ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. – Maverick McNealy has lengthy had a cope with his grandmother, Marm, that each time he cashes a match examine for over $50,000, he should ship her flowers. Every top-10 end additionally earns Marm a field of sweets.
Now, although, McNealy was going to want to up the ante, admitting, “I ought to most likely get her one thing a bit of further particular.”
That’s as a result of the 29-year-old McNealy is now a PGA Tour winner, his breakthrough, a one-shot victory Sunday on the RSM Basic, coming seven years after the previous top-ranked novice famously flirted with life as a profession entrepreneur solely to present skilled golf his greatest shot.
What a call that turned out to be.
“My thoughts’s gone clean, truthfully,” McNealy mentioned, almost an hour after his profitable, 72nd-hole putt dropped. “It was an unbelievable adrenaline rush there.”
Becoming, contemplating the journey he’s taken.
McNealy was as soon as a hockey participant who dabbled in golf, hardly ever taking part in outdoors his area. However he knew he wasn’t constructed for faculty hockey, and as a Stanford legacy, he verbally dedicated to his hometown Cardinal his junior yr of highschool. He was the third piece in a star-studded 2013 recruiting class that additionally included U.S. Junior winner Jim Liu and worldwide prodigy Viraat Badhwar, a lot in order that he’d usually joke that head coach Conrad Ray’s trio of signees featured three Nos. 1 – No. 1 in America, No. 1 in Australia and No. 1 in Portola Valley.
But, it was McNealy who piled up the accolades – 11 faculty wins, tying the varsity file shared by Tiger Woods and Patrick Rodgers; two Walker Cup appearances; world’s top-ranked novice.
“I had no expectations on me, and every thing appeared to occur accidentally,” McNealy mentioned. “It got here actually simply and sort of caught me off guard, to be sincere.”
McNealy had all the time dreamed of taking part in for Stanford, however after that, he figured, he’d dive into the enterprise world, like his dad, Scott, the billionaire tech mogul who famously based Solar Microsystems, which he later bought to Microsoft. McNealy’s LeBron James-like resolution was a lot anticipated, however when he finally selected skilled golf, he was all-in.
“The best way I’m taking a look at it’s I’m leaping off a cliff proper now … and there’s no wanting again and there’s no second guessing,” McNealy mentioned the day he turned professional, in 2017.
A yr later, McNealy was put to what’s nonetheless right now his largest take a look at. A rookie on the Korn Ferry Tour, McNealy developed the full-swing yips. He couldn’t play 9 holes at TPC Summerlin, his dwelling course in Las Vegas, with out going by a dozen golf balls. It was so debilitating that McNealy phoned his caddie on the time, Travis McAllister, that he could be skipping the KFT Finals occasion in Columbus, Ohio.
What occurred subsequent was a doubtlessly career-altering turning level.
“One of the crucial pivotal telephone calls of my life,” McNealy defined. “He informed me, ‘Get your butt on a aircraft and we’ll determine it out.’ Went there, I hit it 50 yards proper off the primary tee and we by some means made the reduce.”
McNealy earned his PGA Tour card that subsequent season – and he’s but to relinquish it. In his first three seasons, he racked up 9 top-10s, together with a pair runners-up, and by no means completed worse than 68th in FedExCup factors. Certain, victory eluded him, however primarily based on his pedigree, it appeared solely a matter of time.
Then he damage his shoulder.
McNealy tore his left anterior sterno-clavicular in February 2023, an harm that sidelined him for about six months, required regenerative stem-cell remedies and compelled him to take a significant medical extension this yr. Many execs would’ve been left devastated, or at the least discouraged. However Joseph Bramlett, McNealy’s greatest buddy on the PGA Tour, remembers, even within the early days of McNealy’s rehab, an inspiringly decided McNealy.
“As he does with something,” Bramlett mentioned, “he saved pushing, saved working, did all the correct issues. … He made probably the most of it.”
Did he ever. Whereas away, McNealy polished off his pilot’s license, and he met his spouse, Maya, who labored on the facility the place McNealy did his bodily remedy. The couple married final Dec. 6. McNealy additionally rebuilt his swing, flipping his path to swing left and taking stress off his physique.
“I by no means misplaced religion that I’d be again higher than ever,” McNealy mentioned.
He simply by no means anticipated all of it to click on on, of all weeks, this one.
The Seaside Course at Sea Island Golf Membership is just not an important match for McNealy, with its slick Bermuda greens and demand for exact iron play. McNealy joked earlier within the week that the one cause he even signed up was as a result of Maya loves the Lodge’s milk and cookies. However reality is, McNealy wished to problem himself, and having already locked up his place within the FedExCup’s high 60 – and spots in two early signature occasions subsequent season – he had a free roll.
He additionally used the chance to place the brand new Titleist golf ball into play, and he flighted it properly in windy circumstances on Friday, backing up a gap 62 with a gutsy 70 to remain within the hunt. The following day, McNealy, for simply the second time in his profession, grabbed a share of the 54-hole lead, and earned a tee time in Sunday’s remaining threesome alongside co-leader Vince Whaley and Daniel Berger, who three years in the past, at Pebble Seaside, denied McNealy maybe his greatest probability of change into a PGA Tour winner.
One in all McNealy’s biggest strengths is that he hardly ever grows impatient. He says he was ready for his maiden skilled win to take 10, perhaps even 15 years. However he additionally isn’t good. McNealy recalled a dialog with Maya earlier this fall wherein he was voicing his frustrations that he wasn’t getting probably the most out of his sport.
Maya responded, “Should you knew you have been going to win in six weeks, would you do something totally different?”
McNealy conceded: “In all probability not.”
That was six weeks in the past.
McNealy constructed a two-shot lead on Sunday earlier than watching it evaporate. And a bogey on the par-4 14th knocked McNealy into the chasing pack, behind hotshot novice Luke Clanton and red-hot Nico Echavarria, already a winner this fall. However Clanton and Echavarria each bogeyed the par-4 ending gap to skid into the clubhouse at 15 beneath, tied with McNealy and Berger, who nonetheless had two holes to finish.
That’s when McNealy’s brother, Scout, stepped in. Scout, the youngest of the 4 McNealy boys, hopped on Maverick’s bag previous to the FedExCup Playoffs, leaving his job in actual property to loop for the rest of the yr. Scout’s biggest power as a caddie is his lightheartedness, and as McNealy ready to stroke an 11-footer for birdie on the par-3 seventeenth, Scout, like he’d executed all fall, took the chance to get in one other joke.
Maverick declined to share what precisely was mentioned, calling it not appropriate for work. Scout wouldn’t disclose, both, however defined that the week had been filled with inside jokes comparable to him getting applesauce throughout his yardage ebook and his brother’s golf bag.
“I simply attempt to hold him smiling and laughing,” Scout mentioned, “and when he’s taking part in like he’s, it’s straightforward.”
A gap late, Maverick stuffed his method shot from 195 yards to six toes, utilizing a 6-iron from a brand new TaylorMade set that McAllister, on his personal volition, had shipped to McNealy’s doorstep earlier than the autumn. Following a missed birdie attempt by Berger, McNealy stepped up and sank the birdie dagger.
Moments later, Scout, nonetheless holding the flagstick, hugged Maverick and excitedly shouted, “Maui, child!” By advantage of his win, McNealy earned an invitation to subsequent yr’s Sentry, plus main begins on the Masters and PGA Championship; Scout will likely be on the bag for these, having accepted a full-time gig just a few weeks in the past in Japan.
Bramlett has recognized McNealy for many years, courting to when Maverick was a fearless middle-schooler difficult the Stanford gamers to chipping contests, and he had little doubt McNealy would pour in that profitable putt. He calls McNealy among the best putters on this planet, a moniker McNealy proved final yr when he led the PGA Tour in strokes gained: placing. McNealy’s not a foul coach, both, serving to Bramlett along with his placing this yr, all whereas balancing life as a newlywed, taking part in off a medical and getting concerned in PGA Tour politics; McNealy’s evaluation of the present FedExCup factors construction led the PGA Tour to regulate some inadequacies for subsequent season.
“He takes unbelievable care of the folks round him,” Scout mentioned of Maverick, who is understood for sending handwritten notes every offseason to sponsors, match organizers and even members of the media.
McNealy’s newest act of kindness got here on Saturday evening, when he mentioned of Bramlett, who was battling to maintain his card this week, “I’d commerce 100 trophies to have him on the PGA Tour subsequent yr.”
“Mav’s the most effective individual,” Bramlett mentioned. “The whole lot he does as a human being, he’s the most effective. He cares quite a bit about me. I care quite a bit about him. I’m actually blissful for him.”
So, even after shedding his full standing, Bramlett was greenside on No. 18 to look at McNealy elevate his first PGA Tour trophy into the cloudless, blue sky. Becoming a member of Bramlett was Maya, Scout and one among McNealy’s different brothers, Dakota, plus McNealy’s longtime agent, Peter Webb, who flew in from Nashville simply hours earlier. Maya’s job on Sunday was to have McNealy’s mother and father on velocity dial, simply in case McNealy completed the job.
McNealy’s mother, Susan, couldn’t cease crying. Scott couldn’t cease smiling.
It was Scott McNealy who first instilled the significance of a crew to Maverick, who famously shared a room with all 4 of his brothers rising up, one wall lined with twin-sized beds. Now, McNealy was thanking a crew that has grown properly behind his household to incorporate over a dozen folks, starting from efficiency employees to enterprise personnel.
This win was no accident.
Each member of Crew Mav had performed a task in Sunday’s breakthrough, so in McNealy’s thoughts, this trophy was for all of them.
But it surely’d look greatest atop his grandmother’s mantel.
