Ben Silverman: From 118 To Contending On PGA Tour
PALM BEACH GARDENS, FLORIDA | A few miles outside of Thornhill, Ontario, just north of Toronto, an unassuming retail outlet called Golf Town stands next to an adjoining furniture store. From the vast parking lot, you can see where the bustling 407 and 400 highways meet.
Inside, the turquoise ceiling looks down on a typical assortment of golf products. It’s nothing special, but it was here where Ben Silverman and his caddie, Dave Stone, worked as salesmen while harboring aspirations to be on a platform far larger than the store’s AstroTurf putting green.
If there weren’t customers roaming, Silverman and Stone would escape to the simulator and pound golf balls until the sound of the front door opening forced them into sales mode.
“We always snuck in there when we could when the store was dead,” Silverman said. “Or one guy would take a customer so the other guy could go in and hit some balls. We were still good employees, though. Nobody had any complaints.”
More than a decade later, the two Canadians can be found teaming in a successful player-caddie partnership on the PGA Tour. This week at the Honda Classic, the 31-year-old Silverman was tied for 13th heading into the weekend and threatening for the best finish of his fledgling career as he sat three strokes behind leaders Sungjae Im and Keith Mitchell.
It’s appropriate for Silverman to be playing well at PGA National since he has lived in Florida for the past 13 years. How he arrived here is a fascinating study in human psychology, which naturally was his major at Florida Atlantic University.
Around the time Silverman turned 16, he made an internal commitment to become a professional golfer. That’s a common dream for teenage golfers, but this one seemed far-fetched. Silverman was, to put it kindly, atrocious at golf. In his first junior tournament as a 16-year-old, shortly after he decided to pursue professional golf, he carded a 118.
Even if you haven’t been playing the game for long, shooting 40-something-over par in a tournament your junior year of high school is generally a sign you should focus on other endeavors. But Silverman, the son of a journeyman drummer who played with jazz legends such as Dizzy Gillespie, pressed on without fear. He graduated high school and then took a year off to practice every waking moment he could, dropping his handicap to a 12 in a matter of several weeks.
When one of his best friends in high school decided to play college golf at a small NAIA school in Miami called Johnson & Wales, Silverman opted to follow him. His friend had been teaching him the game and although Silverman wasn’t good enough for a scholarship, he agreed to walk on just for an outside chance.
South Floridians associate Johnson & Wales with its world-class culinary arts program, which has helped the school become the largest food service educator in the world. Silverman, who studied on the hospitality side during his couple of years there, is coincidentally a nutrition fanatic. He previously has vowed to never sign a deal with a company such as Coca-Cola because he wouldn’t put their ingredients in his body. One can only wonder what he thinks of Tiger Woods having a Monster energy drink logo on his bag.
Food and drink aside, the move to Johnson & Wales worked.
“I kind of blossomed on my own and had a great couple of years there,” Silverman said. “I met some great guys and had some good coaching and then transferred to a bigger Division I school after, which is what I wanted.”
The bigger school was a step up from NAIA, but it wasn’t a powerhouse, either. Silverman decided to attend Florida Atlantic in Boca Raton, even though there weren’t any available scholarships for him.
He didn’t care about that.
“I remember the first time I met with him,” retired Florida Atlantic coach Angelo Sands said. “I told him that there weren’t any scholarships available, but we offer tryouts and whoever plays in the tournaments is based off of the qualifiers. I didn’t care who you were, the best players were going to play.
“And he said, ‘That’s all I need to hear. I’m here to make the PGA Tour.’”
From that first meeting, Sands noticed something different about Silverman. It didn’t have to do with his physical gifts – he stands 5 foot 10 and weighs 160 pounds – but his ability to focus on every department of the game set him apart.
He worked out like he intended to play professional golf. He practiced that way, too. When he went home to Canada after the school year, those days spent hitting balls at Golf Town didn’t hurt his progression. He became good enough to be one of the better players on the team.
There’s a long discussion to be had over whether Silverman has been naturally gifted in the game all along and was just a late bloomer, or whether the dogged determination bullied his way there. If you’ve seen him on the range, there’s a good chance you’ve caught Silverman – a right-hander – calmly making smooth swings with a left-handed 9-iron and 3-wood. The practice is to help his body rotate more, but it’s also evidence that he has plenty of talent.
After FAU, Silverman worked at a few golf courses and then tried his hand on the Golfslinger.com Tour, now known as the Minor League Golf Tour. You may not have heard of it, but the circuit has enabled some future stars to start their careers. Brooks Koepka won the 2012 tour championship. That bodes well for Silverman, who won 34 times on the circuit, including two “majors” where the winner’s check reached $10,000.
He’s doing it for all of the little guys, the players who shot 118 and realized they couldn’t make it. He somehow got here. He says he owes it to them to continue his story.
Silverman was never a country club kid and may have run out of money chasing professional golf if it weren’t for Alan Appelbaum, a wealthy golf lover who met Silverman through a Jewish sports organization. The financial backing helped him as he got onto the Mackenzie Tour in Canada and eventually made it to the Web.com Tour in 2016. He missed his first eight cuts, but his persistence never drooped. He won the Price Cutter Charity Championship in 2017, which helped earn him a PGA Tour card for last year.
While Silverman was battling on mini-tours, his former co-worker, Stone, had found enough financial success caddying on the LPGA Tour to turn down Silverman’s multiple requests for the two to come together.
Until he made it to the PGA Tour. That was enough to convince Stone.
“We took two different paths to get here,” Silverman said. “I didn’t know he was out on the LPGA Tour for so long because I was out doing my own thing on mini-tours. As my status kept on getting better, I kept asking him to caddie. I finally convinced him.”
Silverman missed the top 125, failing to keep his card after a rough rookie season, but he made a 5-foot par putt in Web.com Tour Finals to earn back his PGA Tour status for this season.
Now here we are. Silverman opened the Honda Classic with a 4-under 66 and battled to a 1-over 71 the second day, which gave him a late third-round tee time with five-time PGA Tour winner Nick Watney.
As he played off the 11th tee Friday, Silverman opted for a driver on the watery par-4. Most players were taking a fairway wood to ensure they were short of a hazard off the tee, but he set up for a cut and let the wind take the ball over the corner of a dogleg. You couldn’t pull that shot off if you had any fear. It’s the swing of a confident player.
He’s doing it for all of the little guys, the players who shot 118 and realized they couldn’t make it. He somehow got here. He says he owes it to them to continue his story.
“It just makes me work harder,” he said as the sun set behind him near PGA National’s 18th green. “You probably get a lot more people cheering for you because everyone loves underdogs and guys who come from a different background who are making it.”
It was the longest of long shots. Now it’s reality.