He Started Golf at 37. His Kid’s Been on the Bag Ever Since.
Most of us took up golf with some kind of promise to whoever we live with. It's just a hobby, I'll use the old clubs in the garage. When William Thomas picked up a club for the first time at 37, his wife kept it simpler: have fun, just don't go crazy buying stuff.
That held up about as well as it does for the rest of us. Five years later he's walked away from a 19-year career in finance to work toward becoming a PGA professional, so technically the gear is a business expense now.
h/t to Kaitlyn Ross (@reporterkait), whose Instagram reel put William on our radar. KVUE has the longer story.
The first round
That's where the jokes stop for a minute. William's dad was a golfer. He died of cancer in 2017, and the two of them never got to play a round together.
On Good Friday in 2021, which was also his father's birthday, William went out with a few men from his church and played his first round of golf. He brought his 10-year-old son, Phillip.
Five years on the bag
Phillip is 15 now and still caddies for his dad. He's watched his father go from never having swung a club to chasing PGA membership in his 40s, and nobody's learning curve in this game is pretty. If William's first couple of years looked anything like yours or mine, Phillip has handed over a lot of clubs that didn't do what anyone planned.
The KVUE piece points out that on the bag, Phillip gets to see how his dad handles it when things don't go his way. Most golf dads worry about whether their kids have a good grip. What the kids are actually picking up is what a grown man does after he makes a triple. Does he wrap a 7-iron around a tree, or does he walk to the next tee and get on with it? Phillip has had five years of the answer.
The late-start thing
William has said he'd have liked to start earlier, for the skill. Anyone who found golf after 30 knows that feeling. Your buddy who played in high school swings like he's half asleep and hits it 280, while you stand over the ball running through eleven swing thoughts and a prayer.
He's also said that for the story, and for the life golf has given him, he's glad he started when he did.
He's a Navy veteran and a dad of four. He's in the Georgia PGA associate program, which usually takes about four years, and he puts himself about a third of the way through. He left a steady paycheck to do it.
Most of us aren't quitting our jobs for golf. (Some of us have thought about it on the 14th hole on a sunny Friday.) We're squeezing in a few rounds a month around work and a group chat that can't commit to a tee time. The part of William's story that fits the rest of us is smaller than turning pro: he started late, was bad at it in front of people, and kept showing up while the people who love him watched how he handled it.
Good luck the rest of the way, William. Same to Phillip, who has the tougher job: talking his dad out of the driver.