Calling An Audible

Sneak Peek: This article will appear in the May 20 issue of Global Golf Post.

When it came to sports, Drew Olson was first and foremost a football player. And a very good one at that, having made his way to the NFL as a quarterback in 2006 after starring in that position at UCLA. But when the San Francisco Bay Area native retired after two years in the league, he turned his athletic attention to golf. And over the past decade he has ventured into the elite amateur game, qualifying for a few USGA championships and earning invitations along the way to such notable tournaments as the Walter J. Travis Invitational, in which he teed off Friday at Garden City (N.Y.) Golf Club, not far from Bethpage Black, where the PGA Championship is being contested concurrently.

Not surprisingly, he is not able to devote nearly as much time to golf as he once did to football, which was his full-time job when he played for the Baltimore Ravens and then the Carolina Panthers and his hometown San Francisco 49ers. His work as head of business developmen...