Ed. Note: This personal message from Global Golf Post publisher Jim Nugent, which ran in the Monday issue of GGP, is being reprised today for our GGP+ subscribers.
For various reasons, all of them very personal, American Thanksgiving has been my favorite of all holidays since my college days back in the 1970s.
This year, I contemplated crafting a Thanksgiving message for our readers and advertisers. Something that would codify why I feel the way I do about this holiday, as opposed to Christmas or the Fourth of July. And something that would express my gratitude to all who support Global Golf Post.
Not being a natural born wordsmith, I struggled mightily in putting words to paper … or in our case, pixels to screen.
And then, with time running out, I came across a powerful message found in a most unexpected place: Twitter.
It was a tweet posted last week by a professional golfer named Scott Langley. At 32 years old, he announced he was retiring from professional golf.
— Scott Langley (@Scott_Langley) November 17, 2021
I did not know Langley personally, but I watched his amateur career closely and covered him in the pages of GGP. He played his college golf at the University of Illinois through 2011 and three years ago was inducted into that school’s Athletics Hall of Fame.
Langley enrolled at Illinois in the fall 2007, and nine months later he was named freshman of the year in the Big Ten after leading the team in scoring average for most of the season. He won twice as a sophomore and was named first-team All-Big Ten and Academic All-Big Ten.
It was during his junior year that people began to really take notice, as Langley won the individual title at the NCAA Championships. An eventful summer followed, during which he tied for 16th to share low amateur at the U.S. Open, reached the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur, and represented the United States at the World Team Amateur Championship in Argentina. In his senior year, he was a semifinalist for the Ben Hogan award and rose to No. 13 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.
Many Walker Cup observers thought he should have been on the 2011 squad that captain Jim Holtgrieve took to Royal Aberdeen in Scotland. I was one of those observers who felt that way, based mostly on his body of work in his college career.
It was not to be, but a successful pro career seemed assured.
Until he walked away from it last week, without a single regret.
There is a school of thought that says successful tour pros need to be of a certain stature – a certain height and weight – and must generate extraordinary swing speed just to reach the PGA Tour, never mind succeeding there. The left-handed Langley, despite his lone career victory in the 2018 Web.com Panama Championship, didn’t check those boxes.
Still, as his tweet pointed out, his dream was simply to play among the world’s elite professionals. “All I ever wanted was to play on the PGA Tour,” he told me last week. And he did that for five years, making 78 out of 142 cuts and winning north of $3.5 million. “I didn’t accomplish all of my goals, but I did accomplish many of them.”
Langley spent the better part of the past two years laboring on the Korn Ferry Tour, without experiencing much success. This summer he said he began to feel “the pull to be home” with his wife, Kristy, and their two young daughters. He came to the realization that 200 nights a year in hotel rooms was incompatible with the family life he envisioned.
And so as he ended his pro career, he wanted to thank the people who made his journey possible. “I’m not a big social media guy,” he said. “But the game has brought so many people into my life, and I wanted to say thank you in a meaningful way.”
Soon, Langley will begin a career in the financial services industry. As for seeking reinstatement of his amateur status, he said he hasn’t given it much thought. I’d be surprised if we didn’t see him out there on the mid-amateur fairways in the not-too-distant future.
Scott Langley wrote a message about gratitude. His words in the tweet embedded here express my emotions, even though we are in different worlds of the same game.
Langley’s missive closed with a simple phrase: Thank you. And with that gracious note of appreciation, it hit me: That was what I really wanted to say this Thanksgiving.
Thank you to my talented colleagues, worldwide, who fought through COVID-19, kept spirits high and continued to publish best-in-class golf journalism.
To our business partners, and there are many, who provide us the tools we need to do our jobs.
To our readers, who inspire us to reach beyond what we think possible all year long.
And to our advertisers, whose business with us makes the whole enterprise possible.
Finally, to our investors, without whom GGP would simply be an idea, not a going concern.
Scott Langley wrote a message about gratitude. His words in the tweet embedded here express my emotions, even though we are in different worlds of the same game.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.