Hayden Buckley, who claimed a share of the Sony Open lead on Friday morning with a 6-under 64, is confident in his ability to rattle off a few birdies. But that wasn’t always the case for the Tupelo, Mississippi, native.
After surging up the leaderboard on the second day at Waialae Country Club, Buckley recalled the one round of golf that caused his career trajectory to take a 180.
“To just have a day where everything went in, it kind of woke me up a little bit to where I realized, this is something I could do for a living,” Buckley said.
Buckley is referring to his second round at the Warrior Princeville Makai Invitational in 2017, when he shot the best competitive round of his life: an 11-under 61.
The then-college senior made nine birdies and one eagle that day, but just a few weeks prior to the life-changing round, he hadn’t even figured out how to break 68 or 69 consistently. Buckley had one round of 64 under his belt, but that was about it. So what changed?
“Just that willingness not to stop,” Buckley said. “Today I had a slow start, yesterday I had a slow start, and I made something out of it. I think it’s kind of the same feeling where you make a birdie or two in a row and are able to build off it rather than falling back and being comfortable.”
Buckley may not have realized it then, but he knew how to compound momentum long before that defining round of 61. The now 26-year-old walked on the golf team at Missouri. As a lifelong baseball player, Buckley didn’t start taking golf seriously until high school, and by then, it was too late to get a recruiting offer. But as a member of the Missouri golf team, all Buckley did was try to get better.
“I just figured out how to hit it a little bit longer and got to the gym a little bit more and gave myself more opportunities,” said Buckley of his upward trajectory.
The walk-on left his alma mater with not only the single round school record of 61 but also the lowest scoring average in Mizzou history and All-American honors.
“I peaked a little bit later than most guys,” Buckley said. “I was studying harder than I was practicing. I was actually planning to potentially work a good job, and I didn’t figure it out until about my junior year of college. That’s when things started to click a little bit. That senior year, that 61 in Hawai’i, that was when it was kind of validated that I could do it.”
As just a second-year PGA Tour member, Buckley is already proving that his gut instincts steered him in the right direction.
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