Undercover Tour Pro: The Harsh Reality Of Being An Old Guy On Tour

The latest Undercover Tour Pro from GolfDigest.com delivers again.

This one is deals with all the sobering challenges of being one of the elder statesmen on the Tour.

Father Time these days is harsh and outside of the seemingly ageless Phil Mickelson, the 40+ players aren’t regularly rising high atop leaderboards.

I’m one of very few guys over age 45 who plays a full PGA Tour schedule. Other than Phil Mickelson, who’s an absolute marvel at 48, most golf fans would have a difficult time naming the rest of us. When I first got a tour card, any given week the field had at least a dozen real veterans, guys who’d played with golfers I’d only seen in photographs. Nowadays, 36 or 37 feels old out here. Instead of three or four generations of players, it’s like we have two.

The fall used to be a time to rest and repair the body, but not anymore. There are almost 50 events on the PGA Tour calendar this season. Unless you’re a top-30 player, you really can’t afford to take three weeks off in a row. Guys will shoot past you in the rankings. And once you fall outside the top 50, your schedule stops being in your control.

I know what you’re thinking: This guy is whining because he can’t get a three-week vacation from playing golf—please. But it’s a grind, especially as you start to age a little. Always sleeping on a different bed, always questioning your food, lugging clubs through baggage claim in the middle of the night, uncertain what time zone you’re in because your phone is dead. When being home is the exception, the body breaks down faster. Every day that I’m on tour, I visit the physical trainer for a massage. There are no candles or robes or meditative music. It’s 30 to 40 minutes of pain so I can keep swinging another day.

I’m not really the mentor type, but on occasion I’ve hinted to younger players that they ought to be more thoughtful with their money. Winning a tournament doesn’t mean that you’ve made it. A million bucks can feel like all the money in the world when you’re 25, but you’re going to pay almost half to the government. Plus, there’s always the chance your career could be over in five years. Buy the 10,000-square-foot party house in Jupiter that costs $100,000 per year in taxes and maintenance, and suddenly you’ve applied serious pressure to your golf game. How are those carrying costs going to feel if you’re relegated to the Web.com Tour? And another thing: Unless you have enough money to fly private until the day you die, you can’t afford to fly private.’

Just take a look at any Web.com leaderboard and count the number of former Tour winners and major winners. It’s the reality of trying to stay at the top of a game that favors youth and distance. The fact that the approaching 50 Mickelson has been ranked top-50 in the world every year since the mid-90s is one of golf’s true milestones.