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CARY -- Mike Goodes is at home on the PGA Champions Tour.

That doesn't mean he's all that comfortable out here. And it certainly doesn't mean he's arrived. But the 50-year-old from Browns Summit is one of the guys on a tour that, above all else, demands you be one of the guys.

"I wouldn't say I'm deserving to be out here," he said as he completed his Wednesday round in the pro-am of the SAS Championship at Prestonwood Country Club. "I'm not sure I belong here, yet. I don't think you'll ever hear those words come out of my mouth."

But he sure looks to be part of the show, and on the laid-back circuit that used to be known as the Senior Tour, he's a card-carrying member.

Goodes is one of the best amateur golfers to ever play in our area, a Reidsville native who won the N.C. Amateur title in 1989 and again in 2006. After his second amateur title, he seriously pondered the question all amateurs ask themselves:

"Just how good can I be?"

Actually, he asked his wife that question. It was professional curiosity as much as anything else, or in his case, amateur curiosity. The most precious thing to great amateurs through the years has always been their status as amateurs. And the next most precious is the thought that they can compete with anyone.

The competitive side of him pushed Goodes to answer his own question.

"I wanted to know if I could do it," he said.

And so he headed out into the unknown, risking his status in 2006 when the senior circuit still allowed players to qualify for PGA events and retain their amateur standing. Of course, then they changed the rules on him.

"Then I really wondered," he said. "I had it pretty good. I played events in places like Pine Valley and Seminole and Pinehurst. How many people get to play tournaments in places like that?"

They don't play those places on the Champions Tour. They play places like Rock Barn in Hickory and Prestonwood here in Cary.

"This is no vacation out here," Goodes said. "This is fun, but it's really work."

He found that out last year, qualifying for a few events giving what he thought was 100 percent effort to make it on the pro tour. As it turns out, he didn't even know what 100 percent meant.

"I thought I was giving it everything I had," he said. "I treated it the same as playing the amateur events. I had no idea. These guys out here will eat you alive."

So he went to work, went back to Q-School to get his card for 2008 and revamped his attitude. Goodes began practicing at Bryan Park and working at Robert Linville's Precision Golf, honing his game and his attitude, getting ready for a season on the Champions Tour that he could only imagine.

"I had no idea what it would be like," he said. "I mean, I had fun. I had a great time. I played in the British Senior Open, the U.S. Senior Open, the PGA Senior. It was an eye-opening experience. It changed my attitude. I finished the year, and then I went to work."

Goodes has been playing golf for as long as he can remember, and he still hears his father's words: "This is a humbling game. It's the most humbling game there is."

He said he's played more golf this year than he's ever played. That's something he couldn't have imagined two years ago when he seriously began to think about a professional career at age 50, something he wouldn't have dreamed while walking the fairways almost every day back at Pennrose Park in Reidsville.

Goodes would stand on the edge of the fairways then and practice, infuriating the other golfers as he tried to squeeze in some extra work in those amateur days that seem like yesterday. He couldn't have known it would take so much more.

Last month, in the fourth major of the Champions Tour season, Goodes shot four rounds in the 60s and finished second in the Jeld-Wen Tradition. The non-exempt player out of Q-School, who'd never finished higher than fourth, found himself one of the guys.

Wednesday, as he drove around Prestonwood, every single person he passed smiled and said, "Hey, Mike."

"It's good to be home," he said.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com