Brad Adamonis just missed winning his first PGA tourney last weekend, the John Deere Classic.

AP / Charles Rex Arbogast

Some people are second-guessing Brad Adamonis, but he’s not second-guessing himself after finishing second at the John Deere Classic last weekend.

“I never considered just chipping out,” the Cumberland resident said of his bold decision Sunday to go for the green from behind trees in the right rough, off a difficult lie, on the first playoff hole.

The TV commentators pointed out that the prudent thing for Adamonis to do would have been to chip his ball into the fairway, try to get up-and-down to save par, and hope that neither of his opponents, the red-hot Kenny Perry and Scott Williamson, would make a birdie to win.

Even his caddy was suggesting Adamonis make the safe choice.

“He wanted me to lay up,” Adamonis said. “He didn’t really think I could hit the shot. But I’ve hit so many shots he didn’t think I could hit that I didn’t let that bother me.”

A year ago, even a few months ago, Adamonis would have been considered a long shot to be in the position he found himself in last weekend — tied for the lead in a PGA tournament after 72 holes.

After all, at the age of 35, he is the oldest rookie on Tour. And, in March, he was diagnosed with nystagmus, a disease causing the eyes to race uncontrollably from side-to-side. He didn’t play for a month, then missed the cut in five of the next six events after returning to the Tour.

But he snapped out his slump last month by posting four rounds in the 60s at Hartford, where he finished tied for sixth. Three weeks later, at the John Deere, he rattled off three consecutive rounds of 66 to go into the final day tied for the lead — which was how he finished, after failing to sink an 18-foot birdie bid on the final hole of regulation and shooting a 1-under-par, 70.

His chances in the playoff plummeted when he hit a wayward drive on the first extra hole — the difficult, par-4 18th, with water all along the left side and the pin tucked in the deep left corner of the green.

When Williamson and Perry both found the fairway off the tee, Adamonis felt he had to try something daring.

“It was the kind of pin,” he said, “where, if you hit your approach 15 feet to the right, it would feed down to the hole. I figured one of those guys would hit a good shot.”

As it turned out, Williamson hit a terrible shot, pulling his ball into the pond. At which point Perry, who’d won two of his four previous starts — the Memorial and the Buick Open — and having seen both his opponents hit their second shots into the water, lofted his approach safely to the green and easily two-putted for a winning par.

“I don’t regret what I did at all,” said Adamonis, who tried to cut an iron from left to right and barely missed pulling it off, the ball hitting just to the left of the green before bouncing into the hazard.

“The shot I regret,” he said, “is the drive.”

He knew the odds were against him, but he’s been beating the odds since earning his Tour card at Q-School last December.

“I had a terrible lie,” he said. “The ball was on a bare spot, and there was a bunch of grass just behind it. I knew it was a risky shot. If I wasn’t in a playoff, I never would have hit it. But, given the circumstances, I wanted to try it. Besides, there was no guarantee that, if I’d chipped it out, I could have kept the ball in the fairway. It was one of the funkiest lies I’ve had all year.”

Had he pulled off the shot and won, Adamonis would have been at Royal Birkdale this week for the British Open. Instead, he’s in Milwaukee for the U.S. Bank Championship, $369,600 richer after last weekend, and hoping to continue to play well.

“I just had my best tournament,” he said, “and now I’m looking forward to getting back out there.”

jdonalds@projo.com