Will MacKenzie once lived in an ice cave. He also lived in an igloo, which may or may not be the same thing. I was going to ask about that, but by then he had moved on to the five years that he lived in a van ... down by the river.
Will MacKenzie is the greatest golf story never told. Even after MacKenzie won the Reno-Tahoe Open last month, you probably think he's another of the faceless humps on the PGA Tour, one more cookie-cutter golfer-person like David Toms, Ben Curtis or Vaughn Taylor.
|
|
| Will MacKenzie earned his place on the PGA Tour in 2005 and '06 in qualifying school. (Getty Images) |
He says beautiful things like, "My best profession was professional van-living. There's no doubt."
MacKenzie doesn't sleep in a 1991 Toyota Previa any more. Over the years, as his golf career moved from the Golden Bear Tour in Florida to the Canadian Tour to the Hooters Tour and finally to full-time status on the PGA Tour beginning in 2005, he moved out of the Previa and into a $20-a-night Masters Inn. As his game improved, so did his choice of hotel. He's not proud of that.
"I don't live cheap any more," he says. "I was living in the van on mini-tours, and I realized I had to put forth some effort. It's not like I was rolling out of the damn vehicle to go rock-climbing any more. You've got to treat yourself a little better out here. Get a good night's sleep, sleep in a decent hotel -- a Holiday Inn ... Express -- and eat the right things to be successful. You need to make sure you're sleeping right, showering."
Right. Showering.
"Well, yeah," he says. "On the mini-tours, I'd get out of the van in the morning, jump into the shower in the clubhouse -- if they had one -- and dry off with a golf towel. I'd switch my clothes and run to my tee time. That was fine. I've just gotten spoiled rotten, pretty much. Now I'm about used to it and don't want to sleep in a van anymore. I don't want to sleep in a Holiday Inn for that matter. I'm pretty disappointed in myself."
Please, PGA Tour, market this guy. Unless Zach Johnson or J.J. Henry or any of the other drones on Tour shoots a 57, we don't care. Please not another kid who was given a golf club at an early age by affluent parents and then progressed through the junior ranks to college golf to the pros to the PGA Tour. Same guy, different khakis.
But this guy, this Will MacKenzie ... market him. Get his story out. Give him a reality show or a television movie. Make sure it starts with the AJGA Ben Hogan Junior in 1989, where MacKenzie says he "basically choked pretty bad" and was so discouraged that he quit playing competitive golf. He was 14.
He kicked field goals and punted for his high school football team in Greenville, N.C., and by the summer after his junior year was sleeping in a van on the Outer Banks. He did it again the next summer, then headed West and went to the van full time, parking it near the Big Sky Resort in Montana.
"It was me getting tired of the normalcy of life," MacKenzie says. "As a kid I wore two faces: I wanted to be Mr. Do-It-Right, the little jock, but also I liked to hang out with the skate rats and listen to punk rock and defy the system a little bit."
MacKenzie learned the best way to sleep through sub-zero temperatures -- "butt cold," he says -- was to take off his boots and socks. "Sweating," he says. "Not good. Your feet turn into icebergs."
