[Educational Post] Young man, I didn't call him a scratch golfer (someone else did). He's far better than that. My regular caddie at an exclusive course that regularly hosts PGA tour events referred to Greinke as the best golfer he has ever caddied for. GOOD DAY
If ZG was really tour quality I think he’d be the first professional athletes ever from another sport to be able to actually make that happen. I’m highly doubtful that he could be a regular, full time pro player bc those guys are so freaking good and have been training for it since they were like 5 or 6 years old. If you wait until your 20’s (I know he thought about trying to do it when he took his sabbatical), I’d be highly skeptical that it could actually happen. I have no idea bc I’ve never seen him play golf under pressure, but I’m suspicious. Now, if the contention was he could have been a tour player if that’s what he chose to do since elementary school I wouldn’t argue. I will look forward to him playing in the Tahoe Celeb game when he retires to see what that looks like.
You're selling Barkley and Jorge and Jordan way short. Greinke was a great youth golfer as a kid, btw.
I heard tiger woods talk about this subject one time and he said everyone is so good and so young that you have to start focusing up and gearing to be a tour player by 5 or 6 years old. I think (and some golfers I know that played on professions tours - one on the pga tour) that his concept is more or less right (you have to groom from very young) but they thought 12 or 13 probably isn’t too late if you have a base of skills that’s very good like ZG would have had. But, they all think it’s absolutely imperative that you start getting tournament type reps on the AJGA circuit over summertime between 12-18. Greinke was focused, obviously, on baseball then. Could a very talented golfer at 22 or 23 or 24, which ZG would have been when he took his hiatus from baseball and thought about becoming a pro golfer make it? Maybe, but there’s not a ton of history of people doing that. He’s also a HOF type pitcher so maybe he’d have made it. I’m trying to think of a tour analogue that made it without playing college golf, or grinding on mini tours during the age of 18-24 and I can’t think of any off the top of my head, but they might be out there. The pga tour is the top 150 players in the world, in a truly global game. It’s insanely hard to get there. Harder to make that tour than make the NFL, NBA or MLB. I’ve known/played with against 3 tour player, 2 MLB players, 2 NFL players and zero NBA players (none of them any good relative to their peers in those professional endeavors, but they did all “make it to the show”. It’s so incredibly random for all but the best of the best of the best talent wise. Put another way, as far as natural ability goes all of those guys are/were top 5% of the population with crazy practice habits and work ethics. Even that, though, wasn’t good enough for super long and sustained careers in the majors and a certain amount of luck was there for all to make it. You have to be like a top 1% guy in physical ability to not have to “get lucky” to make it or have a solid career where you are a household name and getting set for life. All those guys are so ****ing good it’s hard to believe unless you see it up close and personal.
https://theathletic.com/1609738/?source=twitteradsbc&ad_id=28978674 Anybody want to unlock this, @J.R.? Also is JR banned or something? He didnt highlight when I @'ed him.
