to get out to California.

1. Once more on the Potter postround interview — The dude said he was pumped to get back to the Masters ... so he could win the par-3 contest again. Who says that? Par-3 jinx be damned. Love that it was on the top of his mind (thanks to Twitter follower Pikeman for calling this out — I heard it live but it didn’t quite register like it should)

2. The pace of play was hard to justify. I know it’s a tricky event for pace, and you have to judge it within the context of a Pro-Am. There are two concurrent contests going on and a lot of weekend high-handicap chops clogging things up for the pros. Sunday’s postcut tee sheet is always a mix of threesomes and foursomes, with some amateurs mixed in and some groups that are just exclusively pros. They have figured out how to make it work over the years.

But Potter and DJ were waiting forever, an uncomfortable amount of time on what felt like almost every shot on the back nine. The tee sheet troubles were exacerbated by Wayne Gretzky withdrawing with back trouble on Sunday morning, turning the final group into a threesome behind a penultimate foursome. The Ams don’t exactly speed things up, but one particular pro ahead probably wasn’t helping much either.

Yelling about pace of play is so cliche, but the waits the final group had to endure can’t happen in the final round of a PGA Tour event with those stakes. Potter’s wait on the 17th tee was pushing 18 minutes. It was like that throughout the back nine. The leader should not have to repeatedly wait 15 minutes-plus to hit his shots.

3. Larry Fitzgerald and Kevin Streelman just ran away with the Pro-Am portion of the weekend, going wire-to-wire. And as will happen with these things when handicaps and net scores are involved, the subject of sandbagging was tossed about with Fitz.

4. This theory:

Maybe Figjam needs the feline to truly be FIGJAM. As stats god Justin Ray pointed out earlier in the day, Mickelson had not had consecutive top-five finishes on the PGA Tour since the summer of 2013. Now he does.

5. I spent about 500 words on the CBS coverage last week and tried to be fair. I’m not going to spend much time on it here. It was a fine weekend for CBS and much improved over past Pebble debacles. The gap was cut down and tolerable and the increased use of ProTracer is an excellent development. I think we tend to talk about the coverage way too much now and I am as guilty of it as anyone.

6. A guy on the Web.com Tour shot 56-over for 36 holes. The 52-year-old Julio Bell went 93-105 in two rounds of the Colombia Classic (writing this again — he shot a 105 for 18 holes). Bell, AKA The Machine, did not sign his card so he was officially a DQ on the leaderboard.

I loved it because the comedy of the score and resultant outrage were fun to watch in the same way explosions in an action movie can be alluring. But it’s a farce on a tour that’s at such a high level, where spots in the fields are valuable and cherished, and it’s supposed to be the best path to the bigs. Others, in particular Tron Carter of No Laying Up, documented and investigated the story quite well at the end of last week. One thing I heard over the weekend from a caddie is that Bell has been working with Joey D, trainer to the stars down in South Florida. If true, expect DJ and Brooks level improvements from La Maquina. Maybe we can box jump our way to a tour card (Champions Tour card).

7. I am hyped for Riv in a way I’ve never really been hyped for a regular season PGA Tour stop. Tiger returns. DJ, Spieth, Rory, JT, Phil, Fleetwood, Cantlay, Haotong, Pieters, the X-man, on and on are signed up for this week. It’s just an absurd field with a strong international flavor, playing on the best course on the schedule. Tiger obviously takes it to another level in what will be his first start there in more than a decade. It’s not going to compete with the NBA All-Star Game, but it’s definitely going to add to the circus in town this week. We can’t wait.

8. The Masters starts in 52 days.

9. Here’s your final board and payouts from Pebble.