If you’re gonna call in sick, this is the way to do it

Oklahoma State, Georgia and Wake Forest have been known to turn out PGA Tour golfers as if on assembly lines.

Then, there is Central Carolina Technical College in Sumter, S.C., which has no golf team — or any other sports — but does have graduates who go on to work on assembly lines.

That’s part of what makes the appearance of CCTC grad Tommy “Two Gloves” Gainey in today’s Sony Open in Hawaii so remarkable.

His roundabout road to a place on the PGA Tour is the path less traveled, running not through a collegiate golf factory, but a commercial water heater factory in McBee, S.C. There, for $9 an hour, he installed insulation on tanks for the A.O. Smith Corp. in the mid-1990s.

Eighteen years later, Gainey is still a self-proclaimed company guy, proudly wearing the A.O. Smith logo. Only now it is on his hat, shirt and golf bag as a sponsor.

It is hardly the turn of events Gainey imagined coming out of college when golf was but a weekend hobby and he considered himself fortunate to land a month-to-month temp job with A.O. Smith. When a full-time assembly line position came open, Gainey quickly put his name in.

“Everybody else turned the job down and they asked me if I still wanted it,” said Gainey, who nevertheless counted it as “my lucky day.” He said he figured, “You’ve got to start somewhere and work your way up, so I took it.”

It was typical of Gainey, who, in two short years, impressed the folks at A.O. Smith with a can-do, whatever-it-takes attitude, day-in and day-out dependability and punctuality.

So much so that when he uncharacteristically called in sick to play in an area golf tournament in 1997, he was still allowed to keep his job. The man they call “Two Gloves” for his habit of wearing gloves on each hand, might not have landed in hot water at all if he hadn’t won the event and its $15,000 first prize in front of some fellow employees.

But a friend, Cliff Wilson, offered to put in $600 of the $750 entry fee for Gainey to compete and he couldn’t walk away from the challenge.

When Gainey surprised himself and won the event, “I told my buddy, ‘well, this is yours ’cause you paid pretty much all of it,’” Gainey said. “Then, he told me, ‘Tommy, I don’t want any of it and I’ll tell you why. It is because I see something special in you. You have a special gift and your gift is to play golf for a living.’”

In time Gainey ran with it, knocking around on an assortment of the mini tours and The Golf Channel’s “Big Break” but pressing on until earning a place on the PGA Tour in 2008. Soon after gaining his card, he also picked up his old employer as a sponsor.   

More than that, wherever he plays, representatives of the company and its clients invariably turn out to root him on.

“We here at Inter-Island Solar Supply, as the Hawaii A.O. Smith distributor, will be at the Sony cheering him on,” pledged Mark Hertel, the firm’s executive vice president.

“It says a lot when people stick by you like that,” Gainey said. “That’s why they’re like family to me.”

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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.