Nate Lashley is golf’s tragic and stunning success story

Nate Lashley is golf’s tragic and stunning success story. Highlights Round 2 Rocket Mortgage 2019

Nate Lashley is golf’s tragic and stunning success story video duration 5 Minute(s) 2 Second(s), published by F News on 01 07 2019 - 20:59:58.

Nate Lashley was the last player to get into the Rocket Mortgage Classic last week
He's ranked 353rd in the world, had never won a PGA Tour event and had

In the second round of the 2019 Rocket Mortgage Classic, Charles Howell III shot a 5-under 67 and is two strokes back heading into the weekend
SUBSCRIBE . Check out the best shots of the day from round 2 of the 2019 Rocket Mortgage Classic, featuring Cameron Champ, Patrick Reed, Rickie Fowler, Charles Howell .

Nate Lashley was the last player to get into the Rocket Mortgage Classic last week. He’s ranked 353rd in the world, had never won a PGA Tour event and had just one top-10 finish in 32 tries. He suffered a knee injury in 2018 that ended his season early and, at age 36, for all intents and purposes, there was little reason to expect what happened this past week. Lashley shot a 63 on the first day of the tournament at Detroit Golf Club and rolled after that, cruising to a wire-to-wire win in inaugural version of the event. At a tournament where the cut line was 5-under, where 16 players finished with 15-under or better, Lashley’s lead was never in danger. He won at 25-under and took home a $1.3 million purse. He’ll now play at Portrush in The Open next month and at Augusta in The Masters next year. Consider it a culmination of sorts, of a journey that started in tragedy and has been defined by it since. When Lashley was a junior at Arizona in 2004, his parents, Charlene and Rod, and his girlfriend, Leslie Hofmeister, died in a plane crash on their way back from watching Nate play in the NCAA West Regional in Oregon. Rod was flying the single-engine Cessna, which crashed amid bad weather in Wyoming. Lashley has been asked about it to no end, and was again on Sunday. “It took me a long time to get over my parents’ death,” he said, per Gold Digest. “Mentally, it was holding me back for a long time.” As the gravity of his win sunk in, there was little else he could focus on. “I think about my parents all the time,” Lashley said. “I was getting emotional walking up to 18, even before I hit my second shot, thinking about my parents. Without them, I wouldn’t even be sitting here.” After turning pro and joining the Nationwide Tour, Lashley struggled to the point of eventually giving up golf. For six months in 2012, he turned to flipping houses as a real estate agent. Three years later, he returned to the game via the PGA Tour Latinoamerica. By 2017, he had a Web.com Tour card, and a year later, he had a PGA Tour card. “It was nice to take a few months off, and by taking those few months off and doing some other stuff, I realized golf’s a lot of fun,” Lashley said. “It’s a blessing to be able to come out here and compete. Especially now playing at the highest level, I’m glad I stuck it out.” This is well-trodden territory — what happens when tragedy strikes, then seems to linger. Last weekend, Lashley turned the page, and wrote a new chapter.