Editor’s note: “In Case You Missed It” is a GGP+ feature that highlights a story from Global Golf Post‘s Monday magazine.
Steve Wheatcroft was in the lunchroom at the Lakeview Health treatment facility in Jacksonville, Florida, last May taking the necessary steps to work past his alcohol addiction when he saw PGA Tour players and caddies wearing red and black ribbons during the final round of the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas.
Wheatcroft, who played seven seasons on the Korn Ferry Tour with two wins and seven middle-of-the-road seasons on the PGA Tour before surrendering his pro golf career in 2019, could tell from the television that something had happened but he didn’t know what – or to whom.
He saw Peter Malnati crying during an interview and that’s when an image of Grayson Murray with the dates 1993-2024 flashed on the screen.
“I lost it. I started bawling. I knew what he was going through. Oh my God, that could be me, should be me,” said Wheatcroft, who knew Murray through their years of playing professional golf.
“There’s no difference. You could have swapped his name out for mine. It’s the same story. I thought he was on the clean. Turns out he wasn’t.”
The news of Murray’s suicide affected Wheatcroft to the point counselors at the treatment center checked on him through the night. Wheatcroft assured them he was fine, happy in fact to be where he was, but it was another soul-searing reminder of how the world works for some people.
More than nine months later, Wheatcroft, has emerged from the dark side of the moon and now he is founder and CEO of the Mulligan Foundation, a non-profit he began with the goal of helping athletes with their mental health.
In recent years, swimmer Michael Phelps, gymnast Simone Biles and quarterback Dak Prescott are among the high-profile athletes who have publicly shared their mental health challenges, bringing more light to a subject that reaches across society.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, approximately one in five Americans lives with mental health issues in some form.
Golf, with its solitary demands and mental gymnastics, can be a breeding ground for mental health issues, particularly at the highest levels whether as a competitive player or a club pro. The demands, the time commitment, the often sharp line between success and failure can all be contributing factors to a golfer’s mental health.
“I think it’s awesome what he’s doing. Being a professional golfer it can be very lonely and you can go to some very dark places,” said former tour player turned TV analyst Colt Knost, a longtime friend of Wheatcroft’s.
“Dak Prescott and Luka Dončić can play bad and they can still win. With golf, it’s all on you and when you’re playing bad, there’s no one but your support system to really pick you up. You can go down these dark paths. These things happen and I think it happens more than people think.”
Wheatcroft has been there, lived through the darkness and wants to use his experiences to help others avoid the path he walked.
“I went through some hell of my own, and I can relate to a lot of what you’re doing right now,” is the message Wheatcroft shares with the people he talks with.
Wheatcroft’s backstory goes like this: He lived a good life in a blue-collar town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was raised by two wonderful parents, didn’t take his first drink until he was 18 and thought the PGA Tour was for someone else.
He was a walk-on golfer at Indiana University and was good enough to keep going. Wheatcroft played the mini-tours, driving back roads, hitting practice balls off mats and scraping together enough money to keep going even when he wanted to quit.
After seven years of scuffling on the Korn Ferry Tour, Wheatcroft earned his PGA Tour card with its bounty of riches attached. He had to regain it six times because as good as he was, Wheatcroft wasn’t good enough.
Deep down, he knew it.
“I busted my ass to be average,” Wheatcroft wrote about himself recently.
If Wheatcroft had an advantage, it was his mental toughness. Or so he thought.
In 2019 with full status on the Korn Ferry Tour, Wheatcroft called it a career. The game had become a job and the job wasn’t fun anymore.
Wheatcroft became a financial advisor and embraced his new life. He had a good first year and a better second year. Then what Wheatcroft expected to be a big deal stalled. An anticipated $40,000 commission evaporated. His family’s financial future was suddenly hazy.
The kids were at school. His wife was at an appointment. A feeling of panic engulfed Wheatcroft.
So he poured himself a vodka and orange juice – at 7:15 a.m. one morning.
“The worst drink I ever poured in my life because I know where it led,” Wheatcroft said.
Then he poured another and thinks he may have poured a third to drink on his way to the office.
Wheatcroft said it was easier to numb himself for a few hours than deal with the problems facing him and so it went for months.
“I got to almost 305 pounds at one point … I mean, when you’re drinking 2,000 calories a day, and then on top of all your food, and you’re not working out like you used to … ” Wheatcroft said.
“My wife looked at me one day when we were standing in the bathroom, and she’s like, ‘I don’t even recognize you anymore. And it’s not just physical, you’re not there mentally.’
“And I knew she was right. I hate [that] I wouldn’t look in a mirror for a year and a half. I would walk by every one of them because I hated what I saw in the mirror.”
He wasn’t Steve the pro golfer any more.
“I had no idea who I was anymore,” said Wheatcroft, who turned 47 last week.
‘I had to get used to being me again.’
When Wheatcroft left Lakeview Health last summer after his 40-day rehab, he was clean and afraid.
“I’ve lived in Jacksonville for 18 years now, and even when I got picked up by my wife and kids, and I was driving through downtown, it felt like a foreign country. It was so strange, because I was scared to be out there,” Wheatcroft said.
“I’m driving by liquor stores or grocery stores, or just places that now, all of a sudden, looked different to me than they did before I went in, and I was just nervous to see what was going to happen.
“I had to get used to being me again.”
The urge to drink was gone. There was a moment or two, Wheatcroft said, when he felt a flicker of interest in having a cocktail but it passed and now it feels far away.
What stayed with Wheatcroft was the feeling he knew a secret no one else knew. It wasn’t just the drinking he dealt with in the treatment center. It was learning to cope with the depression that came along with the drinking like they were best friends.
Having spent all those years chasing golf’s ephemeral magic, knowing he was getting by on more toughness than talent, Wheatcroft lost himself before he found what he’s now living for.
“I told Jay (Monahan), point blank, look, I’m the poster child for why your stuff isn’t working over there right now, because I was the guy you were trying to save. I was the guy that needed help.” – Steve Wheatcroft
Hitting balls on the range at TPC Sawgrass after leaving the treatment center, Wheatcroft and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan struck up a conversation and Wheatcroft shared his story. For a while, he talked with the tour about doing what he’s now doing through the Mulligan Foundation in helping athletes with mental health issues but nothing was formalized with the tour.
“I told Jay, point blank, look, I’m the poster child for why your stuff isn’t working over there right now, because I was the guy you were trying to save. I was the guy that needed help,” Wheatcroft said.
“I said, I just want to stand on stage at the player meeting and tell everybody my story and have my phone number behind me on a blackboard and just say, take your phone out, put it in your phone so at least you have it. You’re probably thinking you’re never going to need it … I don’t care if you put it in there as break glass in case of emergency, like, but if you call me, you’re free to talk about whatever you want.”
The tour connection didn’t happen but Wheatcroft found other ways to share his message.
Wheatcroft still doesn’t know what made him do it but one day he wrote a letter directed at professional golfers, describing his journey and his willingness to listen to whomever might need to talk about their own demons.
After debating whether or not to post the letter, Wheatcroft finally hit the send button on social media and his letter went out to the world. He wondered about what he had just done.
“I told my wife, I’m like, I’m gonna go walk the dog. Took like, an hourlong walk. I left my phone at home. Didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to touch it. And I came back after the hour, and I just kept looking at my phone,” Wheatcroft said.
When he finally summoned the nerve to open his phone, he discovered his letter had already been reposted more than 100,000 times.
It was real.
Over the next few days, the messages poured in. USGA CEO Mike Whan reached out. Representatives of the PGA of America, club pros, directors of golf, professional golfers, they all reached out.
“The messages were a lot of, hey, I was so grateful to see your message. It meant so much to me, because I’ve been battling the same things, and thought I was kind of alone in what I was doing,” Wheatcroft recalled.
The messages kept coming. Wheatcroft has talked with those he could. He created a podcast to reach more people and the Mulligan Foundation has formalized some of the work, building a base around which to reach out.
‘You don’t keep this stuff in.’
Recently, Wheatcroft was at TPC Sawgrass when he ran into a successful tour player.
“He talked for probably five minutes, and by the end of the five minutes, he was exhausted,” Wheatcroft said. “I could see it in his face … his face was exhausted. And … he’s not even 30 years old yet.”
This week, Wheatcroft will do his first speaking engagement with the New England PGA section. He’s also booked for a Zoom presentation to sections in New York and Philadelphia and an in-person event in Pittsburgh.
“More than anything else, it’s just opening conversation, opening dialogue, trying to let people know that, hey, it’s OK to not be OK. You don’t have to sit there and grin and bear it,” Wheatcroft said.
“Those guys are living incredibly hard lives of 70-hour work weeks for small amounts of money, and they’re around drinking and golf all the time. So it’s like you’re bound to end up in a bad place if you’re not careful.”
“I’m not a licensed therapist. I’m licensed in missing cuts; I’m licensed in drinking too much; I’m licensed in traveling 40 weeks a year; I’m licensed in the grind of the PGA Tour.” – Steve Wheatcroft
At the PGA Show in Orlando, Florida, recently, Ben Alexander, a PGA professional and general manager of The Oaks in Somersworth, New Hampshire, reached out to Wheatcroft after hearing his podcast, “The Uncomfortable Chat.”
They met for the first time in Orlando and shared their stories.
“It was just two guys talking. If you’ve been around any recovery you feel alone then there’s an epiphany and you realize you’re not,” said Alexander, who has been in recovery for more than three years.
“I feel a little army brewing here. I didn’t realize how much movement was going, but I feel it’s long overdue.”
It was Alexander who helped arrange for Wheatcroft to speak to multiple PGA sections this week.
Wheatcroft is careful to point out that he does not have a degree in psychology or human behavior. All he has is his own experience.
“I’m not a licensed therapist. I’m licensed in missing cuts; I’m licensed in drinking too much; I’m licensed in traveling 40 weeks a year; I’m licensed in the grind of the PGA Tour. That’s where my licenses stop,” Wheatcroft said.
What Wheatcroft has is his own story to tell.
“I feel like I need to do this. I didn’t even know if I wanted to do it but I needed to do it,” he said.
“All I’m trying to do is get people to understand you don’t keep this stuff in. If you do, it will eat your life away.”