As things currently sit: The glitz and glamour is now and forever will be shined upon those who play out childhood dreams and maintain status in the world of professional golf.
Then there is this: You should reserve healthy respect for those for whom perspective and reality are strong suits. In other words, cheers to those who know when to cut the cord, stop chasing the pro golf dream, and discover happiness outside of golf.
Where once they were junior golf standouts and elite collegians, Cameron Wilson and Stephanie Kono today are successful players in the real world, quite content, thank you very much, and totally appreciative of those doors that golf helped open.
Ditto Jake Shuman and Brent Wanner. Oh, and to be honest, so are hundreds of others, because sometimes to those who are up and close and within the playing arena, the passion can run dry.
“I got burned out and at the time, I didn’t have any status,” said Wilson, who graduated from Stanford in 2014 and chased pro golf for three years. “I wasn’t enjoying it. I was happy when I envisioned myself doing something else.”
Said Kono, who graduated from UCLA in 2012: “I got injured in 2015 (a disk in her back) and was never really the same. I was sitting out, wondering, ‘How much longer do I want to do this?’ That was stressful.”
Mind you, both Wilson and Kono savored great success so it’s not as if they didn’t have fuel for their pro golf dreams.
The pride of Rowayton, Conn., Wilson was the individual NCAA champion in 2014, though he’ll tell you it was bittersweet because his talented Stanford team (Patrick Rodgers and Maverick McNealy were among those alongside) “gave one away there” and lost in the semifinals.
Kono, a high school teammate of Michelle Wie at the Punahou School in Honolulu, was part of UCLA’s NCAA women’s championship team in 2011. Her pursuit of the LPGA Tour lasted through 2019, but she was injured much of it.
“My back kept me from progressing,” she said.
However, in a world that has been tumultuously soiled by this sadness called NIL, we can restore some of our faith in a time-honored concept called education. Don’t get me wrong, golf was the vehicle which drove Wilson to Stanford, Kono to UCLA, Shuman to Duke, and Wanner to Wake Forest, but each of them – and many others like them – took their opportunity for an elite education seriously.
Today, their pursuits are tributes to their educational success. Please tell me that still holds great value in today's world.
Wilson, who went to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies following Stanford, works for the Department of Energy in the loan program office.
Kono is a research assistant for Voloridge Investment Mgt. in Jupiter, Fla.
Shuman (Duke ’18) remains in the Boston area in the financial services industry.
As for Wanner’s intriguing road since leaving Wake Forest in 2003, he did graduate studies in energy and environment at Duke and eventually landed with the International Energy Agency in Paris. His title is head of the power sector unit of the World Energy Outlook.
Paris? Work with a global firm? Sounds better than grinding over 6-footers on Friday to make the cut.
Now entrenched in the business world, Stephanie Kono still embraces the chance to compete, like this winning effort in the Florida Women's Mid-Am championship.
But that speaks to what is deep within a lot of these very talented golfers and very worldy young people. Shuman, for instance, never looked at pro golf as the end-all – not when he was a high schooler, not when he was at Duke.
He knew people saw the best of the best week in and week out on television, and that they made piles of money. Ah, but he also knew this – “that’s not the reality for 99.9 percent (of those who chase pro golf).”
What separates a lot of these quality golfers who decide to lean on their education and not their clubhead speed is self-confidence to know they will achieve happiness outside of golf.
“There’s a sense of comfort (with golf). It’s what you know,” said Kono. “It’s hard to break from that comfort zone. Golf is great, but it can be confining. I always had an open mind; I wanted to learn.”
What struck Wilson early on with pro golf was the “big change in lifestyle.” Whereas collegians were used to chunks of time off between tournaments, the pro life had him on the road all the time. “There was no rhythm and it takes a lot to get used to.”
Still, he did not set up a timetable and choose a route to travel if things did not work out. “That would make it sound like I had a plan,” he laughed. “Fact is, I didn’t know what I wanted.”
But he knew what Kono knew. And what Shuman and Wanner knew. “I trusted (my education) would open doors,” said Wilson.
Long removed from that glorious stretch of golf at Prairie Dunes in Hutchinson, Kan., 54 holes of ball-striking brilliance that prompted Stanford coach Conrad Ray to call Wilson “maybe the most overlooked player here,” the onetime junior standout from Connecticut is quite content where he is.
“Not typically,” he said, when asked if he misses pro golf. But, yes, he still loves the game, even if he only gets a chance to play five-to-10 rounds a year.
Kono and Shuman would agree; they do not miss the demands of a pro golf life. But they, too, love the game and they do their best to keep the competitive fires burning.
Shuman recently won the Hornblower Memorial in Plymouth, Mass., outplaying a solid field of amateurs. Kono, meanwhile, welcomed her reinstatement to the amateur ranks in dramatic fashion – she shot 68-72-75 to win the Florida Women’s Mid-Amateur by one.
When she interviewed for her job at Voloridge, Kono said “the people knew nothing about me and my golf.” That pleased her – and when she got the job it meant even more.
It told her that she had done things the right way, that she had sacrificed a lot on the social end to be part of a championship golf team at UCLA, but so, too, had she not taken anything away from the studies.
“I still love the game. It gave me so much,” said Kono. “But what I really value about my moving on from golf is that it meant I had kept an open mind.”
Translation: Having studied well, Kono has proven that a time-honored value is not extinct.
