FH no good, maybe should call it quits

Message Topic Search Topic Options Post Reply Create New Topic Printable Version Translate Topic

 BizLawProf wrote:

 BeaverMD wrote:

By the way, I want to ask you since you've reached a high level in golf (I don't play).  At the USGA 3 to 5 handicap like you had, can one play golf for a living?

At peak I could probably have passed the PGA Pro PAT (playing ability test).  At one time 20 years ago I thought about doing it.  Passing the PAT would've licensed me to be PGA professional, basically the equivalent of a club pro in table tennis, though since the US in golf is more like China in table tennis, there's more money to be made in it than in TT in the U.S.  

That said, it would have been a dead end living, most of the time selling clubs in the pro shop, giving lessons to little old ladies and portly executives who couldn't hit the ocean if you teed their ball up on the beach, being regarded as a very good golfer, but at the same time not really an equal among the corporate execs and businesspeople who make up the typical country club membership, regarded as something of an idiot savant.  

Pros at a local 9 hole dive make maybe $25K a year, pros at the ritzy country clubs make maybe 3X that, maybe the average is $40 or $50K.  

PLAYING for a living at my level? To make big money in golf, you need to be much better golfer than I was, you need to play on a tour and you need lots of money backing your endeavor at first.  Those guys even on the marginal lower tier tours are almost uniformly a minimum of 3 to 5 strokes better per round than I was.  Assuming I'd get lucky and shoot out of my mind to qualify for a pro tournament, I'd have been so far off the pace I wouldn't have made a cent.  You see these local yokels, maybe the pro at Ed's Driving Range, get hot and shoot a 68 in the qualifying round for a tour event on occasion, then they shoot 78 - 84 in the first 36 holes of the actual event and get laughed off the course.  That'd have been me. 

Thanks for the perspective! Yes, I was refering more towards playing for a living and not coaching and selling golf clubs.  A fellow TT player just had a son that recently turned 4 or 5 and we were just talking about how college is so expensive.  So we were discussing different sports that his son might take up with the goal of getting a scholarship someday.  We narrowed it down to either tennis or golf.  Checking out blogs for these two sports, most posters agree - thinking of sports as a ROI (return on investment) is not the best idea  Hey, people can dream right? How do you know your kid is not the next Tiger or Federer unless you get him/her started.