ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. – Maverick McNealy has lengthy had a cope with his grandmother, Marm, that each time he cashes a event test for over $50,000, he should ship her flowers. Every top-10 end additionally earns Marm a field of sweets.
Now, although, McNealy was going to wish to up the ante, admitting, “I ought to in all probability get her one thing slightly additional particular.”
That’s as a result of the 29-year-old McNealy is now a PGA Tour winner, his breakthrough, a one-shot victory Sunday on the RSM Traditional, coming seven years after the previous top-ranked beginner famously flirted with life as a profession entrepreneur solely to offer skilled golf his finest shot.
What a choice that turned out to be.
“My thoughts’s gone clean, truthfully,” McNealy stated, practically an hour after his successful, 72nd-hole putt dropped. “It was an unbelievable adrenaline rush there.”
Becoming, contemplating the journey he’s taken.
McNealy was as soon as a hockey participant who dabbled in golf, hardly ever taking part in exterior his area. However he knew he wasn’t constructed for school hockey, and as a Stanford legacy, he verbally dedicated to his hometown Cardinal his junior yr of highschool. He was the third piece in a star-studded 2013 recruiting class that additionally included U.S. Junior winner Jim Liu and worldwide prodigy Viraat Badhwar, a lot in order that he’d typically joke that head coach Conrad Ray’s trio of signees featured three Nos. 1 – No. 1 in America, No. 1 in Australia and No. 1 in Portola Valley.
But, it was McNealy who piled up the accolades – 11 faculty wins, tying the varsity document shared by Tiger Woods and Patrick Rodgers; two Walker Cup appearances; world’s top-ranked beginner.
“I had no expectations on me, and the whole lot appeared to occur accidentally,” McNealy stated. “It got here actually simply and form of caught me off guard, to be trustworthy.”
McNealy had all the time dreamed of taking part in for Stanford, however after that, he figured, he’d dive into the enterprise world, like his dad, Scott, the billionaire tech mogul who famously based Solar Microsystems, which he later offered to Microsoft. McNealy’s LeBron James-like resolution was a lot anticipated, however when he finally selected skilled golf, he was all-in.
“The way in which I’m taking a look at it’s I’m leaping off a cliff proper now … and there’s no wanting again and there’s no second guessing,” McNealy stated the day he turned professional, in 2017.
A yr later, McNealy was put to what’s nonetheless in the present day his greatest take a look at. A rookie on the Korn Ferry Tour, McNealy developed the full-swing yips. He couldn’t play 9 holes at TPC Summerlin, his house course in Las Vegas, with out going via a dozen golf balls. It was so debilitating that McNealy phoned his caddie on the time, Travis McAllister, that he could be skipping the KFT Finals occasion in Columbus, Ohio.
What occurred subsequent was a doubtlessly career-altering turning level.
“Some of the pivotal cellphone calls of my life,” McNealy defined. “He instructed me, ‘Get your butt on a aircraft and we’ll determine it out.’ Went there, I hit it 50 yards proper off the primary tee and we one way or the other made the lower.”
McNealy earned his PGA Tour card that subsequent season – and he’s but to relinquish it. In his first three seasons, he racked up 9 top-10s, together with a pair runners-up, and by no means completed worse than 68th in FedExCup factors. Certain, victory eluded him, however primarily based on his pedigree, it appeared solely a matter of time.
Then he damage his shoulder.
McNealy tore his left anterior sterno-clavicular in February 2023, an harm that sidelined him for about six months, required regenerative stem-cell remedies and compelled him to take a significant medical extension this yr. Many execs would’ve been left devastated, or a minimum of discouraged. However Joseph Bramlett, McNealy’s finest pal on the PGA Tour, remembers, even within the early days of McNealy’s rehab, an inspiringly decided McNealy.
“As he does with something,” Bramlett stated, “he saved pushing, saved working, did all the best issues. … He made probably the most of it.”
Did he ever. Whereas away, McNealy polished off his pilot’s license, and he met his spouse, Maya, who labored on the facility the place McNealy did his bodily remedy. The couple married final Dec. 6. McNealy additionally rebuilt his swing, flipping his path to swing left and taking strain off his physique.
“I by no means misplaced religion that I’d be again higher than ever,” McNealy stated.
He simply by no means anticipated all of it to click on on, of all weeks, this one.
The Seaside Course at Sea Island Golf Membership shouldn’t be an amazing match for McNealy, with its slick Bermuda greens and demand for exact iron play. McNealy joked earlier within the week that the one cause he even signed up was as a result of Maya loves the Lodge’s milk and cookies. However fact is, McNealy wished to problem himself, and having already locked up his place within the FedExCup’s prime 60 – and spots in two early signature occasions subsequent season – he had a free roll.
He additionally used the chance to place the brand new Titleist golf ball into play, and he flighted it properly in windy circumstances on Friday, backing up a gap 62 with a gutsy 70 to remain within the hunt. The following day, McNealy, for simply the second time in his profession, grabbed a share of the 54-hole lead, and earned a tee time in Sunday’s remaining threesome alongside co-leader Vince Whaley and Daniel Berger, who three years in the past, at Pebble Seaside, denied McNealy maybe his finest probability of develop into a PGA Tour winner.
One among McNealy’s biggest strengths is that he hardly ever grows impatient. He says he was ready for his maiden skilled win to take 10, perhaps even 15 years. However he additionally isn’t good. McNealy recalled a dialog with Maya earlier this fall through which he was voicing his frustrations that he wasn’t getting probably the most out of his sport.
Maya responded, “Should you knew you have been going to win in six weeks, would you do something totally different?”
McNealy conceded: “In all probability not.”
That was six weeks in the past.
McNealy constructed a two-shot lead on Sunday earlier than watching it evaporate. And a bogey on the par-4 14th knocked McNealy into the chasing pack, behind hotshot beginner Luke Clanton and red-hot Nico Echavarria, already a winner this fall. However Clanton and Echavarria each bogeyed the par-4 ending gap to skid into the clubhouse at 15 beneath, tied with McNealy and Berger, who nonetheless had two holes to finish.
That’s when McNealy’s brother, Scout, stepped in. Scout, the youngest of the 4 McNealy boys, hopped on Maverick’s bag previous to the FedExCup Playoffs, leaving his job in actual property to loop for the rest of the yr. Scout’s biggest energy as a caddie is his lightheartedness, and as McNealy ready to stroke an 11-footer for birdie on the par-3 seventeenth, Scout, like he’d completed all fall, took the chance to get in one other joke.
Maverick declined to share what precisely was stated, calling it not appropriate for work. Scout wouldn’t expose, both, however defined that the week had been filled with inside jokes comparable to him getting applesauce throughout his yardage guide and his brother’s golf bag.
“I simply attempt to hold him smiling and laughing,” Scout stated, “and when he’s taking part in like he’s, it’s straightforward.”
A gap late, Maverick stuffed his strategy shot from 195 yards to six toes, utilizing a 6-iron from a brand new TaylorMade set that McAllister, on his personal volition, had shipped to McNealy’s doorstep earlier than the autumn. Following a missed birdie attempt by Berger, McNealy stepped up and sank the birdie dagger.
Moments later, Scout, nonetheless holding the flagstick, hugged Maverick and excitedly shouted, “Maui, child!” By advantage of his win, McNealy earned an invitation to subsequent yr’s Sentry, plus main begins on the Masters and PGA Championship; Scout will likely be on the bag for these, having accepted a full-time gig just a few weeks in the past in Japan.
Bramlett has identified McNealy for many years, courting to when Maverick was a fearless middle-schooler difficult the Stanford gamers to chipping contests, and he had little question McNealy would pour in that successful putt. He calls McNealy top-of-the-line putters on the earth, a moniker McNealy proved final yr when he led the PGA Tour in strokes gained: placing. McNealy’s not a foul coach, both, serving to Bramlett along with his placing this yr, all whereas balancing life as a newlywed, taking part in off a medical and getting concerned in PGA Tour politics; McNealy’s evaluation of the present FedExCup factors construction led the PGA Tour to regulate some inadequacies for subsequent season.
“He takes unimaginable care of the folks round him,” Scout stated of Maverick, who is understood for sending handwritten notes every offseason to sponsors, event organizers and even members of the media.
McNealy’s newest act of kindness got here on Saturday evening, when he stated of Bramlett, who was battling to maintain his card this week, “I’d commerce 100 trophies to have him on the PGA Tour subsequent yr.”
“Mav’s the most effective individual,” Bramlett stated. “The whole lot he does as a human being, he’s the most effective. He cares so much about me. I care so much about him. I’m actually blissful for him.”
So, even after dropping his full standing, Bramlett was greenside on No. 18 to look at McNealy raise his first PGA Tour trophy into the cloudless, blue sky. Becoming a member of Bramlett was Maya, Scout and one in all McNealy’s different brothers, Dakota, plus McNealy’s longtime agent, Peter Webb, who flew in from Nashville simply hours earlier. Maya’s job on Sunday was to have McNealy’s dad and mom on pace dial, simply in case McNealy completed the job.
McNealy’s mother, Susan, couldn’t cease crying. Scott couldn’t cease smiling.
It was Scott McNealy who first instilled the significance of a workforce to Maverick, who famously shared a room with all 4 of his brothers rising up, one wall lined with twin-sized beds. Now, McNealy was thanking a workforce that has grown properly behind his household to incorporate over a dozen folks, starting from efficiency employees to enterprise personnel.
This win was no accident.
Each member of Workforce Mav had performed a job in Sunday’s breakthrough, so in McNealy’s thoughts, this trophy was for all of them.
But it surely’d look finest atop his grandmother’s mantel.
