BANDON, OREGON | At last week’s PGA Professional Championship at Bandon Dunes, golf instructor and past PGA Tour winner Charlie Beljan entered the final round tied for the lead. He had a chance to win and was well positioned to finish among the top 20 to earn a spot in next week’s PGA Championship at Aronimink. But in Wednesday’s final round, Beljan shot 78 and missed the top 20 by a stroke.
Despite his disappointing finish, Beljan considers his more than five years of sobriety a victory.
“Before I even swung a golf club this week I won the tournament,” Beljan said. “I’ve been an authentic, vulnerable human being on Instagram. I’ve had three of my peers this week who I’ve never met come up to me and say, ‘Because of your Instagram, we’re sober.’”
Alcohol has always been a part of Beljan’s life. He grew up watching his mom, who is 25 years sober and counting, struggle with alcoholism. He drank during his success as a junior golfer, in college and on the PGA Tour, where he made 146 starts, won at Disney in 2012 and earned just less than $4 million. Now, with a new perspective, Beljan is passionate about sharing his story to help others.
“The reason it’s so important to share my story is because of the dark, dark road that is alcoholism or addiction,” Beljan said. “When you’re in it you feel like there’s no way out. I just want to share my story out loud for those suffering in silence.”
Beljan started drinking at an early age.
“The first time I ever got hammered I think I was in eighth grade,” Beljan said. “Because I was decent at golf from an early age I was always hanging out with the older kids. I was always exposed to stuff before I should have been.”
“When I got on the PGA Tour was when I really ramped up the drinking because the pressure became so much more.”
Charlie Beljan
But Beljan’s many experiences with underage drinking seemed to have no effect on his golf game. He won the 2002 U.S. Junior Amateur at Atlanta Athletic Club before going to the University of New Mexico and winning three times there. He was an All-American in 2007, his senior year.
After graduating, Beljan turned pro and competed on the Gateway Tour, where he won nine tournaments.
All the while, Beljan was drinking more and more. He disregarded all warnings from his friends and family to quit.
“I kept being successful and I just felt invincible,” Beljan said. “I was at the top of my career.”
In 2011, Beljan finished 13th at Q-School to earn his PGA Tour card. Once on tour, however, Beljan’s problems multiplied exponentially.
“When I got on the PGA Tour was when I really ramped up the drinking because the pressure became so much more,” Beljan said. “You were on the road in a hotel room, I like to call it a jail cell, for four or five weeks at a time.”
In 2012, his rookie season, Beljan suffered a panic attack during the second round of the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals Classic at Disney World. He had shortness of breath and heart palpitations that he said made him think he was going to die. Doctors advised him not to continue playing. Not only did Beljan continue, he won the tournament.
But the stress and anxiety didn’t go away.
“I started to feel anxiety every day and the only way I knew how to calm it down or make it go away was to drink,” Beljan said. “And little did I know that by drinking I was just amplifying the anxiety for the next day.”
Beljan says it got to a point where he had to take pills in the morning to offset the shakes, depression and anxiety. Then he was right back to boozing at a party at night. Golf was no longer fun, and it hadn’t been for a while.
“It became a vicious cycle,” Beljan said. “I hated golf more so I drank more when I was done to forget about it. Then I took the pills after that.”
Even when competing in an event, Beljan couldn’t help but think about alcohol.
“I’d start thinking about drinking on the fourth or fifth hole and couldn’t care less about how I was playing,” Beljan said. “I just needed to get the feelings to go away.”
Beljan continued to play on tour and some good results kept him from addressing his problems. He still felt invincible. But he lost his card in 2018 and hit rock bottom at a mini-tour event two years later.
“I hit 18 greens and I three-putted 13 times because my hands were shaking so bad,” Beljan said. “And my wife sat me down and said, ‘It’s time to change or I have to leave.’ I wasn’t willing to lose her.”
Beljan had his last drink on Oct. 26, 2020, and started his road to sobriety. There were days when he’d consume more than 30 non-alcoholic beers to satisfy the urge. When the shakes started around 2 p.m., he went on walks.
“Some days the walk would last three miles and some days it would last 15 miles until those feelings went away,” Beljan said.
Beljan discovered a penchant for teaching in 2023. He says it’s never a career he would have envisioned because he hated taking lessons and practicing. However, he was a good player and wanted to give back.
“Through my sobriety I was humbled and I learned that giving is way better than receiving,” Beljan said.
Beljan joined an Arizona golfers Facebook group and threw out the idea of teaching lessons. Within 10 minutes, he says he received messages from close to 100 interested people.
In his lessons, Beljan says he tries to teach his clients golf, not the golf swing. He thinks a lot of golf instruction is too complicated and should be simplified. People should enjoy the game without the loud noise of too many swing thoughts.
Through teaching and sobriety, Beljan has rediscovered his love for the game. For years, he says, he hated golf as soon as the competition started but just did it because he was good at it.
So the PGA Professional Championship was an altogether new experience.
“I have never enjoyed 72 holes of golf as much as I did this week,” Beljan said. “I got to battle the elements and my competitors instead of the demons inside me. This was the first tournament where I truly felt there was no fight within.”
Tuning in to the championship were at least two people whom Beljan’s story has touched: Carrie Williams, the executive director of the Illinois PGA, and Tony Martinez, a former PGA of America board member. Williams and Martinez are 12 and 13 years sober, respectively.
Both say Beljan sharing his story is important not only for others, but for Beljan himself.
“When you’re in the ditch and in the addiction, you can’t even fathom what a life outside of what you’re living is. I’m here to tell people that it’s so great that you have no idea but it takes work.”
“In the recovery rooms it’s come to be known that one of the most powerful things a recovering alcoholic can do is tell his or her story of how they came to be sober because others might hear a piece of themselves in your story,” Williams said. “But you’re also investing in yourself and your own sobriety by this active service of being vulnerable.”
If Beljan can get sober, why not others?
“For everybody who is in an addictive cycle or struggling with something, they feel alone,” Martinez said. “That they are the only one and their circumstance is unique. The opposite of addiction is connection.”
As Beljan prepares for next year’s PGA Professional Championship and many more to come, he will continue to use his newfound appreciation of golf to teach others the game. He will also continue to use his newfound appreciation of life to spread the joys of sobriety.
“Don’t give up [on getting sober],” Beljan said. “If you have to try 10 times and fail nine, keep on trying. I’ve never met anyone who’s gotten sober and said their life was way better when they were drinking. But when you’re in the ditch and in the addiction, you can’t even fathom what a life outside of what you’re living is. I’m here to tell people that it’s so great that you have no idea but it takes work.”
Top: Charlie Beljan brought a newfound appreciation of golf to the PGA Professional Championship.
Ryan Lochhead, PGA of America via Getty Images