Maverick McNealy's PGA Tour breakthrough didn't come by accident

Maverick McNealy’s PGA Tour breakthrough didn’t come by accident

Posted by Admin November 25, 2024 Golf

ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. – Maverick McNealy has long had a deal with his grandmother, Marm, that every time he cashes a tournament check for over $50,000, he must send her flowers. Each top-10 finish also earns Marm a box of chocolates.

Now, though, McNealy was going to need to up the ante, admitting, “I should probably get her something a little extra special.”

That’s because the 29-year-old McNealy is now a PGA Tour winner, his breakthrough, a one-shot victory Sunday at the RSM Classic, coming seven years after the former top-ranked amateur famously flirted with life as a career entrepreneur only to give professional golf his best shot.

What a decision that turned out to be.

“My mind’s gone blank, honestly,” McNealy said, nearly an hour after his winning, 72nd-hole putt dropped. “It was an unbelievable adrenaline rush there.”

Fitting, considering the journey he’s taken.

McNealy was once a hockey player who dabbled in golf, rarely playing outside his region. But he knew he wasn’t built for college hockey, and as a Stanford legacy, he verbally committed to his hometown Cardinal his junior year of high school. He was the third piece in a star-studded 2013 recruiting class that also included U.S. Junior winner Jim Liu and international prodigy Viraat Badhwar, so much so that he’d often 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.

Yet, it was McNealy who piled up the accolades – 11 college wins, tying the school record shared by Tiger Woods and Patrick Rodgers; two Walker Cup appearances; world’s top-ranked amateur.

“I had no expectations on me, and everything seemed to happen by accident,” McNealy said. “It came really easily and kind of caught me off guard, to be honest.”

McNealy had always dreamed of playing for Stanford, but after that, he figured, he’d dive into the business world, like his dad, Scott, the billionaire tech mogul who famously founded Sun Microsystems, which he later sold to Microsoft. McNealy’s LeBron James-like decision was much anticipated, but when he ultimately chose professional golf, he was all-in.

“The way I’m looking at it is I’m jumping off a cliff right now … and there’s no looking back and there’s no second guessing,” McNealy said the day he turned pro, in 2017.

A year later, McNealy was put to what is still today his biggest test. A rookie on the Korn Ferry Tour, McNealy developed the full-swing yips. He couldn’t play nine holes at TPC Summerlin, his home course in Las Vegas, without going through a dozen golf balls. It was so debilitating that McNealy phoned his caddie at the time, Travis McAllister, that he would be skipping the KFT Finals event in Columbus, Ohio.

What happened next was a potentially career-altering turning point.

“One of the most pivotal phone calls of my life,” McNealy explained. “He told me, ‘Get your butt on a plane and we’ll figure it out.’ Went there, I hit it 50 yards right off the first tee and we somehow made the cut.”

McNealy earned his PGA Tour card that next season – and he’s yet to relinquish it. In his first three seasons, he racked up nine top-10s, including a couple runners-up, and never finished worse than 68th in FedExCup points. Sure, victory eluded him, but based on his pedigree, it seemed only a matter of time.

Then he hurt his shoulder.

McNealy tore his left anterior sterno-clavicular in February 2023, an injury that sidelined him for about six months, required regenerative stem-cell treatments and forced him to take a major medical extension this year. Many pros would’ve been left devastated, or at least discouraged. But Joseph Bramlett, McNealy’s best friend on the PGA Tour, remembers, even in the early days of McNealy’s rehab, an inspiringly determined McNealy.

“As he does with anything,” Bramlett said, “he kept pushing, kept working, did all the right things. … He made the most of it.”

Did he ever. While away, McNealy polished off his pilot’s license, and he met his wife, Maya, who worked at the facility where McNealy did his physical therapy. The couple married last Dec. 6. McNealy also rebuilt his swing, flipping his path to swing left and taking pressure off his body.

“I never lost faith that I would be back better than ever,” McNealy said.

He just never expected it all to click on, of all weeks, this one.

The Seaside Course at Sea Island Golf Club is not a great fit for McNealy, with its slick Bermuda greens and demand for precise iron play. McNealy joked earlier in the week that the only reason he even signed up was because Maya loves the Lodge’s milk and cookies. But truth is, McNealy wanted to challenge himself, and having already locked up his place in the FedExCup’s top 60 – and spots in two early signature events next season – he had a free roll.

He also used the opportunity to put the new Titleist golf ball into play, and he flighted it well in windy conditions on Friday, backing up an opening 62 with a gutsy 70 to stay in the hunt. The next day, McNealy, for just the second time in his career, grabbed a share of the 54-hole lead, and earned a tee time in Sunday’s final threesome alongside co-leader Vince Whaley and Daniel Berger, who three years ago, at Pebble Beach, denied McNealy perhaps his best chance of become a PGA Tour winner.

One of McNealy’s greatest strengths is that he rarely grows impatient. He says he was prepared for his maiden professional win to take 10, maybe even 15 years. But he also isn’t perfect. McNealy recalled a conversation with Maya earlier this fall in which he was voicing his frustrations that he wasn’t getting the most out of his game.

Maya responded, “If you knew you were going to win in six weeks, would you do anything different?”

McNealy conceded: “Probably not.”

That was six weeks ago.

McNealy built a two-shot lead on Sunday before watching it evaporate. And a bogey at the par-4 14th knocked McNealy into the chasing pack, behind hotshot amateur Luke Clanton and red-hot Nico Echavarria, already a winner this fall. But Clanton and Echavarria both bogeyed the par-4 finishing hole to skid into the clubhouse at 15 under, tied with McNealy and Berger, who still had two holes to complete.

That’s when McNealy’s brother, Scout, stepped in. Scout, the youngest of the four McNealy boys, hopped on Maverick’s bag prior to the FedExCup Playoffs, leaving his job in real estate to loop for the remainder of the year. Scout’s greatest strength as a caddie is his lightheartedness, and as McNealy prepared to stroke an 11-footer for birdie on the par-3 17th, Scout, like he’d done all fall, took the opportunity to get in another joke.

Maverick declined to share what exactly was said, calling it not suitable for work. Scout wouldn’t divulge, either, but explained that the week had been full of inside jokes such as him getting applesauce all over his yardage book and his brother’s golf bag.

“I just try to keep him smiling and laughing,” Scout said, “and when he’s playing like he is, it’s easy.”

A hole late, Maverick stuffed his approach shot from 195 yards to 6 feet, using a 6-iron from a new TaylorMade set that McAllister, on his own volition, had shipped to McNealy’s doorstep before the fall. Following a missed birdie try by Berger, McNealy stepped up and sank the birdie dagger.

Moments later, Scout, still holding the flagstick, hugged Maverick and excitedly shouted, “Maui, baby!” By virtue of his win, McNealy earned an invite to next year’s Sentry, plus major starts at the Masters and PGA Championship; Scout will be on the bag for those, having accepted a full-time gig a few weeks ago in Japan.

Bramlett has known McNealy for decades, dating to when Maverick was a fearless middle-schooler challenging the Stanford players to chipping contests, and he had no doubt McNealy would pour in that winning putt. He calls McNealy one of the best putters in the world, a moniker McNealy proved last year when he led the PGA Tour in strokes gained: putting. McNealy’s not a bad coach, either, helping Bramlett with his putting this year, all while balancing life as a newlywed, playing off a medical and getting involved in PGA Tour politics; McNealy’s analysis of the current FedExCup points structure led the PGA Tour to adjust some inadequacies for next season.

“He takes incredible care of the people around him,” Scout said of Maverick, who is known for sending handwritten notes each offseason to sponsors, tournament organizers and even members of the media.

McNealy’s latest act of kindness came on Saturday night, when he said of Bramlett, who was battling to keep his card this week, “I would trade 100 trophies to have him on the PGA Tour next year.”

“Mav’s the best person,” Bramlett said. “Everything he does as a human being, he’s the best. He cares a lot about me. I care a lot about him. I’m really happy for him.”

So, even after losing his full status, Bramlett was greenside on No. 18 to watch McNealy lift his first PGA Tour trophy into the cloudless, blue sky. Joining Bramlett was Maya, Scout and one of McNealy’s other brothers, Dakota, plus McNealy’s longtime agent, Peter Webb, who flew in from Nashville just hours earlier. Maya’s job on Sunday was to have McNealy’s parents on speed dial, just in case McNealy finished the job.

McNealy’s mom, Susan, couldn’t stop crying. Scott couldn’t stop smiling.

It was Scott McNealy who first instilled the importance of a team to Maverick, who famously shared a room with all four of his brothers growing up, one wall lined with twin-sized beds. Now, McNealy was thanking a team that has grown well behind his family to include over a dozen people, ranging from performance staff to business personnel.

This win was no accident.

Every member of Team Mav had played a role in Sunday’s breakthrough, so in McNealy’s mind, this trophy was for all of them.

But it’d look best atop his grandmother’s mantel.