Photos: Johnny Manziel

"I was only 4 or 5 years old, maybe younger than that, and I remember hitting plastic golf balls over the fence with these little starter clubs . . . I hit that thing everywhere I could -- from the flowers, the bushes, even out of the pool. The more I think about it, doing that taught me how to hit shots off all kinds of surfaces and lies."

"My dad's a really good golfer, and he'd always tell me: 'If you can't hit the green from 100 yards, you suck. You don't need to play anymore.' I remember going out there with the biggest bag of balls I could find in the garage."

"The more and more he'd push me to play, the more I'd go out and practice on my own. Golf was a bond my dad and I developed and, really, that our whole family developed."

"It'd always be me and my mom versus my dad and my sister. Of the 40 or 50 times we played through the years, my mom and I never beat them. Not once!"

"My dad taught me, but really it was one of those things where I was able to learn on my own. Until I turned 14 or 15, I gripped it like a baseball bat. My dad always tried to get me to use the normal overlap or interlock grip, but I just never liked them."

"Golf was a big part of our family. Golf Channel was on the TV a lot, we watched the tournaments on TV during the weekend, and more than anything, these were the Tiger years."

"I played a lot of golf with my grandpa and his buddies when I was about 13. That's probably the best golf I ever played. We'd play Wolf and all kinds of money games. I had about $10 in my golf bag at the start of that year. By the end of the year, I had about $350 or $400 in quarters and dollars. All kinds of golf winnings."

"The next goal is for Dad and me to somehow get to play Augusta National. I'm pretty sure that playing Augusta and walking my sister down the aisle are the only two things left on my dad's bucket list."

"If I'm playing in a tournament, I'm probably going to shoot somewhere between 79 and 84. My goal every time is to break 80. I'm about a 7- or 8-handicap right now."

"I want it to be a game I can play forever. That was the one selling point that was always huge. When I was 12 years old, and I'd hear people say golf was a game you could play forever, I didn't really think much of it. Now I'm really glad I learned how to play when I was a kid."

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Photos: Johnny Manziel

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