A Change in Course
I still have the Titleist Balata ball, sitting in a glass case on a shelf in my house. It’s not from the Masters or The Travelers Championship or any other professional golf tournament I’ve won. No, it’s from a win back when I was 13 years old, at the 1992 Divot Derby, the biggest junior golf tournament in the Pensacola area, where I grew up. That win sparked my determination to become a pro golfer, to become, as my dad said, a leader, not a follower. It also sparked something else—a sense of…I didn’t know what. A foreboding that things might not ever get any better than my last win, that I’d never really be good enough. It was a feeling that would, as the years passed and my career flourished, consume my life.
My first love was baseball. My dad thought I was destined to pitch for the New York Yankees. Then, when I was six, lightning struck: I got a left-handed nine-iron golf club, cut down to my size. I became obsessed with golf, spending countless hours hitting plastic balls around—and over—our house. Our family didn’t have much money. My dad was a construction engineer at a chemical plant. But Mom and Dad could see my talent, and, at age eight, for Christmas, I got a
