The Loop
NBA 1st-round pick Dylan Windler is also a golf trick shot artist who had PGA Tour dreams
If there are any members of the Cleveland Cavaliers who still play golf in the post-J.R. Smith Era, they better watch out. One of the team's newest members is a serious stick.
The Cavs selected Belmont's Dylan Windler with the 26th pick on Thursday night and in addition to being a tremendous three-point shooter, the 22-year-old has quite the range on the golf course. In a video from September, Windler showed off his talents at a Topgolf in the form of a trick-shot compilation. Check it out:
OK, so some of those are easily copied, but we dig the creativity. It also looks like he flushes the ball on several of his attempts, including "The Corkscrew," which is actually reminiscent of pro golf rookie Matthew Wolff's unusual swing. In fact, Windler originally had dreams of playing on the PGA Tour before a growth spurt and an opportunity at a particular AAU tournament changed the course of his basketball career. In other words, he's basically the opposite of recent U.S. Open champ Gary Woodland. Here's what Windler told HoopsHype.com about how he ended up at Belmont:
My recruiting was a little different. So early on in high school, I played basketball and golf. Honestly, golf was my main sport early on in high school. I had to make a decision if I wanted to pursue one or the other for the summer. Either you are going all in on golf tournaments or all in on AAU. I didn’t want to go half and half, I wanted to go all in on one. Early on in high school, I thought I’d be better off in golf. I went state as a freshman, I went county. I wasn’t on an AAU team first the two summers in high school. I didn’t have any looks or any type of recruitment. I played well in high school and probably my junior year of high school is when I was starting to grow a bit, getting a lot better. I had a really good junior season and decided to get on an AAU team to see where it took me. I ended up getting on an Indiana team, which was the last AUU season of my junior year. I was like the seventh or eighth man honestly. Just being new, they had a lot of guys that have been there a long time. I didn’t get much time early on. Then there was one tournament where three of the starters went to the Adidas camp, so I got a big opportunity to start and play most of the minutes and we ended up winning the tournament. From that weekend, I ended up getting 20 of my first offers. They were all mid-majors early on and one of them was Belmont. But a lot of mid-majors coming off the South East area. I only visited Belmont first. They came to my high school to watch me play. I went to visit and I really liked it. Ioved coach Byrd, the coaching staff, all the players, the whole school and the campus and the city. I honestly liked it so much and it was so late in recruiting process that I didn’t want to take any chances on missing out on this scholarship or missing out on this opportunity. So I committed early on, about a month and a half after I got the offer. My recruitment was pretty short, I didn’t give teams a lot of time to recruit me. It was pretty fast for me.
Windler says he maintains a 1-handicap despite infrequent playing. Pretty impressive.
"Anyone from my team, I’ll take them out there and it’s not really even fair," Windler said.
Fellow Cavs, you've been warned.