JO U RNEYS
I hadn’t touched a club in a month when I agreed to play in a member-guest. The events that followed changed my life By Ben Griffin with Keely Levin ‘I Got a Job as a Mortgage Loan Officer’ I N 2021 I WAS BURNED OUT on mini-tours and couldn’t see myself making it to the PGA Tour. I’d lost my motivation and love for golf. The stress of playing with $15 000 of credit-card debt was agony, so I quit. I got a job as a mortgage loan officer and hadn’t touched a club in a month when I accepted an invita- tion to a member-guest tournament that changed my life.
said to play. I’d be home in time for the funeral on Wednesday. That tells you how we thought the qualifier would go. ● ● ● I shot 65 to qualify for the Korn Ferry event but missed the cut. My grandpa always said, “Hit ’em long, hit ’em straight,” and when I saw that in his obituary, I knew I had to play profession- ally again. Mike and another friend, Jesse Ahearn, said they’d cover me through Q school. Highland members pooled to- gether cash, and another good friend, Doug Sieg, said he’d pay all my expenses for two years. I wouldn’t have to worry about credit-card debt. I quit my job, over- whelmed by everyone’s support. ● ● ● I vowed to myself to do it differently this time. I needed to stop drinking dur- ing the season. I didn’t have a drinking problem, but I was drinking like I was still in college. When you drink consistently, you think you feel good, but you don’t. Now I feel incredible. ● ● ● My girlfriend Dana introduced me to a vegan lifestyle, which helped. Some people treat food like entertainment, but food is fuel. I eat for energy. Research says veganism helps with inflammation. I’ve never felt better. I used to be fatigued down the stretch, but now I feel fresh enough for another 18 after the tourna- ment is over. ● ● ● By September 2021 I was at Korn Ferry Q school. I made it through, had three runner-up finishes in 2022 and got my PGA Tour card for 2023. Then a month into the season, I had a shot at winning in Bermuda. It didn’t go my way, but that was my first time holding a lead going to the back nine of a tournament in a very long time. ● ● ● I soaked in every experience on the PGA Tour, and 2025 was quite a year for me. In April, Andrew Novak and I won the Zurich Classic. A month later I won at Colonial in the Charles Schwab Challenge. Then I was one of Keagan Bradley’s captain’s picks for the Ryder Cup at Bethpage. I played once the first two days but was proud to win my singles on Sunday. Finally, in December, Dana and I got married.
in not-so-nice hotels, and I didn’t have the same resources I had had in college. Instead of playing for championships, guys are playing like they’re fighting for their lives. ● ● ● The pressure turned me into a fear- ful golfer. If there was water to the right, my brain would say not to hit it right. The anxiety kept building, and I started playing bad golf. I obsessed over my equipment and swing. I became a perfectionist. You should focus on hitting shots, not hitting the right positions in your swing. ● ● ● I played the Korn Ferry Tour in 2019, didn’t play well and played smaller tours until 2021. Without belief, I had nothing, so I quit, put my clubs away and became a mortgage loan officer. I said yes to that member-guest with my friend Mike Swann at Highland Springs in Missouri thinking it would just be fun. I shot 63 on my own ball. The course hosts a Korn Ferry event. Mike told me to fly back and play in the Mon- day qualifier. He’d pay for everything. ● ● ● I wasn’t sure, but at home one morn- ing I accidentally drove to the golf course instead of the office. It felt like a sign. A few days before the quali- fier, my grandfather died. My parents
My dad – who can still shoot under par on a good day – put a club in my hands when I started walking. My grandpa taught me you can try as hard as you can to beat the other guys but still be respectful. We belonged to Chapel Hill Country Club, a private course in North Carolina, until I was 12. Then the financial crisis of 2008 hit. My dad is in real estate, and my mom is a mortgage loan officer, so it hit us hard. We went from having a nice house to renting. We got rid of our golf member- ship. University of North Carolina Fin- ley Golf Course, which is public, had a great junior golf rate, and I had friends there, so that’s where I started playing. ● ● ● That’s also where the University of North Carolina golf team plays. Once I started going to college there, my teammates would jokingly complain that qualifying wasn’t fair: I knew every break on those greens. I won two tour- naments my freshman year. I thought I couldn’t be stopped: I would turn pro, play the Korn Ferry Tour, then make the PGA Tour right away. But that’s not what ended up happening – not even close. ● ● ● I graduated and turned pro in 2018. I won almost immediately on PGA Tour Canada, but travelling on my own was like a punch in the face: I was staying
PHOTOGRAPH BY JOSH LETCHWORTH
22 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
MAY 2026
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