Rest, practice at home will be priorities for Ryan Moore in 2016 golf season

Ryan Moore has aligned himself with some pretty serious company on the PGA Tour.

With nearly $21.7 million in career earnings, he sits inside the top 50 all-time. And Moore, who grew up in Puyallup, is less than a million dollars away from chasing down Seattle’s Fred Couples ($22.6 million) as the Northwest’s all-time money leader in golf.

He has four career victories as part of his 51 top-10 finishes in 262 PGA Tour starts.

Yet, when it came time for Moore to discuss his 10-year run on golf’s best tour, he sounded like a man celebrating his 60th birthday.

“Last year is honestly a bit of a blur, and I am not sure why,” Moore said. “It wasn’t like it was busy. … But I don’t remember a lot of it.

“Maybe it was … the 10 straight years of being out there, traveling 30 weeks (a season). Something about that caught up to me, I got worn out midway through the year, and I do not know why.”

Like he has been known to do throughout his career, Moore made a change for the upcoming season. He’s vowed to get enough rest this year.

That is why he started his winter season late by debuting at last week’s Waste Management Phoenix Open instead of in Hawaii or at the CareerBuilder Challenge (formerly the Bob Hope Classic) in the California desert to kick off the West Coast swing.

Moore, 33, said he needed the three months off to recuperate.

“I had a decent fall with a couple of top 10s. But when I got home, I got comfortable with the three-month break,” Moore said. “I played the least amount of golf in the past 10 years. I practiced playing and had things I was working on. But the rest was very, very important to get recharged for this year. I am really, really excited about playing golf again.”

The rest didn’t mean any rust in his game. In Phoenix, he carded three sub-70 rounds (the other was a par-71) and finished tied for 11th, good for a check of $149,500. He’s in the field for this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

Moore also added something to his offseason he had never considered: a team summit getaway.

Last November, Moore, caddie J.J. Jakovac, swing instructor Troy Denton, agent Jeremy Moore and younger brother Jason, Ryan Moore’s former caddie, all flew to St. George, Utah, for a three-day retreat.

Staying at a hotel, the group played golf, then got down to the business of evaluating Ryan Moore’s golf organization, on and off the course.

“We were all honest, and at times, (Ryan Moore) did not like what he heard,” Denton said. “We had some good talks.”

An astute self-assessor, Ryan Moore agreed that listening to others’ criticism about his practice and travel routines hit him flush.

“It is sometimes hard to hear what people say … when they get free rein to discuss what you did well and what you did bad,” Ryan Moore said. “But I have a great team around me, and I want to utilize them fully.”

From that meeting, Ryan Moore said he will make an adjustment in his travel in 2016, trying to leave tournaments on a Sunday night to return to his family in Las Vegas. He added that he will leave a day later than normal — usually on a Tuesday — during tournament weeks.

“It was about trying to find ways to make life better for me,” Ryan Moore said.

This story was originally published February 10, 2016 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Rest, practice at home will be priorities for Ryan Moore in 2016 golf season."