The secret language on tour

This article originally appeared in The Undercover Newsletter, where we grant anonymity to people who work in golf who’ve got something to say. Here a current PGA Tour player is interviewed by Senior Writer Joel Beall. You can sign up via Golf Digest+ to make sure you receive this newsletter regularly.

There is a lot of dead time in golf. PGA Tour rounds are always over five hours, plus there’s warm-up, cool-down, practice, meals, hanging in the locker room. It’s a day. We love golf, but it is our job, and I am sure you don’t just talk about work at your place of work. We need a distraction, and the No. 1 distraction out here is football.

If you made a heat map of where pro golfers were born, the American south would be on fire. Even more tour players went to school in this region, where college football is religion. I grew up out west and stayed there for college. Although it was Division I, we were far from a pigskin powerhouse. I had a lot of friends from my AJGA days that came from southern backgrounds or migrated to SEC towns, but football was never a big topic of discussion during junior and college golf. Granted, there is not as much talking at those levels. When you are a kid, you tend to take golf too seriously. All to say, I was not prepared for how significantly football would dominate life when I turned pro.

Crazy thing is, it’s not necessarily the games. It’s all the talk about spring practices, the schedules, conference realignments, which players are going to break out, which coaches are on the hot seat. And, my word, the recruiting. These football nuts know more about prospects their schools might sign than I do about my nephews.

When I first got on tour, I was somewhat vocal that I didn’t care about football. I found out I was missing out on text threads and watch parties, which I didn’t mind at first because, hey, I wasn’t a football fan. But those groups ended up taking vacations together and becoming better friends. Football was one of the few things bringing people together, and I was blowing it and feeling left out. So, my third year with full status, I started following my alma mater, along with the sport at large. I did deep dives on Reddit team pages. That year I made more friends than my previous six years as a professional. Now, when rookies ask me for advice, the first thing I tell them: Get to know ball.

Counter to what you might assume, a lot of European and international golfers are knowledgeable about football, having gone to college in the United States and eagerly assimilated themselves socially. School always starts in the fall, and what subject is a smart kid going to learn if he wants to make friends and maybe meet the homecoming queen?

Who has the most passionate base on tour? Them Georgia boys are crazy. We like to joke that their main goal is not to make the Tour Championship, but to have a good enough year where they can take the fall off to go to as many Bulldog games as possible. Hell, in his first Team USA appearance in 2017, Kevin Kisner asked Steve Stricker to sit out one of the Presidents Cup sessions to watch the Georgia game. Kisner got his wish. Auburn isn’t far behind. If you’re from Texas, you got the fever twice as bad, because most are Dallas Cowboys backers, too. My only hot take is Alabama fans—sorry, JT— tend to be frontrunners. Let’s see how many continue to support in this post-Nick Saban era. 

One story for the road. A then-younger player (who has since made himself a nice career out here) was trying to make an impression on Jack Nicklaus at the old Honda Classic, angling for a sponsor’s exemption at the Memorial. This player sidles up to Nicklaus on the range and tries to talk Ohio State football, thinking this is his way in. Jack was kind but eventually tells the player, sorry, I don’t really follow the Buckeyes. Ten minutes later, Nicklaus is talking Florida State football to several caddies. The player overhears this and thinks, “What have I done to offend Jack?” Didn’t take long for that player to learn that Nicklaus’s grandson, Nick O’Leary, was a Seminole tight end that year.