'Ten feet to change your life' Hayden Buckley's remarkable journey
Buckley's path to the winner's circle epitomizes the brutality of professional golf.
Standing in the right corner of the 18th green at Lakewood National Golf Club, Hayden Buckley wrestled with his heart rate.
As the Florida sun began to fade behind the trees, the man standing in the shadows stared directly at his fate. This sun-splotched green was Buckley’s arena and he battled valiantly for four days to arrive at this opportunity to strike one final blow. It was the first hole of a three-way, sudden death playoff at the Korn Ferry Tour’s LECOM Suncoast Classic. He eyed a ten-foot birdie putt that wiggled slightly to his left. With his opponents in for par, Buckley’s career — a remarkable three-year journey that spanned three countries tens of thousands of miles — would change forever.
“You’ve got ten feet to change your life,” Buckley said to himself.
If you know Buckley’s story, this opportunity was eight years in the making and he didn’t want to wait any longer. He’s a quick, decisive player. His putting routine doesn’t even include a practice stroke. Perhaps this stems from his irrational confidence, a trait that acts as a mental shield and has hardened over a career in which he’s perpetually been counted out. Maybe it’s his inability to fear failure because of what he’d already overcome in the last six days alone — never mind eight years. Whatever it was, Buckley was more than ready to grapple with the outcome. He wasted no time, stepped up and stroked it.
“Waiting around made it worse,” he said. “I didn’t even really talk about the read with my caddie. I knew what it did. I just wanted to hit it.”
It didn’t matter that he hadn’t seen a putt fall all day. The normally stoic 24-year-old Tupelo native drilled the most consequential one of his life and let out a roar as the crowd around him erupted.
He was a champion on the circuit that serves as a gatekeeper to the PGA Tour, ascending from the ruthlessly taxing grind that comprises the lower levels of professional golf, all the way to the precipice of realizing a lifelong dream.
Life with no status:
Buckley’s story epitomizes the rigors of this cutthroat world that’s often misconceived by the casual fan who sees millionaires flying NetJets from Augusta to Pebble Beach and everywhere in between. His previous six days is enough evidence on its own.
The Suncoast Classic was the first event of the 2021 portion of a unique, two-year long, wraparound Korn Ferry Tour season caused by the pandemic. With the Korn Ferry Tour idle throughout the winter, Buckley sat at 85th on the tour’s points list — the top 25 at the end of the year earn PGA Tour cards. That’s standing on the surface, but deceivingly absent of consistent opportunity. Trying to make sense of the levels of permanent and conditional status on the Korn Ferry Tour (and the PGA tour for that matter) is like trying to understand the nuances of the NBA salary cap written in a foreign language. Hell, the players don’t even know precisely where they stand when it comes to getting in tournaments and are often at the mercy of a website that updates them on whether or not they are in the field of the next event. Buckley spent all winter thinking he was safely in, until checking the site a couple weeks before and realizing he’d been bumped out because a handful of players with better status (and some PGA Tour players) decided to play.
“It’s really frustrating not knowing exactly where you stand,” Buckley said. “I felt like I deserved to be in the golf tournament."
So, what now? A frustrated Buckley returned to an all too familiar place. He’d have to try to Monday qualify — something he’s no stranger to. Bluntly put, Monday qualifiers suck. They’re a complete crapshoot. Roughly 200 professionals fighting for their livelihood show up to the course for what is essentially a one day tournament that awards 1-3 spots in the real tournament depending on the week. As Buckley puts it: “You have to shoot seven under to even be in the conversation.”
It’s like buying a lottery ticket with slightly more control over the numbers. The odds are still long.
Buckley started three over par through three holes. That’s a death sentence in this setting. The last 15 holes were essentially irrelevant. He ended up making seven birdies and was still not close. Naturally dejected, Buckley was placed on alternate list, meaning if guys dropped out, he might end up with a spot?
Catching a break:
How do you prepare for a tournament you’re not in? Well, Buckley started by waking up at 4:30 a.m. that Thursday in order to arrive at a pitch-black driving range by six o’clock to wait out the day for any withdrawals. If someone did drop out or fail to show up, there’s no way to know when their tee time is. Sometimes you’ll have a few hours, sometimes less.
“It wasn’t looking good. It’s the first tournament of the year. No one is backing out and no one tested positive for COVID,” he said.
His phone buzzed just after 7 a.m. with good news. It was a tour official. Someone had dropped out and Buckley was the next man in line. Another player dropped out. Buckley got another call to inform him that he was in the field.
“He told me that if I am even here, I have 15 minutes to get to the tee. I just kind of laughed like ‘yes, I am here. I have been here since six,’” Buckley recalled. “Okay, this is my chance. You feel like you have to play well at this point.”
Twenty-five minutes after his phone rang, he put the ball in the air. Buckley fired an opening round 3-under-par 68 and followed it up with a 65. He didn’t make a bogey through two rounds and hit 46 of his first 54 greens. Five days after aimlessly trudging through the final 15 holes of a Monday qualifier, Buckley found himself in the final group on Sunday. On the biggest day of his professional life, he actually felt most of the pressure subside.
“You have done everything you are supposed to do,” Buckley recalled. “You are good to get in (the next Korn Ferry Tour stop) Louisiana in a couple of weeks and are probably going to be good for the rest of the year.”
This mindset encapsulates the grueling nature of professional golf. Partial status, never mind full status, on any tour is hard to come by and opportunity is scarce without it. A top 25 finish got him into the next event. That box was essentially checked. The points he’d earn from a likely top five finish might improve his status enough to earn more guaranteed starts for the 2021 (wraparound, mind you) season. Check another box. Of course winning is life changing, but he’d already cashed in on this opportunity.
The fight he spent years preparing for:
Sunday arrived. Buckley shared the lead with 28-year-old Korn Ferry veteran Billy Kennerly. If you’re unfamiliar with the dynamic of the Korn Ferry Tour, the majority of the events are set up for shootouts. Par isn’t necessarily your friend and bogeys are costly. It often takes 20-something under par to win or even finish top five. The fact that their shared lead sat at 12-under heading into Sunday actually spoke to tougher than usual conditions. But still, a bunch of birdies were needed. A sluggish front nine and a costly bogey on hole 13 put Buckley three back with five holes to play. His second shot to the par five 14th found the water. Kennerly knocked it home in two. He sauntered to located his golf ball in the Florida swamp down in the water, down three shots and his opponent had an eagle putt. Any shot at a life-changing victory was rapidly fading away.
“I’m thinking, this is probably over at this point,” Buckley recalled. “I couldn’t see it down, but if that ball is in the water, I am done with him being home in two.”
He caught a break. The ball trickled in the hazard but, somehow, his golf ball rested atop pile of mud to the point of him being able to get a club on it. He hacked it out, got up-and-down for par and watched Kennerly three putt for a five. He had life.
“Okay, we’ve got something here,” Buckley thought. Kennerly bogeyed the 15th hole as Buckley tapped in stress-free par. Now, he was two back with three to go. They traded pars on 16. Buckley jarred an eight footer that he calls the putt of the tournament.
Two back, with two to play.
“Okay, this is actually happening,” he thought.
Buckley flushed a five iron into the long par three 17th. The gallery erupted as it nearly went in the hole and settled eight feet away. He’d applied the pressure. Kennerly missed the green, blew a chip 15 feet by and blistered his par putt a few feet past. If Buckley made his birdie putt, they’d be tied going to the 72 hole of the tournament, something most would have thought to be impossible 45 minutes ago.
The putt lipped out.
“I did everything right on that one, it just didn’t go down,” he said with a grimace. “That was really tough.”
As if anything in his career has been easy.
As Buckley walked to the 18th tee preparing to make up a shot to get into a playoff, he heard the crowd gasp. He quickly turned around to see what happened. Kennerly missed the short bogey putt and made a double bogey. Buckley was in a four way tie for the lead with one hole to play with Kennerly, along with two others in front of him in the clubhouse, also at 13-under.
Buckley made a routine par on 18. Kennerly — who held a three-shot lead with five holes to play in search of his first major professional win — bogeyed 18 and missed out on the playoff entirely. A stunning turn of events. Buckley made up three shots in five holes in a Korn Ferry event — without making a birdie. He met the other two leaders back on the 18th tee for the sudden death playoff — both of whom he knew — and they all looked at one another for a brief moment as if to ask how in the hell they were standing here.
“It’s just like, ‘wait what happened?’” Buckley said. “Weren’t we down three an hour ago? So, 16-under par was leading this golf tournament 60 minutes ago and now we are here at 13-under? How are we in this playoff?”
His disbelief reflects the shocking contrast between how the final four holes of the most consequential tournament of his life played out compared to a typical Korn Ferry Tour event.
If Buckley’s career, or really his entire life in this game, has yielded any lessons, it’s that how an opportunity arrises matters very little, but when it beckons, you better grab ahold of it. His path to the standing on this tee box, getting in the playoff — and into tournament at all — was carved by seizing opportunities that were often hard to come by. His previous trials and tribulations shaped his mindset in this moment. He possessed the attitude of a battle-tested man in the arena, wanting to seize the moment, one of aggression and devoid of fear that can only be attained by enduring the path he’d taken to arrive at it.
“I am going right at this,” he remembers thinking. “I am winning or losing it now. I don’t want to play another hole. It’s birdie or bust.”
Seizing the opportunity:
Buckley wasn’t a decorated junior golfer. In a day and age in which swing coaches by middle school are par for the course and a decorated resume on a national circuit like the American Junior Golf Association is the baseline for playing major Division-I golf, Buckley was still waffling between golf and baseball up until his junior year of high school.
He’d played some junior tournaments regionally, and a few AJGA events, but hardly enough to actually be seen within the recruiting landscape. He also got overshadowed by his teammates. If there’s such a thing as a high school golf power, Tupelo High School is it. Buckley was their No. 4 player as a sophomore (playing alongside hacks like the author of this story). He recalled once shooting a 73 in a tournament and his score not counting. That is, frankly, unheard of in high school golf. Squarely behind the eight ball, Buckley practiced tirelessly until dark most days throughout his junior year of high school. The opportunities did not mirror the work ethic. Senior year rolled around and no scholarships materialized. Raised an Ole Miss fan, he pleaded for a chance walk on in Oxford.
“I have good grades,” Buckley pleaded. “I can get academic scholarships, just give me a year to walk on. If it doesn’t work out, kick me off after that. I don’t care. Just let me try for a year.”
Ole Miss told him they were full. He tried the same at Mississippi State. No room there either. He harbors no resentment, and his sense of self-awareness that makes him one of the most approachable and relatable professional athletes on earth, allowed him to understand why no one would give him a chance.
“It is not that I didn’t play good enough,” Buckley said. “Playing more and winning a big junior tournament or two would have changed things. But that never happened. I was never told I wasn’t good enough, but it still felt like that.”
Out of options, and his path to playing college golf evaporating, Buckley’s instructor, newly-hired Tupelo Country Club head professional Chris Harder, called a friend: Missouri golf coach Mark Leroux. Harder said he had a kid that worked hard, made good grades, wouldn’t be a problem and had slipped through the cracks. All he asked was for Leroux to give him a look. A couple weeks later, Buckley — who knew little about the school, the town, or the Mizzou golf program that just joined the SEC — was on a flight to Columbia for a visit. He met the team, went to a football game and saw the facilities. As exciting as it was, Buckley felt out of place. As he rode to the airport that Sunday morning to fly home, Leroux dropped some surprising news. The Tigers had a spot for Buckley to walk on if he wanted it. He was stunned. Three days ago, a future that included college golf at all was in doubt. Now, an SEC offer is a real thing?
“Wait a minute, you’ve never seen me play,” Buckley thought. “You already have 13 guys on the roster, and you’re offering me? — a kid from Mississippi who doesn’t know any of these guys —a spot on the team? It was like hitting the lottery.”
That’s all he needed to hear. He leapt at the opportunity.
Buckley’s college career is not all that abnormal, beyond his path to getting there. He struggled with the transition, both on and off the course, initially and didn’t feel like he belonged. The fall of his freshman season was tough. He flopped in his first tournament qualifier, reaffirming his belief that he was the weakest link. Overwhelmed and exhausted, he reverted back to what he does best.
“Okay, I am here. But I am about to have to sacrifice a lot if this is actually going to work out,” He thought.
He worked tirelessly throughout the fall and winter, missed football games (the golf course was essentially deserted on football Saturdays) and most social events to practice. He got stronger in the weight room. It started to come together his freshman spring. He played in every event but failed to qualify for the travel roster for the SEC Championships at the end of the season. Yet another reminder of how far he had to go.
Things came together after that. Buckley posted the lowest scoring average on the roster as a sophomore, worked through injuries in parts of his junior season and won twice in the fall of his senior year. He shot 61 at an event in Hawaii that winter— a round that, according to him, convinced him that he had a shot to become a professional. A third win came to start his senior spring in a loaded field in Florida, vaulting him to a top-five college ranking in the country. For the first time in Buckley’s life, he was in the spotlight.
Back down to earth
Buckley admits that the newfound attention he garnered as a senior in college rattled him initially. The walk-on, who once wondered if he’d ever play college golf, wasn’t used to it. But he closed the year strong and then turned professional that summer.
The early years of a professional career are incredibly challenging, with the occasional generational talent being the exception. With the way the PGA is structured now, there is no direct path to the Tour anymore. Essentially, you must come through qualifying school for the Korn Ferry Tour and graduate to the PGA Tour by finishing in the top 25.
There are other, rarer avenues, of course. The elite college players often have the luxury of sponsorship exemptions into a handful of PGA Tour events. An exemption means that a Tournament’s governing body creates a spot in their field for you. In this context, it’s usually given a top-ranked amateur who has made a big enough name for himself to draw a crowd. Buckley was a good college player by most standards, but his portfolio didn’t capture eyeballs when it came to being picked for a spot to play with the best on the planet. Sure, Buckley won tournaments, but for example, his friend, Ole Miss alum Braden Thornberry, won an NCAA Individual National Title and earned a spot on the Walker Cup team. That gleans a little brighter on a resumè. That’s not a knock. It simply means Buckley is a part of the other 95 percent of newly-minted pros that don’t get multiple PGA Tour exemptions.
It wasn’t all bad. Buckley did get an exemption into his home state’s tour event, the Sanderson Farms Championship, in 2018, and made the cut. His first professional paycheck had him riding high, but spending most of it on the entry free to the second stage of Korn Ferry Tour qualifying school the next week — and ultimately failing to advance through — brought him back down to earth.
This is when reality typically sets in for aspiring professionals. Q-school is the most concrete way to guarantee your short term future. What do you do with no status for an entire year? He spent the winter in Tupelo, preparing to spend the 2019 season Monday-qualifying in Korn Ferry events — a grueling way to live.
It can’t be that bad, right? You’d be mistaken. Here’s one example: Buckley once drove from Tupelo to Miami, Florida, for a Monday qualifier for a Korn Ferry event in Panama. He shot 8-under to qualify for the tournament — a remarkable accomplishment. Mind you, if he didn’t get one of the two spots out of 200 people, he’d pack up and return to Mississippi with nothing to show for it. But the struggle of golf’s minor leagues doesn’t relent. Buckley made the cut in Panama, another great feat and a guaranteed payday, but finished 40th. His winnings essentially covered his travel for the week. So, he netted zero dollars for his travels and service. Thanks for coming to Central America.
You get the picture by now: life with no status is a week-to-week hustle, traveling for one-round events for the right to even get into the real thing, living in hotel rooms, blowing through money and compiling stress.
“This sucks,” Buckley once muttered after a stretch of shooting 66 or better eight rounds in a row — and still not qualifying for a single event.
“You gain a new appreciation for pressure and stress after watching your name on TV teeter around the qualifying line of a Monday-qualifier… after hitting a mini tour event on the way there.”
Double-A Baseball:
A couple more months with little success pushed him toward the Canadian Tour’s qualifying school in April of 2019. It’s only four rounds and an opening round 7-under helped him qualify with relative ease. It’s not the most desirable place to exist, but he had status somewhere. That was a start.
He had two months before the Canadian season began in late May of 2019. In the meantime, he toiled around playing predominantly Korn Ferry Tour Monday-Qs, hoping to hit the lottery. The week before he was set to leave for Canada, Buckley found himself in an eight-person for four spots playoff at a Monday-Q for the Tour’s Kansas City stop — right in his collegiate backyard
“I’m going for it all,” He thought again. “I am making birdie.”
Buckley flew the green with his approach on the first playoff hole and made bogey. The four players that got through the playoff did so with par. The 23-year-old was off to Canada to start another chapter.
Here’s the first thing you need to know about the Canadian Tour: Professional golfers don’t go to Canada for financial stability. The money is even less than the two American tours. You go to chase status on a bigger tour. The season was 12 events over three months. The players who finish in the top five of the season-long points standings earn varying degrees of Korn Ferry Tour status. Buckley notched his first professional win in Canada, and totaled six top 10 finishes to compliment it. He earned a whopping $80,000 for his efforts. Sounds like a good living, right? Well, that’s without factoring in travel costs, paying a caddie and, you know, living a somewhat normal life while chasing a dream. He basically broke even for the summer.
“I didn’t lose any money in Canada. I was pumped about that because that means you’re playing well,” as he put it.
The same finishes on a series of mid-level PGA Tour events would net close to $6 million. Again, it didn’t matter. He finished 5th on the money list. His reward? Full status on the Korn Ferry Tour? Not quite. His remarkable play basically warranted a free pass to the final stage of Korn Ferry qualifying school, meaning he was guaranteed conditional status for 2020 season with the final stage serving as a chance to play his way into more guaranteed events. Instead of security, he was granted another opportunity to seize.
“The way this sport is, there are so many good players out here, eventually you just have to go take it when you get the chance,” Buckley said. “You can’t afford to waste precious opportunities.”
The life changer you won’t hear about
Buckley faltered again in the final stage of qualifying school and didn’t improve his conditional status. This meant more Monday qualifiers, but his success in the tournaments he got into would carry more weight with partial status. He puts it succinctly: “Yes, I am still doing Monday qualifiers, but now with conditional status, a Monday can change my life. It’s not like last year where I can make a cut and it does nothing, other than cut me a small check — oh, and I probably lose money with two more days in a hotel.”
Apparently, his absurdly taxing path still wasn’t difficult enough. A global pandemic killed the beginning of the 2020 season as the entire world was left with nothing to do but sit at home. The Korn Ferry Tour restarted in Utah in late June. Buckley hopped on a flight for, you guessed it, another Monday qualifier. In that qualifier, was 11-under thru 16 holes — set to safely get the tournament.
As he stood on the 17th tee box, a thought passed through his head that perhaps surmises this merciless life better than anything else: “If I make two birdies, I shoot 59. That’s golf history. At the same time, a bogey-bogey finish is 9-under… and you just never know.”
He finished at 10-under and got in the field.
It’s here, in Utah, where his rise truly began.
He played well for three days, made the cut easily and hovered around 25th place entering Sunday. Remember, Buckley’s status at this point was still conditional, so a top-25 finish guarantees him entry into next week’s event, with each shot, each putt and each swing, becoming more consequential. He estimates three or four under in the final round will do the job of securing a top-25 finish easily. He made nine straight pars to start his final round and was even thru 15 holes. That won’t cut it in this ruthless world.
“Dude, this is not going to do it,” he thought to himself. “There is no shot even par gets you there. You’ve got to do something. The money itself doesn’t matter. I need a top 25.”
That’s when Hayden Buckley seized the moment. He rolled in a 20-footer on for birdie on the 15th green and then another on the 16th hole. He knocked it to ten feet on 17 and drained that for a third birdie in a row. His approach on the 18th hole nestled up to 15 feet yet again. His putt was destined for the dead center of the hole off the face.
Once the putt dropped, Buckley noticed his caddie execute a Tiger Woods-like fist pump. Buckley was a little perplexed as to why.
“I didn’t even realize it, but my caddie looks at me and says ‘hey, that was it. We needed that one for a top 25,’” Buckley recalled.
He had just birdied the last four holes to finish T-18. A par on 18 would have placed him at 27th — which meant there was guaranteed start the next week.
He made the cut the next week in Colorado and earned enough points for two more events. An 11th place finish in Portland a few weeks later — his best result ever on a major tour — paved the way for Buckley to play every event the rest of the season, a life changing level of security.
None of that happens without those four straight birdies in Utah.
“I will look back in five years and remember 2020 Utah as the moment,” Buckley said. “If I don’t make it, I don’t get exempt into Colorado, and I literally wasn’t going to make it in time for the Monday qualifier in Colorado because it was late on a Sunday afternoon and I am still in Utah. Colorado’s finish barely got me in Portland.”
Built for the moment:
The the story of Buckley’s win is mostly told through the lens of a long-shot getting lucky to get in the field and riding a miraculous week. But in all actuality, the man standing on the 18th tee box that Sunday afternoon at Lakewood National was built for this moment and well-equipped to seize his control of his fate.
“I am going right at this. I don’t want to play another hole. I am making birdie and ending this now,” he repeated in his head.
Each swing, step and movement was purposeful and concise. He hit first off the tee in the playoff and split the fairway. He had 155 yards to the flagstick. In regulation, he had 165, hit a decent eight iron and left it 25 feet short. You do the math. There wasn’t a doubt. His caddy handed him the 8-iron without muttering a word. He stuffed it, and strolled up to the green. His two partners hit marginal approach shots and lagged a couple of putts close enough for tap-in pars.
Suddenly, Buckley’s fate was solely within his own control again. He examined the 10 feet that would ultimately change the arc of his career forever, and got right down to business.
Hayden Buckley’s life is different today than it was a month ago. He’s got a home base (a house in Fort Meyers, Florida) and job security for the first time ever. But he’s not out of the woods yet as the Korn Ferry grind never truly ceases. He’s still not inside the coveted Top 25 in the points standings that earns you a tour card. But he sits at 27th, with full Korn Ferry status for next year the bulk of the 2021 season still to play. Those are slightly better odds than having to birdie four holes in a row in Utah for the ability earn a paycheck the next week.
But even beyond that, this victory was a validation of the countless hours of work, the immeasurable number of miles traveled and dollars blown toward a future that isn’t guaranteed but fueled by the hope of filling of a dream.
It’s validation that the late bloomer from Tupelo was good enough to play college golf, and a reinforcement of the unwavering belief in his ability that was often shared by no one else but him.
Buckley is no fluke. Take the final putt for example: He knew what the putt did. He never consulted with his caddie, nor did he take so much as much as a practice stroke, as if there was ever any doubt of where it was going — other than the bottom of the cup.
“Like anything else,” Buckley said. “I just needed a chance.”