Maginnes: Offseason is fun, what little there is  PGATOUR.com Contributor I often get asked what PGA TOUR players do in the offseason. For some, there really isn't much of one.  (Getty Images)
Take Kevin Stadler. He played in the finale of the PGA TOUR Fall Series and now he's headed overseas to play in China this week. And if you are headed back to q-school, there really isn't any offseason at all. For some, though, there are a string of wonderfully worry-free weeks in the last two months of the year. Your average exempt TOUR player gets about as much time off for the holidays as a fifth grader -- and he is a lot busier. Some players will spend endless hours in the gym with personal trainers. Others will spend the bulk of their time working with sports psychologists and swing coaches trying to find that extra edge. That is what Charles Howell III did last year and it certainly paid off on the West Coast when he won the Nissan Open, was runner-up at the Buick Invitational and tied for second at the Sony Open in Hawaii. Most guys just try to assimilate themselves into the normalcy of their families' everyday lives. They pick the kids up at school and help with homework. They play the occasional round of golf with the boys back home. They go to Christmas parties and try to avoid that 3-handicapper at the club that can only talk about golf. Most professional golfers are big sports fans as well. In years past, you would have no trouble finding John Rollins or J.J. Henry watching the Dallas Mavericks play. David Toms has been known to prowl the sidelines at LSU football games. Jim Furyk doesn't live near Pittsburgh anymore, but I would bet dollars to donuts that he will catch at least one Steelers game in the next couple of months. For Jerry Kelly, it is the Wisconsin Badgers. For most players, the first couple of weeks away from the TOUR are heaven. Clubs in the closet, cell phones on mute, you try to remember who you are when you are away from the game. Agents call; they are very busy this time of year. Contracts have to be renewed and endorsements deals need to be signed. If you are a player making an offseason equipment change, your front porch doubles as a Christmas tree, littered with packages daily. If a TOUR player moves to a new town in the offseason, one of the first people he gets to know is the FedEx man. He will make stops there constantly. A player may even have to fly out to Southern California to the corporate offices of TaylorMade or Titleist to test drivers and balls to make sure that they can hit the ground running next year. But most of that is just time-filler. Players aren't thinking that much about next year. Something happens about mid-December, though. Something in the brain that has been idle for four or five weeks starts to awaken. That urge, the desire to take your game to the next level the next year, starts tugging on your sleeve like an impatient 4-year-old. No matter how much fun you are having relaxing with family and friends, it is there. So you slip away one afternoon in your jeans to make a few swings, and you are hooked all over again. The love of the game, the sound of a cleanly struck 5-iron, the smell of the grass, the dreams that live on the driving range all comes flooding back. The God-given talent that got you to the TOUR in the first place needs to be fed, and the cycle starts anew. You wish it would have waited a few more carefree days, but you know that it is back for good. You know that there is nothing you can do because the desire has a life of its own. It is a relationship you have with yourself that controls you as much as you control it. The days following Christmas are the longest. You make your reservations for the first few events. You book your travel and you count the days until a new season with a clean slate begins. With your batteries recharged and every bad shot and letdown from the previous year washed away by distance and time, you wait the same impatient wait as a rookie. This is the cycle of the offseason. The much-anticipated idleness of November flows cleanly into the rising tide of anticipation in December -- and before you know it, the first event of a new season is here. |
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