TAMPA, FLORIDA | Park Ulrich doesn’t think he deserves to be getting interviewed.
Through two rounds of the Gasparilla Invitational, a tournament he aptly describes as the “Waste Management Phoenix Open of mid-am golf,” he is 3-over and nine shots back of the lead. In his fourth playing of the Gasparilla, this is the first time that the 32-year-old from Overland Park, Kansas, has made the 36-hole cut. It’s tough coming straight from the dead of winter to play at Palma Ceia Golf & Country Club, a thorny Donald Ross course that specializes in discomfort. The national field is easily one of the best on the calendar, and a few of those players are challenging for the title.
So again, why is he being interviewed?
“Really the only interesting part about me is that I almost died one time,” Ulrich said jokingly as he watched a group approaching the ninth green.
Wednesday, a day before the tournament started, was the 15th anniversary of Ulrich being diagnosed with leukemia. Ulrich was a high school senior in 2008, just about to turn 18 years old, when cancer robbed him of an opportunity to play college golf at Louisville. Having grown up playing at the Nicklaus Golf Club at Lionsgate alongside future PGA Tour player Harry Higgs, Ulrich held aspirations of being what Higgs became, but that route was taken away by force.
His entire relationship with golf took a drastic turn. Ulrich had been, in his words, a spoiled only child living in a suburban utopia without any adversity of meaning. And then, as quick as an O.B. ball off the first tee, he dropped 40 pounds and suffered unstoppable tremors as a result of chemotherapy. Monthly spinal taps made his back fragile. It was a time of jarring isolation.
“If I didn't have mid-am tournaments, I don't know if I would play any tournaments. I would play client golf, but I'd be a 5 handicap. It wouldn't be my only real hobby.”
PARK ULRICH
Through treatment, Ulrich stayed close to his family while being able to start college at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He eventually would be a playing member of the golf team, but his game had been sucked out of him. Drives that once went 290 yards were going only 230 yards. He had to relearn motor skills, feeling like a newborn baby in the process.
The ease of golf, and of life, had been permanently altered.
“There is an aspect of, ‘Oh, life is so precious,’ and all that, but really it just got me to grow up and realize that this can all go away in a minute,” Ulrich said. “It took golf away from me … there's a lot of, I guess you would say, blessings in disguise. I kind of hate saying that phrase, but there was a lot of that.”
Ulrich played golf through college and then mostly stopped competing for four years. He didn’t need golf, necessarily. Born in South Korea to birth parents whom he never met, Ulrich was adopted by Americans when he was 5 months old and flashed financial intelligence from an early age. He’s now a managing director at Sky Capital Wealth Advisors and has been recognized numerous times as a “Five Star Wealth Manager,” an award that goes to fewer than 7 percent of wealth managers in the region based on results from a third-party research firm.
In 2017, his business partner wanted to play the Kansas Amateur at a course where many of their clients were members. Ulrich felt good enough to play competitive golf again.
“I started playing mid-am golf because my hands finally stopped tremoring,” Ulrich said.
The talent of his youth was still inside of him. Ulrich won the 2017 and 2019 Kansas Mid-Amateurs before adding the 2020 Kansas Amateur, titles that helped get him an invitation to the Gasparilla and Carlton Woods Invitationals. This May, he will compete in the Coleman Invitational at Seminole Golf Club for the first time. His golf swing is classic and aesthetically pleasing, producing a reliable draw.
“Everyone always says I hit it good enough (to be a pro golfer), but I can’t do everything else,” Ulrich said, the self-deprecation weighing heavier with each word.
But this is less about a scoring average or winning or competition. It is more about reviving something deep inside of him.
“It’s given golf a new life to me,” Ulrich said. “If I didn't have mid-am tournaments, I don't know if I would play any tournaments. I would play client golf, but I'd be a 5 handicap. It wouldn't be my only real hobby.”
Often the only player of Asian descent in these mid-am events, Ulrich acknowledges that difference isn’t particularly noticeable until he says it. While the conversation goes on, Ulrich is stopped several times by friends he has made in his four years here.
“A lot of these guys I’ve met are some of my closest friends,” Ulrich said. “You might only see them five times a year, but that's more than you see other people. So it's kind of its own culture. I remember coming here for the very first time. I was a little intimidated because I didn't know anybody, but over the years it's become what I build my year around.”
The blistering Florida sun at the beginning of the conversation is suddenly gone now, at least until tomorrow’s final round. Ulrich is Ubering to get some barbeque with his aforementioned friends.
He’s here this week with his wife, Becky, who came to Tampa partly because it was a celebration of her husband battling and beating leukemia. She doesn’t like golf, he says, but she loves him. They have two children, ages 5 and 1. He doesn’t think about cancer much anymore, except for the anniversary and the fact he was just asked to talk about it. Now it’s just balancing life and enjoying competition, like anyone else in his position would try to do.
“That’s mid-am golf,” Ulrich said, his smile making up for the sun’s absence.
And it’s something to be grateful for.
E-MAIL SEAN
Top: Park Ulrich mostly stopped competing after college before finding mid-amateur tournaments in 2017.
PHOTO COURTESY OF central links golf association