Hubbard quietly having best year of career

The Denver native is enjoying more success after new coach

by Jim Bebbington

Mark Hubbard is getting known for weird stuff.

The PGA Tour pro, who played golf and basketball at Colorado Academy in Denver growing up, made golf-twitter explode recently when he holed a bunker shot at the John Deere Classic and, on camera, laughed and gave his caddie the middle finger. In the fall he was asked in an interview if he was ready for a tournament and talked instead about how his toddler daughter had dropped a knife and stabbed his foot and so, as a matter of fact, he wasn’t particularly ready.

But what he’s actually doing on the course in the 2023 season is having career highs in top-five finishes (five through the end of July). He’s also hovering at 54th in the FedEx Points rankings, with the top 70 going to the FedEx St. Jude Championship Aug. 9 in Memphis. He’ll need to get into the top 50 FedEx Points to play in the BMW Championship, and top 30 to make it to East Lake, Ga., for the season finale Tour Championship. He’s earned $2.4 million so far, more money than any of his eight-years as a pro.

“This year I feel like I’ve played pretty good the entire season,” he told Colorado AvidGolfer in an interview this week. “I haven’t really had any kind of lulls or times where I was struggling to find my swing. And and even those times when I haven’t felt good, I’ve still managed to play decent golf and kind of you know just figure out how to get the ball in the hole.”

He changed coaches early in the year and began working with Corey Lundberg, in Dallas, and with a physical trainer in Arizona, Carson Kemp. Lundberg has helped his game, but also given him a new sounding-board for the issues that arise within the six-inches between your ears where all golf matches are actually won or lost.

“I don’t feel like I’ve really had like a full coach to work on everything and and be vulnerable with and you know talk about my feelings and talk about strategy and and you know how I act when I’m under pressure or when I’m nervous,” Hubbard said. “Someone to push me and give me drills. I don’t feel like I’ve really had that like all around coach since probably college….”

And physically – now that he’s 34 and he and his wife Meghan are playing man-to-man defense on two daughters under the age of 3 – he’s is learning what all men learn in their 30s: stay in shape, and you just might survive parenting. Being fit for golf is just gravy.

“(Kemp) has helped me a lot, get my body in a little better shape and really more just kind of you know, getting a little older and and focusing on my recovery and and you know injury prevention stuff like that,” he said. “Taking some weak parts of my body and shoring them up. This is as good as I’ve ever felt this late in the season, not just strength-wise, but also just the lack of the aches and pains. I just feel better getting out of bed than I have in the past couple seasons.”

The LIV/PGA Tour dramatics have been happening in the background throughout the year, and Hubbard said had it occurred earlier in his career he would have reacted much differently.

“I really have been proud of myself this this season because there’s been a lot of noise and I’ve been just really focused on what I’m doing and and I think in years past I would have let kind of the hypocrisy of it all and us being kept in the dark and and all that kind of stuff really get to me,” he said. “I’ve never been been great with that kind of stuff. I always had a little chip on my shoulder for authority, especially when I feel like the respect isn’t mutual. So I think in years past I would have really had a tough time with it and I’ve just done a great job of putting my head in the sand and and realizing look there’s nothing I can really do about it so why worry about it.”

As for his Twitter-famous moment with his caddie at the John Deere, he said it was much friendlier than it may have appeared on TV.

“I was in between caddies and so my agent (Derek Bohlen) actually carried for me that week,” he said. “He’s from that area and and we’re buddies and he used to caddie back in the day but it’s it’s been a while and so you know it it’s like anything it takes some time and we missed a few (yardage) numbers that week. I caught most of them but didn’t catch that one, which is why I was in the bunker short of the green and I wasn’t happy to be there, but I wasn’t actually mad at him. And so when I made it, it was more of a celebratory flip off and a joke between two friends than me actually being mad at all.”

As he heads into the final lap of the 2023 season, Hubbard is now focused in a way that the PGA Tour could have only dreamed of when they first cooked up the FedEx playoff series. The FedEx Cup series has his full attention, and he wants to do better than he has before.

“You gotta play well at Memphis,” he said. “It’s just the points are too much so that’s really gonna be kind of like a major for me this year. And I’ve had success in in my early career there but haven’t in a while so you know I’m excited to get a crack at it with the pressure on and and the stakes really high.”

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Colorado AvidGolfer Magazine is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it, publishing eight issues annually and proudly delivering daily content via coloradoavidgolfer.com.

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