Much was made a few weeks back about Jason Christie’s win record at B.A.S.S., and rightfully so. Over the course of 96 tournaments, he’s won a remarkable eight times which, for the math-challenged among us, is a rate of one in 12. That’s bolstered by the fact that he’s won two of the last three times he’s put the Xpress in the water with money on the line, but even at six of 93 he’d be doing ok for himself.
As I’ve opined before in writing, in my mind it makes him a steel trap lock for the Hall of Fame, because while he doesn’t have as many wins as the likes of first-ballot inductees Rick Clunn (16), Kevin VanDam (25) or Roland Martin (19), that’s a stratospheric level of competition. Christie’s “batting average” may be higher, but it’s not apples to apples when you’re talking about different eras and different numbers of tournaments fished (479, 314 and 291 for Clunn, KVD and Roland, respectively).
What does bind all of them, however, is that they’re closers. Once an angler reaches the upper half of the Elite level of competition, that’s what separates the true greats – the ability to locate and manage three or four days of bass, and then keep a foot on the gas (with the other on the competition’s neck) on closing day. It sounds easy from a desk or from the couch, but when you think of all of the truly talented anglers who’ve never won, or maybe won once, it becomes that much more impressive.
Sometimes anglers show off the ability to close early in their careers and then misplace it, like Derek Remitz seemingly did. Other times, as with wunderkind Brandon Palaniuk, they start winning immediately and never seem to stop. There are still others who go seemingly forever without winning, but when they open that jar, it makes getting the next pickle out that much easier. That’s what seemed to happen to Randy Howell, whose only prior win at B.A.S.S. was a 2004 E50. Despite coming close many times in the ensuing decade, he didn’t win again until he fished a Northern Open on the James River in 2013. That in turn qualified him for the 2014 Bassmaster Classic on Guntersville, where he claimed all of the marbles.
I recognize that this might seem a little premature, but into this mix we now have to throw one more angler: Lee Livesay. Sure, he’s only fished a fraction of the professional events that Clunn, Martin, KVD or even Palaniuk have entered, but his record in those is beyond exceptional. In just 49 Bassmaster entries, through his recent win in the Central Open on Ross Barnett, he’s won three times in 49 tournaments. Making it even more impressive, he didn’t win through his first 19 events (a not wholly unreasonable expectation), which means that he’s won three of the past 30 – one in 10, albeit in a small sample size.
Perhaps you could make some argument against him: He’s never won outside of the South; one of those wins was in an oddball fall event; one of them was “only” an Open; or in the biggest one of all he had a huge home-field advantage. Every one of those statements has a counterargument, though. At Fork, he dominated, with one of the biggest single-day weights in Bassmaster history, but he’s also won when lakes were off their game. And as for the Opens argument – anyone who thinks that winning against a massive and stacked field on a crowded body of water is easy needs to get checked for brain damage.
I’m not going to go so far as to say that Livesay is a guaranteed Hall of Famer like Christie, but I am saying that we’re seeing a young career that skipped the process of dipping a toe into greatness and instead just plunged into the deep end of the excellence pool. Yes, the field is remarkably deep, and there are multiple standouts – including but not limited to Drew Cook and Patrick Walters, both of whom have won, and both of whom have earned Century Club belts like Livesay’s – but sometimes even grizzled old-timers like me need to take a step back and realize what we’re watching. The talent level, top to bottom, is so great, and the technology is beyond what we could have even imagined even a decade ago – and that makes these standouts more impressive. And it makes closing that much harder.