ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. – Maverick McNealy has lengthy had a take care of his grandmother, Marm, that each time he cashes a match verify for over $50,000, he should ship her flowers. Every top-10 end additionally earns Marm a field of sweets.
Now, although, McNealy was going to want to up the ante, admitting, “I ought to most likely get her one thing somewhat additional particular.”
That’s as a result of the 29-year-old McNealy is now a PGA Tour winner, his breakthrough, a one-shot victory Sunday on the RSM Traditional, coming seven years after the previous top-ranked beginner famously flirted with life as a profession entrepreneur solely to present skilled golf his greatest shot.
What a choice that turned out to be.
“My thoughts’s gone clean, actually,” McNealy stated, practically an hour after his successful, 72nd-hole putt dropped. “It was an unbelievable adrenaline rush there.”
Becoming, contemplating the journey he’s taken.
McNealy was as soon as a hockey participant who dabbled in golf, hardly ever taking part in outdoors his area. However he knew he wasn’t constructed for faculty hockey, and as a Stanford legacy, he verbally dedicated to his hometown Cardinal his junior 12 months of highschool. He was the third piece in a star-studded 2013 recruiting class that additionally included U.S. Junior winner Jim Liu and worldwide prodigy Viraat Badhwar, a lot in order that he’d typically joke that head coach Conrad Ray’s trio of signees featured three Nos. 1 – No. 1 in America, No. 1 in Australia and No. 1 in Portola Valley.
But, it was McNealy who piled up the accolades – 11 school wins, tying the college file shared by Tiger Woods and Patrick Rodgers; two Walker Cup appearances; world’s top-ranked beginner.
“I had no expectations on me, and every little thing appeared to occur accidentally,” McNealy stated. “It got here actually simply and sort of caught me off guard, to be trustworthy.”
McNealy had at all times dreamed of taking part in for Stanford, however after that, he figured, he’d dive into the enterprise world, like his dad, Scott, the billionaire tech mogul who famously based Solar Microsystems, which he later bought to Microsoft. McNealy’s LeBron James-like resolution was a lot anticipated, however when he in the end selected skilled golf, he was all-in.
“The best way I’m taking a look at it’s I’m leaping off a cliff proper now … and there’s no wanting again and there’s no second guessing,” McNealy stated the day he turned professional, in 2017.
A 12 months later, McNealy was put to what’s nonetheless at the moment his greatest take a look at. A rookie on the Korn Ferry Tour, McNealy developed the full-swing yips. He couldn’t play 9 holes at TPC Summerlin, his residence course in Las Vegas, with out going by means of a dozen golf balls. It was so debilitating that McNealy phoned his caddie on the time, Travis McAllister, that he could be skipping the KFT Finals occasion in Columbus, Ohio.
What occurred subsequent was a doubtlessly career-altering turning level.
“One of the crucial pivotal cellphone calls of my life,” McNealy defined. “He advised me, ‘Get your butt on a aircraft and we’ll determine it out.’ Went there, I hit it 50 yards proper off the primary tee and we one way or the other made the reduce.”
McNealy earned his PGA Tour card that subsequent season – and he’s but to relinquish it. In his first three seasons, he racked up 9 top-10s, together with a pair runners-up, and by no means completed worse than 68th in FedExCup factors. Positive, victory eluded him, however primarily based on his pedigree, it appeared solely a matter of time.
Then he harm his shoulder.
McNealy tore his left anterior sterno-clavicular in February 2023, an harm that sidelined him for about six months, required regenerative stem-cell therapies and compelled him to take a serious medical extension this 12 months. Many execs would’ve been left devastated, or no less than discouraged. However Joseph Bramlett, McNealy’s greatest good friend on the PGA Tour, remembers, even within the early days of McNealy’s rehab, an inspiringly decided McNealy.
“As he does with something,” Bramlett stated, “he stored pushing, stored working, did all the appropriate issues. … He made probably the most of it.”
Did he ever. Whereas away, McNealy polished off his pilot’s license, and he met his spouse, Maya, who labored on the facility the place McNealy did his bodily remedy. The couple married final Dec. 6. McNealy additionally rebuilt his swing, flipping his path to swing left and taking strain off his physique.
“I by no means misplaced religion that I’d be again higher than ever,” McNealy stated.
He simply by no means anticipated all of it to click on on, of all weeks, this one.
McNealy’s evaluation of the present FedExCup factors construction led the PGA Tour to regulate some inadequacies for subsequent season.
“He takes unbelievable care of the folks round him,” Scout stated of Maverick, who is understood for sending handwritten notes every offseason to sponsors, match organizers and even members of the media.
McNealy’s newest act of kindness got here on Saturday night time, when he stated of Bramlett, who was battling to maintain his card this week, “I’d commerce 100 trophies to have him on the PGA Tour subsequent 12 months.”
“Mav’s the most effective particular person,” Bramlett stated. “All the pieces he does as a human being, he’s the most effective. He cares quite a bit about me. I care quite a bit about him. I’m actually joyful for him.”
So, even after shedding his full standing, Bramlett was greenside on No. 18 to observe McNealy elevate his first PGA Tour trophy into the cloudless, blue sky. Becoming a member of Bramlett was Maya, Scout and one among McNealy’s different brothers, Dakota, plus McNealy’s longtime agent, Peter Webb, who flew in from Nashville simply hours earlier. Maya’s job on Sunday was to have McNealy’s dad and mom on velocity dial, simply in case McNealy completed the job.
McNealy’s mother, Susan, couldn’t cease crying. Scott couldn’t cease smiling.
It was Scott McNealy who first instilled the significance of a group to Maverick, who famously shared a room with all 4 of his brothers rising up, one wall lined with twin-sized beds. Now, McNealy was thanking a group that has grown properly behind his household to incorporate over a dozen folks, starting from efficiency employees to enterprise personnel.
This win was no accident.
Each member of Staff Mav had performed a task in Sunday’s breakthrough, so in McNealy’s thoughts, this trophy was for all of them.
But it surely’d look greatest atop his grandmother’s mantel.
