DALLAS, TEXAS | Aaron Wise has been a winner his whole life. He started as a highly touted recruit out of Santiago High School in greater Los Angeles, captured the 2016 NCAA Championship as a University of Oregon player and was the PGA Tour Rookie of the Year last season.
Wise skipped the battling on countless mini-tours. He traded it for a quick ascension to the top 50 in the world on the strength of winning last year’s AT&T Byron Nelson and the runner-up finish at the Wells Fargo Championship that preceded it.
He was ready for his rapid rise. But he wasn’t prepared for what occurred in the immediate aftermath. Wise, suddenly engulfed with media attention, missed the cut in his next five starts.
“It just came at a really bad time,” Wise remembers. “Lot of media was on me. I was kind of that hot item, if you want to call it, out here, and then to go on and play bad with all that media around me, it was a tough time."
The 22-year-old rebounded and reached the Tour Championship, but his tale underscores a valuable lesson...
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