University of Georgia Athletics
Why Do UGA Football Players Love Golf?
November 19, 2015 | Football
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By John Frierson
UGAAA Staff Writer
One answer came up regularly, yet it somehow was still surprising each time. Maybe it was the mental image it usually created, of a big guy swinging a thin club at a really small ball.
The question: If you could play any other sport for the Bulldogs, what would it be? The oft-heard answer: golf.
Throughout the Georgia football season I have conducted Q & A sessions with various Bulldogs, usually during the team's weekly media luncheon on Tuesdays. It's a treat getting to know these guys a little better and, hopefully, presenting them to you as real young men, as more than a jersey number and some stats.
The Bulldogs might often come in packages we can't relate to -- we all feel tiny standing next to players like 6-foot-6, 313-pound offensive lineman Greg Pyke -- but they're mostly regular guys, with their own interests, dreams and goofy habits.
In a get-to-know-you Q & A, I'm not interested in discussing the mechanics of a bubble screen or zone blitz. And odds are, they aren't either. I'm after personality and interests. The best example of this was my chat with tight end Jeb Blazevich (Blazevich Q & A), who went all in from the beginning.
Blazevich is one of the Dogs that, when asked the question that sparked this piece, answered that golf is the sport other than football he'd like to play for Georgia. Here's what he said:
"I'm not very good, but sometimes during those hot practices you just think, if I could just be swinging a club right now. I would love to play golf. ... There's a lot of cool guys on the team, too. I'm definitely not good enough, and I wouldn't trade this for anything, but I also wouldn't mind if I could do both somehow."
Among the other Dogs that picked golf are Pyke, linebacker Jordan Jenkins, wide receiver Malcolm Mitchell (though tennis may have a slight edge over golf), kicker Marshall Morgan and fullback Christian Payne.
While not yet the subject of a Q & A, quarterback Greyson Lambert was asked after Georgia's 27-3 win over Kentucky on Nov. 7, to explain why so many football players are attracted to golf.
"I think all of us, deep down, wished that we'd picked up a golf club when we were, like, 3 years old," Lambert said, citing the "leisure sport" aspect of the game.
"I'm terrible at golf, awful at it, but it's fun to get out there, too," he added.
Playing golf well is incredibly difficult, but one of the sport's charms is that you can enjoy yourself even if you stink. It can be a leisure sport, but not always, as Jenkins once discovered.
"It definitely relaxes you, but I couldn't play on one of those hot summer days," the senior said. "I played in a charity golf tournament once for six hours and realized how draining that can be."
I felt compelled to turn to the only other Greyson I've ever met, junior golfer Greyson Sigg, to get his thoughts on the matter. Sigg, who was the medalist at the Carmel Cup at Pebble Beach, Calif., in September, is listed at 5-6, 165 pounds. Like most of his UGA teammates, he isn't built for football. (Sepp Straka, all 6-3, 220 pounds of him, is a different story.)
Yet if given the chance to put on the pads in a game and run the ball at the stadium?
"I grew up playing baseball and soccer a lot, but if I could play any sport it would probably be football," Sigg said Tuesday. "Being a quarterback or a football player at the University of Georgia is not too bad at all. You've got a lot riding on the season and you've always got a really good team. I think that would just be cool, to play under the lights at Sanford Stadium."
So what is it about golf, especially for big, muscular guys that give and take a pounding each Saturday? Well that's just it, or part of it. Golf is non-contact; golf is played at your pace, in a quiet, peaceful setting; golf is polite and civilized, a sport in which you penalize yourself for a rules infraction. Golf is maybe the anti-football.
There's also the fact that Georgia's men's golf program is the equivalent of an A-list Hollywood star. The perennial-power Dogs get invited to all of the big tournaments, which are played in amazing locations.
Among the places Georgia has already been to this season are Pebble Beach, the Portland, Ore., area, East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta (home of the PGA's Tour Championship) and Hawaii. The Dogs return to action in February with a trip to Puerto Rico, followed by a trip to Mexico.
How does that sound to you? Pretty great, right? But typically the only thing easy about golf is a tap-in putt. Football players may see golf as a leisure activity, as they should compared to their grinding season, but for Sigg and his teammates, as well as Georgia's women's team, leisurely certainly wouldn't describe their approaches to the game.
"We've told them (about the work golfers put in), but they just want to laugh and say,'I don't want to hear it,'" Sigg said. "Those guys are animals and they're a different breed of athletes. It's awesome to be able to know some of the guys here and to get their perspective on how they do it."
Sigg has also seen a few of them play.
"They need some work, for sure," he said, laughing. "There's a few of them that can get it around decently, I guess."
Sigg then showed me a video someone had texted him that day, of a current player hitting a shot. It wasn't pretty. Morgan wasn't the player in the video, but he's out on the course a lot.
"I'm telling you, he loves golf more than any of them," Sigg said.
"It's kind of like kicking," Morgan said of golf, "if I hit the ball right, I know why."
For guys like Blazevich, Morgan and the rest, they'd surely love to know how Sigg shot a 69 at a legendary course like Pebble Beach -- to just get a taste of what it feels like to tame a great course, or even a bad one. And because golf is a game for life, they may be trying to figure it out for the next 50 years.
John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
