Earlier than I met Willy Wilcox, I believed nothing was extra addicting than hitting a excellent golf shot on the PGA Tour. However that was earlier than Willy known as me from a drug rehab center not too long ago to reveal he had virtually died. After that shut call, he was lastly prepared to unburden himself of all of his secrets and techniques.
I had glimpses of the story I was about to hear. A dot right here, a dot there, with the promise that when the dots have been linked, the constellation fashioned can be darkish and otherworldly. These items had been shared in passing throughout apply rounds. As somebody who was making an attempt to attain the PGA Tour, I was thrilled to play alongside Willy at Korn Ferry occasions. He had been to the promised land—a few profitable seasons on the PGA Tour throughout which he was among the many ball-striking leaders, contended for match titles, earned greater than $2.5 million and made a hole-in-one at the enduring seventeenth gap at TPC Sawgrass through the Gamers Championship.
Because the story went, a wrist harm and deteriorating play despatched him again to the highest minor league circuit, the Korn Ferry Tour, in 2018. In our first aggressive spherical collectively, Willy hit a shot over the flag and into the highest of a thick bush. He was driving the minimize line with a few holes to play and no margin for error. Along with his ball wedged between the leaves of a heavy plant, at eye level and the goal behind him, Willy aimed a lofted membership to the sky and made a wristy, ascending bunt. The ball popped over his shoulder and onto the inexperienced inside 12 ft of the opening. It was an inconceivable shot he made look routine.
Two holes later, Willy’s tee shot sailed towards the Atlantic. His hopes of taking part in the weekend have been about to vanish with his Srixon. All of the sudden, his ball propelled out of the water as if thrown by Poseidon himself; it had caromed off a rock and bounced 30 yards again to the golf green. Willy capitalized on the luck, made the minimize and shot 66 the next day. That was after I discovered to by no means rely out Willy.
We performed collectively usually after that spherical. Along with his skinny body and approachable demeanor, Willy is unassuming. His speedy swing displays his hyperactive personality. He’s quick-witted, smiles simply, asks considerate questions and usually has a joke at the prepared. Willy loves stand-up comedy and has an encyclopedic information of Seinfeld. He speaks lovingly of his family—his “sensible” older sister, his “saintly” mom and his “exhausting working” dad. Earlier than the beginning of one Korn Ferry spherical, I was struggling with my swing. Willy approached my caddie and quietly prompt a easy swing repair. After my caddie handed the tip alongside, I didn’t miss a shot for two rounds. There are different tales of generosity, as when Willy supplied Lanto Griffin a place to live, a caddie job and financial help when the struggling professional wanted it most. Lanto went on to win the PGA Tour’s 2019 Houston Open and turned a top-50 participant in the world.
“My largest reminiscence of Will’s golf is sitting there considering this man’s gonna be on Ryder Cup groups,” Lanto says. “This man’s gonna win majors. This man’s gonna win a number of instances on the PGA Tour. He hits the center of the face greater than anybody I’ve ever seen.”
In our apply rounds collectively, Willy sometimes talked about that even these shut to him knew few issues about his story. Now, after his brush with demise, we sat on pale blue couches overlooking the car parking zone of a Vacation Inn Specific in a nowhere city on the Korn Ferry circuit. Willy had determined to open up. He stated that by sharing the small print of his journey he hoped for catharsis however, extra importantly, he wished to help others who have been struggling. A bottle of pink wine sat on the desk between us. Even for a Tuesday night time, it was quiet. The distant sound of autos echoed off a couple of strip malls. We nursed the wine from paper espresso cups because the solar went down.
“I nonetheless drink a bit,” Willy stated. “Nothing like I used to. I’ll have 5 or six (beers) to take the sting off. I’ve been clear now for seven or eight months. Each now and then I’ll smoke a little grass. The craziest factor is that’s what bought me suspended.”
Willy fidgeted uncomfortably. He recalled how he completed seventh on the Korn Ferry Tour cash record in 2013, reaching at the age of 27 his dream of incomes a PGA Tour card, solely to get suspended earlier than the following season had even began. Willy shook his head, took a sip and continued.
“It’s simply so loopy I misplaced the start of my rookie Tour season as a result of I bought caught doing issues that at the moment are authorized and fairly secure,” he stated. “I nonetheless can’t consider it wasn’t the opposite stuff.”
“What different stuff precisely?” I requested.
“The capsules,” he replied. “Opioids. Oxycontin. Hydrocodone. Percocet. Muscle relaxants. Xanax. Heroin. I was a drug addict with a PGA Tour card.”
Watch the beneath video, in which Wilcox describes his journey to the PGA Tour:
For Willy, the rushes of life on tour have been a means to one thing cheaper. Extra accessible. Extra harmful. Deft golf pictures meant he might expertise one other form of rush, generally in the warmth of competitors. At the same time as he turned an elite PGA Tour participant, he nosedived into the life of a extreme drug addict.
He talked for a good three hours that night time. The tales poured out of him as if their weight had been suffocating.
In reflection, Willy clearly noticed the moments that ought to have led to a severe reevaluation or intervention. Regardless of not being sober throughout most of them, the moments stood out to Willy like a quadruple bogey on a scorecard full of birdies. However like somebody who insists on hitting a driver on a dangerously slim gap, he believed he might have it all. “Have your cake and eat it too,” was a phrase he repeated on an countless loop of justification. You’d suppose when a card-carrying member of the PGA Tour landed in a heroin vendor’s dilapidated resort room on Christmas Day, he might need lastly realized his cake was poisoned.
Willy grew up in Pell Metropolis, Ala., a blue-collar city 35 miles east of Birmingham. Willy’s mother, Kim, was one of one of the best gamers on the excessive school boys’ workforce. Kim accepted a scholarship to attend Auburn in 1977, and the Tigers certified for the ladies’s national match at the tip of her junior yr.
“Title IX was in ’72, but it surely (benefits) didn’t trickle down for a very long time,” Kim says. “We received a match in New Port Richey, Fla., and it was the most important deal as a result of we beat Georgia (a prime workforce). We didn’t even have matching uniforms!” She hoped to play on the LPGA Tour, however she bought married, took a job and life bought in the way in which. Kim’s good friend Chris Spivey, an Alabama Ladies’s Beginner champion, helped Kim land the pinnacle professional job at Pine Harbor Nation Membership, the place Willy discovered the sport. Within the Deep South few girls had management positions in the golf business.
“Mother was a badass thriving in what was then a man’s world,” Willy says. “She was a really feel participant, and that’s the way in which she taught me to play.”
For his fifth birthday, Willy obtained his first set of golf equipment. She started taking him to work with her. “Hours are lengthy in the golf enterprise,” Kim says. “We might get to the course at 6 in the morning. We have been all the time on the placing inexperienced, or I might simply let him hit balls at me on the driving vary. It actually helped him get his distances down.”
When he was 9, Willy performed in his first match. He was immediately hooked. “He crafted his personal swing from a very younger age,” Kim says. “He all the time had nice hand-eye coordination and was copying different people’s swings.”
“Mother and I spent a lot of time collectively,” Willy says. “She was my mentor and is my greatest good friend. She was the nice cop in the disciplinary parenting duo.”
Willy’s father, Invoice, was shut with Willy’s older sister, Sarah. Invoice underwent a botched again fusion surgery in his early 20s that might require 16 extra excruciating surgical procedures. As a result of of his bodily limitations, Invoice developed into a expert handyman and labored at a printing press. Watching his Dad’s battle formed Willy’s early view of maturity. What he noticed was pain. It left Willy defiant.
“Dad tried to get his son in his handiwork and cross on his skills,” Willy says. “Dad would say, ‘Go get the Allen wrench.’ I’d stroll to the storage and stare at a software field for 10 minutes making an attempt to determine what an Allen wrench was.” For Willy, a purely struck driver was extra intoxicating than a custom-built door.
Like most juniors who go on to play school golf, Willy spent lengthy hours on the course with older children. By the point he was 13, he was hanging out with 16- and 17-year-olds. Some have been expert gamers themselves and have been usually gambling, consuming or smoking pot on the course. Willy envied the way in which they performed golf, however he additionally noticed one thing else: pill-popping. When he inquired what the older boys have been taking, he was advised “birdie capsules.” A robust cocktail of pain medication, the drugs of alternative surfaced off the course as effectively. He by no means might have imagined he was taking the primary steps down a path to destruction.
“First we’re shopping for and promoting these extremely powered narcotics in the toilet at school for a big markup, and additionally doing fairly a heavy dose of them per day,” Willy says. “On the time, I’m turning into the second-highest ranked golf recruit for my graduating class of 2004. How I juggled all this shit, I’ll by no means know.”
Golf was his saving grace. “Of my good friend group in excessive school, there have been eight of us,” he says. “Three are lifeless, three went to jail for five-to-10, one is a extremely expert engineer for Sherwin-Williams, and I made it to the PGA Tour. It was a blended bag, and everybody did drugs as usually as we might afford them.”
Willy willed himself into being a robust junior golf prospect. He attended Alabama-Birmingham, the place his mother had develop into the coach of the ladies’s workforce. His school years have been like a rollercoaster experience: a barrage of low scores, a litany of petty crimes and arrests, dismissal from the golf workforce and an effort to be a part of the Navy upon leaving school.
After being given one final likelihood to play collegiately at Clayton State, a Division II school in Morrow, Ga., Willy was again with his hometown crew. “We purchased a bag of cocaine,” he says. “Virtually instantly I knew one thing was very incorrect. My coronary heart was racing, and I was feeling sick. It felt like my coronary heart was going to burst.”
Willy had overdosed, and he was rushed to the emergency room. His coronary heart price was 222 beats per minute. “It was terrifying,” Willy says. “The deep stabbing pain in my coronary heart lasted for days.”
It seems the bag of cocaine had been laced with Comet. The comb with demise at least taught him to steer clear of sure drugs. Half of surviving as a drug addict is predicting what the chemical cocktails will do to you. The opposite half is pure luck.
“That incident taught me I wasn’t an ‘higher’ man,” Willy says. “Uppers are what we customers call stimulants. Something that provides you power and alertness is an higher. My highs wanted to come from ‘downers,’ or capsules that had a sedative effect.”
Possessing an addictive personality could be each a blessing and a curse. After Willy received the Alabama Beginner prior to the beginning of his senior yr of school, he turned a vary rat. He virtually lived on the apply tee. Throughout one marathon stretch, he recollects hitting balls for six hours a day for 90 consecutive days. “The vary turned my workplace, my escape and my most wholesome addiction,” he says. “Complete days would disappear in the filth, and I loved it.”
This work ethic helped earn Willy All-America honors at Clayton State, and the one factor that saved his drug consumption in examine was a lack of cash. When Willy realized how a lot he might earn with his golf swing, the notion of reining in his addiction eroded. The mini excursions with the most important purses traversed the Southeast, which meant Willy was by no means removed from his drug connections and his hometown crew.
Willy was capturing low scores and cashing checks starting from $3,000 to $9,000 in virtually each match. He usually bought excessive throughout rounds, popping capsules between pictures. His essential relationships—the ones with his family and pals—suffered. The elevated entry to drugs affected everybody in Willy’s orbit, even when they didn’t know the explanation for it.
“I was Jekyll and Hyde, which made it troublesome to maintain down any relationships, romantic or in any other case,” Willy says. “Most of my addict pals had screwed me over at some level. Some stole from me, threatened my life or left me in a life-threatening state of affairs after I wanted help. I was removed from what you would possibly suppose of as a good good friend. Capsules took precedence over virtually everybody and all my commitments.”
Remarkably, Willy’s golf recreation continued to enhance, and with that got here larger checks. He gained standing on the Korn Ferry Tour (then Nationwide Tour) in 2011 after Monday qualifying into an occasion and tying for third. And though he missed the minimize, he certified for the U.S. Open at Congressional. The next season, heroin started to dominate his life.
“I’d normally snort it,” Willy says. “I shot heroin a few instances. Each time I shot up, it scared the shit out of me. I was fortunate nothing horrible occurred. Taking pictures heroin was deadly for people I knew.”
But he didn’t cease. And whereas he acknowledged he was struggling, he didn’t reveal what he was struggling with. By the tip of the season, he was unrecognizable to himself as a golfer and a individual.
“Folks requested, ‘What the fuck goes on with you?’” he recollects. “I’d reply with some variation of, ‘Golf is tough proper now.’ I can’t think about what the response would have been if I had described how a lot heroin I’d been snorting.”
Because the grip of heroin squeezed him, he wanted to escape. He left Alabama. Left the Deep South. Left the world as he knew it. He hid away on St. Croix. He bought clear, spending his days in the salt water, pouring himself into coaching and figuring out. He began smoking extra weed to boring the craving for one thing more durable.
Free of the addiction, Willy greater than seemingly would have been sitting on a important pile of money. However he couldn’t pay his payments. All of the drug purchases and frivolous spending caught up to him. He turned to a golf sponsor to make ends meet.
“My sponsor by no means requested the place I had sunk all my cash,” Willy says, “and I was fortunate to have such unwavering assist.”
That is an ongoing theme connecting troublesome moments in Willy’s life: As a result of he was taking part in effectively, people gave him the profit of the doubt. Within the wake of Tiger Woods’ struggles, Nike launched an advert marketing campaign with the slogan, “Profitable takes care of all the pieces.” In Willy’s case, successful solely enabled him, prolonging an inevitable reckoning.
Willy had shaken the ghastly grip of heroin when he returned to competitors in 2013. He was energized, tanned and rejuvenated. He calls that season “one of the best golf yr of my life. I was smoking a lot of grass however figuring out continuously. I averaged 317 yards off the tee, and my physique felt superb. Weed helped me get better and helped steadiness my hyperactive personality.”
With this contemporary outlook, his confidence exploded. Willy received the 2013 South Georgia Traditional on the Korn Ferry Tour by 4 pictures, gathering $117,000 and locking up PGA Tour standing for the next season. Andrew Loupe, a long-hitting All-American from LSU, performed in the identical group as Willy that Saturday, and the expertise left a mark. “He was in the zone,” Loupe says. “He holed a 5-iron on No. 11 or 12. Simply hooped it. He saved making birdies and then received the match. That was after I was like, this man can actually hit it.”
With their pure swings and roots in the Deep South, Loupe and Willy started taking part in apply rounds collectively. Loupe is considerate and perceptive and he sensed Willy’s deeper points. “I knew there was some kind of vulnerability even earlier than I knew about the drug use,” Loupe says. “It was such a blind confidence with golf. However he appeared risky, even at the excessive factors.”
Later that season, Willy shot a 59 in the ultimate spherical of the Utah Championship. His elevated weed consumption required fixed water consumption in case he was drug-tested throughout competitors, the speculation being the water would dilute the chemical substances in his system so he might cross the take a look at. He turned complacent towards the tip of the season and failed his second take a look at of the yr, main to a suspension that meant 5 months away from competitors.
“Somewhat weed almost cost me all the pieces,” he says. “Regardless of my drug checks coming again soiled for a litany of pain medication, that wasn’t in opposition to the foundations. The lesser of two evils had the career-ending potential.”
The suspension left him reeling. He had simply achieved the dream of incomes a PGA Tour card, however now he was relegated to watching his fellow professionals compete in the Fall Sequence with out him. He was a finely tuned race automobile slapped with a boot. As half of the suspension, the PGA Tour required Willy to go to a physician and attend eight counseling classes. Regardless of that, Willy started to backslide into the throes of addiction.
“My recreation was sharp and trending,” he says. “Now I had to maintain my head down, keep away from questions and keep out of the highlight to maintain from dropping sponsors and assist. The issue was that with out tournaments to maintain me considerably targeted, the shock of the suspension despatched me spiraling.”
That’s when Willy known as Lanto, who was grinding on the mini excursions. When Lanto graduated from VCU in 2010, he was paired with Willy in his first begin as a professional. Willy knew Lanto had a devoted work ethic and was laser-focused on advancing to the subsequent level of professional golf. “He stated I’ll provide you with a deal to live with me for those who can simply maintain me out of bother,” Lanto recollects.
Lanto had performed with Willy on the mini excursions, and he admired Willy’s ball-striking capability. Willy had dominated the Hooters Tour in Lanto’s first yr as a professional. “The sound that his irons made,” Lanto says. “He was such a straight driver of the ball. He flushed it. He was principally a PGA Tour participant taking part in on the mini excursions.”
Skilled golf had been exhausting on Lanto. He had been living with his mom and begun amassing bank card debt from all of his match and journey bills. A free place to live and the chance to apply with a PGA Tour participant have been too good to cross up.
“I knew he had issues,” Lanto says. “However I was so naive to drugs. I had by no means taken something. When he requested me to live with him to get clear, I believed it was weed.” Even after living and practising with Willy for months, Lanto was unaware of the complete extent of Willy’s struggles.
“We by no means actually went to dinner,” Lanto says. “Willy was by no means into going to bars or golf equipment. I simply keep in mind him being sleepy all the time. He appeared low on confidence. He’d simply go to mattress, and I might be left on my own.”
For professional golfers, the PGA Tour is Carnegie Corridor. The programs are pristine, the perks and facilities unparalleled, the competitors unmatched. But when he returned, Willy felt embarrassed. He hadn’t shared the information of his suspension with many people, however he sensed that everybody knew. Half of his discomfort was from questioning what sponsors and fellow gamers would possibly suppose about him, however to a bigger diploma, he felt burning disgrace. Disgrace he had been suspended. Disgrace he was an addict. Disgrace he had to lie repeatedly. Disgrace he was almost alone in this battle. These emotions would solely intensify.
Willy had been away from PGA Tour competitors for months. He had missed the Fall Sequence, a essential stretch of tournaments for a latest Korn Ferry Tour graduate wanting to advance his profession. If Willy hoped to qualify for sufficient tournaments in his first season to retain his PGA Tour card, he would wish extraordinary play. He delivered. On the Sony Open in Hawaii in January 2014, he performed his manner into the final group on Sunday after capturing 69-66-64. He tied for eighth with a final-round 71 and earned $119,000.
Lanto watched his roommate play on TV with nice pleasure. “For those who can take months off for being suspended and go play on the PGA Tour and play in the ultimate group on Sunday,” he says, “it exhibits you the quantity of expertise he had.” Willy was again on Tour with a contemporary infusion of money in his checking account. He was additionally largely left to his personal gadgets.
The addiction raged. His battle with drugs, and particularly heroin, led to mental and bodily breakdowns earlier than tournaments. “I snorted a shag bag full of heroin throughout that point,” he says. Throughout some match weeks Willy battled heroin withdrawal. Understanding the extreme potential cost of one other constructive drug take a look at, he tried to wean himself off throughout match weeks.
In accordance to Willy, the primary day off of heroin isn’t horrible, however the second day is hell. It brings a darkish depression and excruciating pain. His physique would go into extreme withdrawal, screaming for one thing, something, to finish the struggling. On days when colleagues have been charting the match course and getting ready, Willy couldn’t get out of mattress, laying in a river of sweaty torment.
“I’d cry. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat,” he says. “My pores and skin turned grey and appeared like moist cardboard. My eyes swelled. I didn’t suppose I was going to make it.”
Early in the summer time of 2014, Lanto was virtually out of cash and again living with his mom. He had missed six straight cuts on the eGolf Tour. With $176 in his account and considering a profession outdoors of professional golf, Lanto caddied for Willy in The Greenbrier. For the primary time, Willy advised Lanto he had been abusing opioids, and Lanto witnessed up shut what drug withdrawal appears to be like like: the illness, the shaking fingers, the unsteadiness of it all. And but in some way, virtually inexplicably, Willy performed almost flawless golf and tied for fourth.
“Golf’s exhausting sufficient once you’re 100%,” Lanto says. “I might see his fingers shaking, and it was as a result of he was making an attempt to get clear. For 4 days, I didn’t see him hit a unhealthy shot. I couldn’t fathom it.” Willy earned $227,036 and minimize Lanto a examine for greater than $17,000, the quantity Willy would have paid a full-time caddie. Lanto by no means anticipated the level of generosity, and the cash turned out to be career-changing. “I’m 100% satisfied if I hadn’t caddied for him, I wouldn’t be the place I’m on the PGA Tour,” says Lanto, who has since earned $6.4 million between the ropes. It additionally opened up the connection and gave Willy a good good friend he might confide in.
On the finish of 2014, his first season on tour, Willy was taking part in the final regular-season occasion, the Wyndham Championship. He wanted to end twelfth or higher to maintain his card. Early in the match his fingers have been calm. For the primary couple of days, he took whale-sized doses of hydrocodone: 6,000 milligrams of acetaminophen per day (twice the day by day really helpful most). He was a ticking time bomb.
“My fingers shook uncontrollably and I by no means regained management,” says Willy, who in some way nonetheless completed twenty fourth. It wasn’t adequate to preserve full taking part in privileges.
The vicious cycle continued: He would swallow an extreme quantity of capsules to numb the pain of addiction, which led to extra pain, which led to extra pain capsules. One thing in his decrease again was producing waves of stabbing agony. His organs ached.
“I was shopping for 200 to 300 hydrocodones at a time,” he says. “Associates have been mailing them to me. I paid somebody $1,500 to drive a stash to me at the final (Korn Ferry) Finals occasion. My physique had taken me so far as it might, and I hit a wall.”
On the finish of the season, Willy went straight to a methadone clinic in Jupiter, Fla. It took 10 days of really fizzling out the drugs and bathing in salt water to get clear. He was in such poor form that when he advised a clinic employee he was a PGA Tour participant, she couldn’t help however chuckle. “Each golfer thinks they’re a professional down right here,” Willy remembers her saying. As he sat wedged between two homeless people for treatment, he might hardly blame her. Most significantly, the toxins have been leaving his physique. So was the pain.
The match outcomes started to enhance. Throughout 2014 and ’15, Willy gathered 5 top-10 finishes, together with a solo second at the 2015 Barbasol Championship. For the primary time in his profession, he had certified for the profitable FedEx Cup playoffs. His 2014-15 season stats have been spectacular: eighth in scoring common, fourth in greens in regulation, eighth in strokes gained off the tee and second in sand saves. Willy was taking part in one of the best golf of his profession when he arrived in New Jersey for the primary playoff occasion, The Barclays.
He was two strokes off the lead after an opening-round 67 at the tough Plainfield Nation Membership. However he struggled to preserve the momentum in the second spherical and missed the minimize. The excellent news was that he had already gathered sufficient factors to advance to the subsequent playoff occasion, the Deutsche Financial institution Championship. Given the significance of the next week and the comparatively shut proximity of the match at TPC Boston, most professional golfers would have discovered a place to keep domestically to relaxation and put together. Willy headed dwelling. Once more he was shut to temptation. “All I had to do was not go to my buddy’s residence, get on a airplane and go to Boston,” Willy says. However he went to the residence. Monday of match week glided by in a haze of marijuana smoke and capsules. He wakened Tuesday and repeated the drill. Willy was paired with Hunter Mahan and Davis Love III for the primary two rounds at TPC Boston. He by no means made the journey.
“At that time you’re 48 hours from a potential drug take a look at and I’ve bought all this cash on the desk,” Willy says. “None of that might have been out there if I had failed (the take a look at).” He justified the WD to defend everybody who was relying on that revenue—not simply himself, however his management workforce and family. As a substitute, Willy exaggerated the importance of a minor harm he’d been dealing with and his season was over.
He pocketed a $75,000 bonus for ending 97th in the FedEx Cup standings, however who is aware of what occurs had he teed it up at TPC Boston. Possibly he performs effectively sufficient to climb into the highest 70 and earns a spot in the BMW Championship. As soon as there, perhaps he performs his manner into the Tour Championship, the place he would have been assured $175,000 and secured coveted exemptions to big-time tournaments for the next season.
“Nobody in the historical past of the PGA Tour has performed something that silly,” he says. “If I had performed that second playoff occasion with how effectively I was taking part in, there’s no telling the place I might have ended up in 2016.” After he withdrew, Willy instantly flew to the Caribbean and purchased two circumstances of Dom Perignon. He spent the rest of the playoffs feeding his drug addiction, which had returned with a vengeance.
When he returned for the Fall Sequence, Willy didn’t miss a beat. He opened with a T-10 at the Frys.com Open, taking part in in the ultimate group on Saturday. A number of weeks later he got here to the Sanderson Farms Championship in Jackson, Miss., with “a pocketful of Percocets,” a highly effective pain medication consisting of oxycodone and acetaminophen. Willy deliberate to make the minimize and begin popping the capsules on the weekend.
He opened with a clean 4-under 68 earlier than torrential rains led to tedious delays. Willy waited anxiously on Friday for the remaining of the sector to full the primary spherical. Throughout most of this time, he remained in the highest 10 on the leaderboard, however the Percocets beckoned. “I was bored out of my thoughts and I was an fool for having them on me understanding I had no self-control in anyway,” he says.
Because the rains intensified so did the temptation. It was clear his second spherical wouldn’t start till Saturday afternoon. Willy grabbed the capsules and started “gobbling them up.” Then he did one thing unfathomable. With school pals close by in Atlanta, Willy withdrew from the match and hit the road. By the point he arrived, his 4-under rating was in a tie for twenty third.
A lot of Willy’s profession is marked by juxtapositions: one minute reaching one thing most will solely dream about, and the subsequent doing one thing so desperately harmful, so hopelessly reckless, it’s unimaginable. That is the paradox of drug addiction: While you’re excessive, you’re numb. And once you’re not, you agonize.
“I believed pain capsules, or birdie capsules, gave me power and in the very quick time period, some excessively lengthy drives confirmed this,” Willy says. “For a time, the more serious I handled my physique, the higher I performed.” There’s the non permanent pain of lipping out a three-footer, hooking a tee shot out of bounds or lacking a couple of cuts in a row. Most golfers have felt that in a way. That’s nothing just like the deeper, lingering psychological pain that has tormented Willy for most of his life.
Loupe performed alongside Willy throughout his first two seasons on the PGA Tour and the 2 had grown nearer. Willy slowly opened up about his life off the course, to the purpose Loupe turned involved. “I might all the time examine him,” Loupe says. “I might all the time be sincere. Inform him opioids are the worst one—you’re taking part in with hearth right here.”
Willy says the outgoing Loupe was the one one that might sometimes get by means of to him. “He might seize me by the shoulders and shake some sense into me,” Willy says. However the addiction wouldn’t permit him to settle for Loupe’s help usually sufficient.
Willy impressed galleries with a flurry of late birdies at, of all locations, the 2016 Waste Administration Phoenix Open, the match recognized for its rollicking celebration ambiance. He tied for sixth. A pair of months later, he hit probably the most memorable shot of his profession—an ace at the seventeenth gap at TPC Sawgrass through the second spherical of the Gamers Championship, the Tour’s flagship occasion. The outlet-in-one was the primary in 14 years at the island-green gap; it generated an electrical celebration and got here in entrance of family members who have been in the gallery. Willy tossed his pitching wedge in the air and leaped into his caddie’s arms and then across the tee field, delivering adrenaline-fueled high-fives. The Related Press story described Willy as a “free spirit.”
However his health and play deteriorated and worsened in the next seasons. On the finish of the 2021 season, after dropping his remaining taking part in privileges on the Korn Ferry Tour, Willy retired. On the age of 36.
With out competitors to put together for, Willy backslid. Lately he had a brush with demise, which brought about him to notice that if he didn’t get sober and keep clear, he wasn’t going to survive. Willy’s family and pals helped him discover a treatment center. When he known as me from the facility, he hadn’t slept in days, hadn’t eaten a meal in a week and stated he had by no means felt worse. Willy isn’t spiritual, however a voice in his head advised him “it was now or by no means.”
When he emerged after about a week in treatment, Willy appeared like a youthful man. He started tweeting about his struggles and says he feels reborn. He acknowledged it could not be an straightforward journey, however he had efficiently accomplished step one. It was a important stride for a man who for 20 years had been preventing his demons and mendacity to everybody, together with himself, about his addiction. He has visions of making a comeback to professional golf, beginning with some Monday qualifiers.
“I made hundreds of thousands of {dollars} taking part in on professional golf’s largest stage and blew a important proportion of these winnings on drugs,” Willy says. “All of this stuff occurred with out virtually anybody understanding.”
Willy hopes that by sharing his horrifying ordeal—and his road to recovery—he’ll encourage others who’re battling addiction. He hopes to develop into an advocate for these with substance-abuse points.
However first he has to keep clear. If he can, these Monday qualifiers beckon. Possibly, lastly, the joys of a purely struck golf shot would be the solely addiction Willy wants.