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SEA ISLAND, GEORGIA | It didn’t happen in one moment. Kevin O’Connell absorbed his two major championship experiences in 2019 and came to peace with the reality.
After years of painstaking deliberation, the voice in his head telling him to chase professional golf had slowly faded.
“The word journey is a perfect description,” O’Connell said. “I’ve sort of meandered in and out of golf for the past 10 years in considering playing it for a living. The bottom line is at some point you have to make a grown-up decision based off the results you’ve had and where you want to be in life. … I realized after playing the U.S. Open, these guys, they are so good. And they are so far along. You are playing against guys who are hardened professionals who have played in however many majors.
“The gap was just so big. For somebody my age, the decision to not pursue it was pretty easy after that.”
Relief and sadness often accompany each other. O’Connell’s decision is a beautiful example.
“I was that guy who never missed the cut, but just couldn’t shoot the 20-under par that it took to win.”
Kevin O’Connell
The 2018 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion grew up in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area, with every intention of making it to the game’s brightest stages. His father Bud tells the story of how O’Connell, at age 3, loved golf on television and spent his weekends jumping off the couch during commercials to swing a cut-off club, doing impressions of Fred Couples and Greg Norman.
“He would swing it beautifully, just like they were doing it on TV,” Bud O’Connell said.
He spent countless hours at Wildwood Green Golf Club, which produced current PGA Tour players Doc Redman and Grayson Murray in addition to many locals who went on to play Division I golf and moved to the professional game. He also played a great deal of golf with another Raleigh native, Webb Simpson, at Carolina Country Club during their youth.
Even as a junior with years ahead of him before high school, it appeared as if O’Connell would walk the same paths those players eventually did. He won an AJGA All-Stars event in Camp Lejeune when he was 12 and played in Oregon at the All-Star Championship all three years he was eligible, developing into a top college golf prospect. That included qualifying for the 2004 U.S. Junior Amateur at Olympic Club when he was 16 – he made it to the round of 16 – and later winning the 2007 North Carolina High School State Championship.
“What I remember so vividly is that you had to cross this little road to get your range balls back at the Wildwood clubhouse,” former Duke University assistant coach and close friend T.D. Luten said. “He would get two large buckets, go cross the road and hit them. Then he’d do it again. Then another time. He would do it three times in a normal practice. Six large buckets of balls. And that didn’t include beating up on the older members during actual rounds or in putting contests they would have.
“His work ethic, honestly, it was always second to none. It was beyond amazement how much skill and determination he had.”
That skill landed him a scholarship at the University of North Carolina. It’s customary for players there to begin the year with 10 consecutive qualifying rounds to set the Tar Heels’ fall lineup. Undaunted by the veteran group in place, O’Connell shot 22-under par for the 10 rounds to finish runner-up.
It wasn’t a fluke. As a freshman, he started all 11 of UNC’s tournaments and carded nine top-15 finishes, leading the team in seven of those events. It was more than enough to be named the 2008 ACC Freshman of the Year.
Time after time, O’Connell displayed a penchant for hitting the necessary shot at the exact moment he needed it. In the 2008 U.S. Amateur at Pinehurst, he came to the par-3 ninth hole, his final hole of stroke play, needing a birdie to reach the match-play portion of the event.
“I told him all he had to do was hit the green and I’ll read the putt for him,” said Luten, his caddie that day. “He hit his tee shot to 20 feet and he had a really tricky putt, but he just drilled it. We were playing with (eventual PGA Tour player) Jamie Lovemark and I think he was more excited than Kevin was. That’s pretty clutch.”
But as O’Connell qualified for the biggest amateur events on the calendar, he didn’t like how his game compared to those near the top of the world rankings. Both he and his instructor at the time, Todd Anderson, decided to reconfigure his swing to get more distance off the tee.
His stroke average suffered, going from 71.66 his freshman year to 75.38 his junior year.
“With that came inconsistency,” O’Connell said. “My freshman year, I led the country in greens in regulation, but I never got back to that consistency. In hindsight, should I have left some things alone and worked on my putting a little bit more? I think so. Maybe more distance off the tee would have come naturally through going through our team’s strength and conditioning program instead of trying to chase it through mechanics.”
Although his game had deteriorated and he never won a college event, O’Connell felt like having the opportunity to focus solely on the game without school and other responsibilities would be a boon for his pro aspirations. At the time, there was a Carolinas-based mini-tour called the eGolf Professional Tour with 160-player fields that competed for upwards of $50,000 first-place checks.
The circuit, which eventually was sold and integrated into what is now the SwingThought Tour, buoyed the dreams of many eventual PGA Tour players, including Peter Malnati, William McGirt, Roberto Castro and Steve Marino. O’Connell pooled some money from family and friends to play two years, hoping he could add to that list.
“I was that guy who never missed the cut, but just couldn’t shoot the 20-under par that it took to win,” O’Connell said. “I was always stuck finishing between eighth and 25th. And then I would go to Monday qualifiers and shoot 5 under and feel like I played really well, but it took 7 or 8 under to make it.
“I got to the point where I was as good as I was going to get.”
O’Connell went to PGA Tour Latinoamérica Q-School in January 2014 and didn’t make it, marking the close of his professional golf life.
Or so he thought.
That fall, O’Connell started a three-year run working next door to his alma mater at an investment firm called Franklin Street Partners. While he got his amateur status back, his 9-to-5 job left little room for competitive golf outside of qualifying for the 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur at Stonewall Links in Elverson, Pennsylvania. He longed to be back in the position of having his adrenaline pumping on the first tee or coming down the back nine needing a charge to win.
That’s when he was hired by Luten to work for PXG as a territory representative. It gave him significantly more freedom to play and led to the best stretch of golf he’s ever enjoyed. In summer 2018, O’Connell won the Monroe Invitational ahead of 2019 U.S. Amateur champion Andy Ogletree, tied for sixth at the Porter Cup, qualified for the U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach – his first since 2008 at Pinehurst – and then won the U.S. Mid-Amateur in his home state, giving him an invitation to play in the Masters and U.S. Open, also at Pebble Beach.
“I had gotten older and matured as a player and a person,” O’Connell said. “I was still fairly young and in a different space to maybe try (pro golf) one more time. I was married but didn’t have any kids. When I left PXG in the spring of 2018, I went to my parents and told them that I wanted to play 2018 out, building a good amateur schedule as preparation to go to European Tour Q-School that fall and just see what happens.”
“... I realized that you don’t have to be playing on the PGA Tour necessarily to enjoy some really cool stuff, playing and competing on some great golf courses.”
But by winning the U.S. Mid-Am, O’Connell had to remain an amateur in order to play in the two majors. That meant he would forgo Q-School as originally planned.
He went all-in to prepare for those opportunities, briefly moving to Jacksonville, Florida, with his wife, Michelle, so he could prepare in warmer weather. He missed the cut by one stroke at the Masters, nearly recovering from a first-round 77 to reach the weekend, and also missed the cut at the U.S. Open.
Meanwhile, as O’Connell also was finishing in the top five at the Gasparilla Invitational and Coleman Invitational, two premier mid-amateur events, he came to a greater appreciation of the opportunity mid-amateur golfers have.
“My thinking started to shift throughout 2019,” O’Connell said. “For the first time, I realized that you don’t have to be playing on the PGA Tour necessarily to enjoy some really cool stuff, playing and competing on some great golf courses.
“The idea of being a professional golfer just quietly went to the wayside. It was unexpected, but it was kind of cool at the same time.”
Now O’Connell is back in the real world, recently having taken a job in wealth management as an associate advisor for Curi Capital in Raleigh. He was one of the few mid-ams at last week’s Jones Cup and intends to take advantage of everything this level of golf has to offer. As he battled Ocean Forest Golf Club in cold conditions, you could sense a player breathing easier, taking in the competition and the challenge that awaits each shot.
The dream that wouldn’t let him go is gone for good, he says. In a way, there always will be a sadness that he didn’t make it.
But then there is the relief. He gave every effort he could, acknowledging what he has instead of wishing for what he doesn’t.
“His little cut-off club has taken him to a lot of neat places in the game,” Bud O’Connell said. “I think the only thing that hurt him professionally is that he’s a much better player now than when he was younger. If he was 10 years younger and playing the way he is now, he could still do it.
“But as his father, I’m just glad he’s at peace with it. I’m glad he doesn’t have any regrets.”
At a certain point, that’s all anybody can ever ask for.
Top photo: Kevin O'Connell at the 2019 Masters
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