GoHeels Exclusive: Kevin O'Connell Readies for the Masters

By Pat James, GoHeels.com

This time last year, when Kevin O'Connell decided to leave his job and make a last-ditch effort at a professional golf career, the former North Carolina standout had relatively few expectations.

Almost five years had passed since he'd regularly played against the type of competition that he'd be facing at the amateur level. So he wasn't focused solely on winning tournaments. Instead, he hoped to use each event as a stepping stone toward his ultimate goal.

"It was more so just wanting to point to some real tangible improvement," O'Connell said. "And at the end of the year, I felt like if that was the case and I was confident in my game, I was going to give Q-school (qualifying school) a shot."

Eventually, that's exactly what he chose to do, booking a flight to compete in European Tour qualifying in France. But winning the U.S. Mid-Amateur on Sept. 27 changed that plan.

With his victory at Charlotte Country Club, O'Connell hit the elite golfer's jackpot: A Masters invitation and an exemption into June's U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. He also earned exemptions into the next two U.S. Amateurs and 10 U.S. Mid-Amateurs. The caveat, however, was that he must remain an amateur.

Although he briefly considered still going to Europe, he couldn't pass up the opportunity to play on golf's biggest stages, as he'll do this week at Augusta National.

"To not go do what the goal was all year, from that standpoint it was like, 'Man, I feel like I'm passing up a little bit of an opportunity while I'm playing well,'" O'Connell said. "But you may never play in the Masters again. So at the end of the day, that was a pretty easy decision."

But his journey to this point hasn't been smooth.

During his first season at UNC, O'Connell was named the 2008 ACC Freshman of the Year and a third-team All-America. He also earned All-ACC honors, a feat he duplicated as a sophomore. Both of those seasons, he said, were defined by consistency. Yet a lack of that same level of play resulted in him posting a 76 scoring average across his junior and senior campaigns.

After graduating in 2011, he began pursing a professional career. He found some success on the eGolf Tour, a mini-tour conducted in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia. But he never advanced past the first stage of PGA Tour qualifying, despite three tries.

Meanwhile, O'Connell, 30, said fellow golfers his age – such as Rickie Fowler, Webb Simpson and Kyle Stanley – gained their PGA Tour cards within about a year of turning pro.

"I saw that and saw that I wasn't able to do that," O'Connell said, "and I just thought to myself, 'It seems like if you're going to make it, you should kind of be able to in the first try or two.' And since it didn't work out that way, I just had in my mind that maybe it wasn't meant to be."

So in 2014, he applied to be reinstated as an amateur. He also took a job with Franklin Street Partners, an investment firm in Chapel Hill.

O'Connell spent almost three years with Franklin Street Partners, a place he said he "probably could've spent almost my whole life working at." He still played golf occasionally, mostly for fun. Both he and his wife, Michelle, had moved on from the idea of him playing professionally.

But that could only last so long.

After playing in a few events in 2016, O'Connell started contemplating giving professional golf a second try. By the time he accepted a job with PXG (Parsons Xtreme Golf) in early 2017, it had become a foregone conclusion.

"I think if we were 10 years older and had kids and all this sort of stuff, I don't think it would've happened," O'Connell said. "But at 28 years old and having switched jobs already a second time, it was a situation where we felt like, 'Maybe one or two more years and one more try is not going to be the end of the world.'"

Any doubts that surfaced were quelled last June, when O'Connell won the Monroe Invitational in Pittsford, N.Y. Before then, he hadn't won a golf tournament since claiming the North Carolina state high school championship as a senior at Green Hope High in Cary.

From there, he qualified for the U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach, but didn't advance to match play. Ranked outside of the World Amateur Golf Rankings top 400, he didn't receive an exemption for the Mid-Am. But he managed to qualify.

The Mid-Am consists of two days of stroke play, with the leading 64 competitors then competing in match-play to decide the champion. O'Connell won 19-hole matches in both the quarterfinals and semifinals. Then, in the 36-hole final against Brett Boner, a Charlotte native playing in front of a large contingent of fans, O'Connell won 4 and 3.

"It was definitely a grind," he said. "But as the week went along, I definitely felt my confidence improving. It went from trying to win a couple of matches or just seeing how well I could do to, as it got near the end, I definitely felt like if I continued to do what I was doing, that I was going to have a good chance to win."

Once he did, O'Connell said he didn't think about the Masters or the U.S. Open. But in the ensuing three weeks, he checked his mail twice a day until he received his first communication from Augusta.

"When it finally came," he said, "it was like a whole different wave of emotion from winning the tournament."

In preparation for the Masters, O'Connell and Michelle relocated from Cary to Jacksonville, Fla., where O'Connell could spend the winter working on his game. He's also played Augusta a few times, most recently last Wednesday.

Growing up, O'Connell said he attended the Masters "quite a bit." His first trip came in 1998, when he went to a practice round. Upon arriving for it, O'Connell said Mark O'Meara, the eventual champion, and Tiger Woods were the first golfers he saw. This week, he'll be in the same field as Woods – and perhaps he'll even be paired with him.

Even if he's not, O'Connell plans to relish the experience, one he didn't expect to have this time last year.

"If it goes well, great," O'Connell said. "If not, at the very least I feel like I'm going to be equipped with the experience of playing in a major. So I'll kind of really turn my attention to the U.S. Open and trying to do as well as I can there."

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