This nice guy finished first

ATLANTA - Somewhere in the middle of a 22-hour drive home from another miserable golf tournament in Ohio, it hit them.

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This was the low point. It was the end of 1993.

Three-year-old Kristen was in the back seat. Cathy was still a few months away from delivering Michelle. Bart Bryant had banked $10,255 in 21 Nike Tour events.

"I'm so ungrateful," Bryant said to his wife.

"We're whiny," Cathy responded.

That was enough. The whining had reached its peak, and the Bryants decided to stop it right there.

"What are we happy about?" Cathy wrote at the top of a page on a spiral-bound notebook. She stopped writing two full pages later.

"We had so much to be thankful for," she said. "Each other. A beautiful girl. Another one on the way. We never missed a meal. It's become a family tradition, something we do at the end of every year."

Sunday will certainly make the 2005 list. Cathy and the girls were all at East Lake Golf Club where Bryant couldn't be touched by the greatest golfers in the world.

This is the high point. It is the end of 2005. Bart Bryant won the Tour Championship.

The Bryants left Georgia with a $1.17 million check - more money than he had made in his first 12 seasons as a professional.

"I'm very surprised," said Bryant after cruising to a six-shot win in a week he set course (62) and tournament (17-under par) scoring records. "I mean, I'm just as surprised as you are."

It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Or more deserving.

Bryant has been through hell and back in his career. He's survived Q-school six times and failed a few others. He's undergone major surgeries on both of his arms and will have his left knee surgically "scoped" on Tuesday, "for old times sake." It took him 41 years of living and 18 years of playing golf professionally to finally win a tournament at the Texas Open last fall.

Now he won two more at age 42, and not just any two - Jack Nicklaus' Memorial Tournament in June and this star-studded season finale. He banked more than $3 million this season.

"With money comes responsibility," Cathy Bryant said. "We've got much more than we need."

Bryant's rags-to-riches story is the kind that makes golf the greatest game. We love watching the big names win the big events, but it's the little names that intervene infrequently that make it so special.

Bryant going wire-to-wire at East Lake is as big as upsets get. Nobody even challenged him Sunday after he went out and birdied the first two holes and sent a message to Tiger Woods, Retief Goosen and everyone else that he wasn't backing down.

"It was up to us to try and go get him ... and we didn't do that today," said Woods.

We should all be thankful for that. Bryant is a winner you can't help but love. His honest self-deprecating attitude is endearing.

"I didn't think I could make it to the Tour Championship, and I certainly didn't think I could win," he said.

"I feared choking my guts out, a lot. ... I think I was getting abused on television for being so dull. ... I started having things going on in my mind like how many can we chunk in the water from this ball drop."

Bryant, the son of a Southern Baptist preacher, wasn't blessed with the power of positive thinking until crossing 40. He admits he sabotaged his own career by fearing failure and embarrassment and being labeled a choker.

"I finally started buying into the belief that maybe I belonged out here and I certainly wasn't going to be chicken anymore," he said this week. "I'm just too old to care about it anymore."

He wasn't too old to make a name for himself this week and finish in the top 10 on the money list. He's not to old to be a Masters Tournament rookie in April at age 43 and play his first fully exempt major schedule.

And he's not too old to appreciate everything that's changed in his life since he let go of his ungrateful attitude.

Bart Bryant left East Lake a bigger name than when he arrived. But it seems the highs and lows have changed him very little since 1993.

"It's the things that haven't changed that are the meaningful ones," Cathy said. "Those are the precious things to us."

Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.