Jerry Kelly, 45, and Chris DiMarco, 43, probably don't top anyone's list of golf superstars, but they have had long and remarkably similar PGA Tour careers. Between them they've earned $46 million in official prize money, almost equally split. And there they were again Thursday, being interviewed side by side at the Travelers Championship here after posting excellent opening-round scores of 66 (Kelly) and 67 (DiMarco).  "Hi, Jerry," DiMarco called out with a laugh over the heads of reporters in the press scrum.  "Hello, Chrissy," Kelly called back. "Pretty good timing for that man there."  The man in question was me. I had traveled to Hartford specifically to interview the two after noticing their below-the-radar rankings on the Tour's career money list. (Play on Friday was stop-and-go because of storms.) They are part of what could be a vanishing breed: what used to be called "journeymen," if the term can refer to millionaires. Despite having won only three tournaments apiece, Kelly is the 25th all-time money winner and DiMarco is 27th. Directly behind them, ranked 28th through 30th, are Fred Couples, Tom Lehman and Paddy Harrington.  "Week in and week out, there might not be two more intense people about golf than Chris and I. That says a lot, I think, about why we're there," said Kelly.  Both players had their best spurts on Tour in the early 2000s. DiMarco won his three events—the SEI Pennsylvania Classic, the Buick Challenge and the Phoenix Open—between 2000 and 2002. Kelly won the Sony Open and the Advil Western Open in 2002 and added the Zurich Classic of New Orleans in 2009. Yet despite injuries and slumps, they're still plugging away.  Why? "The competition," said Kelly. "The money," said DiMarco, before taking a philosophical step back and instantly glomming onto the same word as Kelly. "The desire to compete, that never goes away," he said. "We do it to know and be able to say we're still one of the best. That's what it's all about."  Kelly and DiMarco have similar games. Neither has ever been long off the tee. In driving distance this year they rank 178th and 182nd, respectively, out of 184 players. But they are handy with their irons and capable of getting hot with their putters.  "Jerry and Chris are classic grinders," said Brad Faxon, 50, who has known both forever. "They are guys who seem always to have gotten more out of their game then you might think, and have lasted longer than you might think," he said. "You wouldn't say that they have, you know, anything exceptional. But they are steady, they keep their heads composed, and when they are on, they are very confident and can both be very aggressive."  Faxon said they exemplify the kind of courage he tries to impress on young players as necessary for a successful PGA Tour career. "They don't throw in the towel when things aren't going well. I see guys who look great on the range, who can shoot 65 in practice rounds, but when the wheels come off in competition, they don't know how to get it in the house. That's something that is learned. Jerry and Chris know how to get the job done."  Of the two, DiMarco has had the closest brush with stardom. He lost in back-to-back playoffs in majors at the 2004 PGA Championship, to Vijay Singh (Justin Leonard was also in the playoff), and at the 2005 Masters, to Tiger Woods.  "The good thing I took away from those tournaments was that I didn't beat myself. I made birdies down the stretch," he said. On Sunday at the 2005 Masters he shot 68 to catch Woods and came within a hair's breadth of chipping in on the 72nd hole to win outright. "I've had my chances to win more tournaments. I've had 12 second places. But unfortunately over the years, when I was playing my best golf, somebody has always played just a little bit better."  Kelly has fewer seconds than DiMarco, at six, but more top 10s: 78, compared with DiMarco's 61. They've made an almost identical number of cuts, 325 for Kelly and 323 for DiMarco, in a similar number of tournaments (504 and 483). Since PGA Tour retirement benefits are determined in large part by cuts made, both would seem to be well set for their golden years.  Not that Kelly, in particular, is thinking along those lines. "I'm not old. I feel good. I'm solid," he said, despite having earlier described for me the rib, neck, back and finger injuries that have plagued him in recent years. For the last couple of years, he said, he has been in a "mental funk," but recently decided to "hit the reset button" on his career. He watched his 13-year-old son play baseball this spring. "He's got such a better attitude than I've had. He was having so much fun playing, even when his team was losing," he said.  With today's enormous purses on Tour, and younger, more fully developed players like Rory McIlroy and Ryo Ishikawa arriving from around the world, DiMarco said that going forward, fewer players might play as long as he and Kelly. "If they're 40 and have been out here for almost 20 years and have earned their $40 million or $50 million or whatever it is, it's a grind. There are other things they might want to do," he said.  Or even sooner. I asked John Peterson, the 23-year-old who tied for fourth at last week's U.S. Open, how long he expected to play. "Once I earn enough money to buy a ranch, I'll probably quit then," said the former LSU golfer and native of Fort Worth, Texas. "I'd like to just sit on the porch all day and shoot things."  A version of this article appeared June 23, 2012, on page A14 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Grinding It Out on the PGA Tour.
The two old friends aren't household names, they're grinders. It's a pretty good living (to the tune of $46 million in prize money between them).