Stuck in the friend zone

This story originally appeared in the The Undercover Newsletter, where we grant anonymity to people in golf who’ve got something to say. Here an active PGA Tour coach is interviewed by Senior Editor Luke Kerr-Dineen. You can sign up via Golf Digest+ to make sure you receive this newsletter regularly.

There's this guy. He's a major winner. He’s a long hitter who loves pizza—you've definitely heard of him.

I'm a top coach. I like him, and he likes me. We get along great. He's an incredible talent, and we love talking golf. The problem is, this player doesn't see me as anything more than a friend. In other words, I'm stuck in the friend zone.

The top level of professional golf is a traveling circus. Players, caddies, coaches; we spend so much time on the road with each other that it's only natural to become friends. Practice rounds are the only days coaches are allowed inside the ropes with players, and players will pair up with other players for practice rounds fairly randomly. They’re usually slow and boring, so players and coaches will joke around to pass the time. All it takes is one of your players to share a practice round with another player to spark a friendship that lasts for years.

That's a good thing for business. Most players treat coaches like a merry-go-round. At some point they’ll want to make a change. When they do, the first coaches they'll turn to are the ones they already have personal relationships with.

But it doesn't always work out like that. As I am now with this particular player, I’m stuck in the friend zone.

This often happens when the coach gets to know a player before their professional career. Maybe they coached at a club where the player practiced, or even played college golf alongside them. While the player improved their game to a tour level, the other developed their skills as an elite coach. The coach may make all the top lists and get all the professional accolades and successfully coach other tour players—but the player who has been there all along can never see them as more than a friendly face. Money never comes up because the coach is never in an official role. And if you’ve been friends with the guy for so long, asking for money could ruin a good relationship.

Probably the most common way coaches get friend-zoned, though, is when a player is stuck in a long-time relationship with their current coach. If you get to know a player through day-to-day life on tour, pretty soon they might start asking you questions about their game. Maybe they’ll text an old video and ask how they can get back to that old move. Or they’ll ask why they hate a certain kind of miss. Maybe they’ll even come in for the occasional lesson. They never pay for any of this, because it’s all so casual. You can take it up with their agent, but that often doesn’t go well.

Deep down, the player may want to make a change, but breaking up with their long-time coach is too hard. Especially if that coach has been there since junior golf, and has become a kind of father figure. Sometimes, the coach is literally their father.

Either way, having that conversation with their current coach is just too awkward for the player. So they leave you in the friend zone.

If you’re wondering why it matters so much to be an official part of a tour player’s team, well, it’s because being in the friend zone with a tour player doesn’t get you much. It doesn’t get you paid, for one. It doesn’t get you any notoriety if the player starts playing well, which means you can be overlooked by other players. Your peers don’t know your work, which makes it harder to make the big lists, which makes it harder to grow your lesson business back home.

How to get out of the dreaded friend zone? It's difficult. In my case, I want to be honest with the player and give him the nudge he needs, but that could backfire. I want to be respectful to his other coach by not damaging their relationship, the same way I wouldn’t want another coach trying to steal one of my players. Golf is a small world, and I have my own reputation to think about.

Most coaches play the long game. They’re patient and show respect to the current coach while always leaving the door open if the player wants to do more. I tell them that I’m here to answer any questions, or to provide a second set of eyes whenever they wish. Ultimately, whether they want more than that is up to the player.

Professional golf isn't like those rom-com movies. I want this player to get better, and I know I can help him do it. Of course, I have a level of personal ambition here, too. But there’s nothing more I can do. I have to let the player come to me and accept that maybe, he never will.