Visionaries

Right now, a computer (and an ever-ready credit card) are as essential as the latest equipment for mini-tour golfers like Nick Mason, who see their future selves playing on the PGA TOUR.

“Yeah, that kind of money will do something for your life for sure,” Mason chuckles.

In the 2018 Open, Sam Saunders shot a final-round 12-under-par 60 to draw into a tie for first, but lost a subsequent playoff to Dru Love, son of golf icon Davis Love III. Last year, he was 10 shots worse in the final round, but still came away with $80,000 more than the year before, winning the championship.

Like Mason, Saunders’ life hasn’t gone exactly as he planned in the aftermath of that win. But he also says the GVR event is far more than another stop on the mini-tour merry-go-round.

“It has the biggest purse and the best field, so that’s like the closest you can get to playing on the PGA TOUR from where [we’re] at,” says Saunders. “It’s like one of the major championships of all the State Opens—it might not be the same as a PGA TOUR win, but it’s the best we’ve got.”

A victory this year might actually come pretty close to an elite victory. Chris DiMarco, runner-up to Tiger Woods in the 2015 Masters, a newly-minted resident of the state, is expected to play, as is Sahith Theegala. In his abbreviated 2020 senior year at Pepperdine, Theegala was the collegiate player of the year and became an All-American for the third time. He’s expected to try to play his way onto the PGA TOUR later this season.

That was Mason’s and Saunders’ early-season plan for this year as well. Mason ended the 2019 season winning his last three tournaments, putting him in a good place, he says, for the season. In January, Saunders left his home in Albuquerque and went out to California to try and qualify for some early PGA TOUR events. While he was ultimately unsuccessful, he said he returned home thinking his game was coming around enough that he would be a factor in the spring when the season picked up.

Then the coronavirus hit. Saunders said he didn’t touch a golf club for five weeks, but when the itch to play returned, he was stymied because New Mexico was one of the last states in the U.S. to reopen for golf. Eventually, he hopped into his car and drove to Phoenix, like Mason, hooking up with the Outlaw Tour.

That’s the simplified version of the story. Life on the far, far outskirts of professional golf, according to Mason, is well, actually something akin to living as a desperado.

LIVIN’ THE DREAM

About 10 years ago or so, Mason decided he was through with that golf life; wearied from the nomadic, trunk-slamming existence of putting hundreds of miles on his car driving from one mini-tour event to the next, hoping to make the cut and earn enough to get him to the next week—all the while hoping against hope that when he arrived, the tournament would actually be taking place and not canceled unexpectedly.

And so, literally feeling spent—both financially and mentally—he decided to join an insurance firm with a starting annual salary of about $48,000. The figure wasn’t a princely sum—at least not compared to the millions that he had at one time assumed he’d be chasing as a member of the PGA TOUR—but it represented a welcome, reliable paycheck.

After agreeing to the gig, all that was standing between Mason and his new corporate, 9-to-5 existence were two tournaments—a farewell to golf as it were. One more excursion: an event in Arizona, hop in the car and drive to Utah for the second—six rounds (hopefully), over-and-out.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the actuary tables—Mason won both events, pocketing about $35,000 in the process.

“I called up the guy who’d hired me, and he was a little upset when I told him that I thought I wanted to keep playing, because he had gone through hoops to get me the job,” Mason said. “But as we talked, he eventually saw it; he said ‘If you want to keep playing, go for it.’

“I haven’t stopped since—and the funny thing is, he and I are good friends—he loves that I’m doing this.”

So today, he presses on in his current position—President and CEO of Nick Mason Inc. While the “company” is fictitious, the effort Mason, Saunders and other golfers put in trying to climb golf’s corporate ladder might put a “real” exec to shame. Mason’s financials won’t be found on the pages of Forbes Magazine, or on a spreadsheet monitored by a team of accountants—in fact, it largely exists solely on the monthly statement of a credit card that is dedicated to his golf expenses.

And, just like any titan of industry, Mason has to keep on top of what comes in and what’s going out. But in his case, that often means trying to figure out how to make sure the check from an earlier event gets picked up in the mail and deposited into his bank account in order to cover the entry fees and travel for a future event—all while he’s out on the road, ostensibly playing well enough in some far-flung locale to make that week’s cut.

No, direct deposit usually isn’t an option.

“And the thing about that is, you really need that money,” Mason says. “People don’t know that you have to sign up for Monday qualifiers and stuff like that way in advance— so that’s like $450 out the door, way before the tournament is played.

“That’s the problem a lot of guys run into; you have to put it out there in front of you, but you won’t see a return on it for awhile—like, I signed up for the Colorado Open nine months in advance.”

Mason figures he spends about $60,000 a year on golf, often maxing out that credit card on travel, entry fees and food—“everything that has to do with my professional golf.” A recent devotee to exercise, he credits training at Viking Power Fitness in Denver with the uptick in his play, even at his relatively advanced age.