Sitting in his office in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, three years ago – working as a mortgage loan officer with his dreams of playing the PGA Tour packed away like Christmas decorations in June – Ben Griffin believed he had made peace with his career decision.
Griffin had been a good college player at the University of North Carolina, and he had tried the pro game, but nine missed cuts in 12 combined starts on the Korn Ferry and PGA Tour Canada in 2019 dented his confidence and his bank account.
Like so many others, Griffin learned how hard it can be to love a game that doesn’t love you back.
“I didn’t miss it,” Griffin said at the Players Championship, where he spent parts of three days on the leaderboard before finishing T35 after a triple bogey on the 72nd hole cost him 22 spots, not to mention thousands of dollars.
Griffin spent his days and nights in Chapel Hill, where he was born and raised, hanging with friends, hitting the hot spots along Franklin Street and letting golf go on without him. He played, by his estimation, six rounds of golf in four months.
“That was the life I wanted at the time,” said Griffin, who is now ranked 76th in the world.
Invited by a friend to the 2020 Players Championship, Griffin showed up to attend a tournament-sponsored Chainsmokers concert the night before golf and everything else shut down due to COVID.
It was hard to imagine that three years later, Griffin would shoot 67 in the first round and be telling the story of how he got to the Stadium Course with a PGA Tour card rather than a hospitality ticket.
Griffin was working out of an office barely a wedge shot away from the third hole at UNC’s Finley Golf Course and from time to time he connected with Andrew DiBitetto, the Tar Heels men’s golf coach.
There were reminders of the game Griffin had left behind.
“I started having weird signs,” Griffin said. “My grandpa passed away and he got my dad into golf, who got me into golf. It was a family affair on my dad’s side for golf so when he passed away that kind of hit me. He would always say, ‘hit ‘em long and hit ‘em straight.’ That was a line in his obituary.
“I remember talking to my mom saying maybe I need to give golf another go. I accidentally drove to the golf course wearing my work clothes, wearing a button down, and I was like, ‘All right this needs to happen.’”
Soon after, Griffin showed up at the team’s practice facility with his clubs.
“I said, ‘What are you doing?’” DiBitetto recalls. “He said, ‘I’m back. I’m going to Q-school in the fall and in one year I’ll be on the PGA Tour.’”
That’s pretty close to how it happened.
“Before I’m thinking about, all right, how am I going to pay my rent, how am I going to pay my food? I’m not going to get guac at Chipotle; that’s what Viktor Hovland used to say. It’s stuff like that that’s real.” – Ben Griffin
Boosted by the financial support of friend Doug Sieg and Lord Abbett & Co., Griffin had the mental freedom to focus on golf rather than finances.
“I thought I was done. If it weren’t for Doug Sieg and Lord Abbett, he offered to pay all of my expenses for two years to play professional golf, and as a golfer, when you’re starting up, that is a humongous sigh of relief and huge for your confidence and everything because you don’t have to think about anything but winning,” said Griffin, who met Sieg at St. Simon’s Island, Georgia.
“Before I’m thinking about, all right, how am I going to pay my rent, how am I going to pay my food? I’m not going to get guac at Chipotle; that’s what Viktor Hovland used to say. It’s stuff like that that’s real.”
Griffin earned his Korn Ferry Tour privileges in the fall of 2021 and by midway through 2022, Griffin had assured himself of having his PGA Tour privileges this year, just the way he laid out to DiBitetto.
He tied for third in the Butterfield Bermuda Championship in October after carrying the lead into the final round. In 20 starts this season, Griffin has made 16 cuts, has six top-25 finishes and sits 39th in FedEx Cup points.
Griffin is teeing it up in the Valero Texas Open this week, chasing his first victory and the last available spot in the Masters next week.
At the Players Championship, Griffin came more fully into focus on the big stage. His hot start drew an abundance of media attention and when he holed a bunker shot for a birdie on the infamous par-3 17th on Sunday, Griffin burned a memory into the minds of the thousands surrounding the famous hole.
The closing triple bogey stung but couldn’t tarnish the larger picture.
“He has an amazing perspective,” DiBitetto said. “He is filled with gratitude and appreciative of so many things. He’s always smiling.”
“People think I’m a wizard for timing it so perfectly.” – Ben Griffin
Griffin has a big smile, and it may have taken stepping away from the game to rediscover it.
“For a guy like me, I competed against Scottie Scheffler and Collin Morikawa in junior golf and had success against them, won against them,” he said. “I knew deep down I had the talent. It was just a matter of figuring it out, maybe changing some off-course things, maybe drinking less and changing my diet. Just doing the right things off the course and on the course.
“Swing my swing more. Arnold Palmer always said that, and I feel like I was playing swing too much and not playing golf before I quit.”
At times, Griffin looks back on where he was to remind him of where he is. It didn’t hurt that he got out of the mortgage business before rates began to spike.
“People think I’m a wizard for timing it so perfectly,” Griffin said.
His smile says it all.