Here are numbers no pro golfer wants beside his name: 83-76, for 17- over-par 159. But that's what Jerry Rice, who will go into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in August, shot at the Fresh Express Classic in Hayward, Calif. this week in his debut as a professional golfer.
Rice's rude introduction to pro golf calls to mind an incident at a dinner party in Toronto a while ago that bears on the dreams some pro athletes have of morphing into successful pro golfers. A decent player for whom money wasn't a problem wanted to devote himself to golf with the goal of making it to the Champions Tour. He was seeking advice.
It's not right to crush a dream. But it also seemed important to balance his dream-his fantasy? -against reality.
"If you do make it, and that's a gigantic 'if,' you'll be playing against golfers named Tom Watson, Tom Kite, and Hale Irwin," I told him, trying not to sound discouraging but failing mightily. "Still, you can afford the effort and you have the time. Go for it."
I don't believe the gentleman made it to the Champions Tour.
Now that fellow was no Rice, a tremendous athlete who holds three Super Bowl rings and set 38 records as a receiver during his 20-year career, most of it with the San Francisco 49ers. He knew what it was like to drive himself in a brutal physical sport. Rice, 47, retired in 2005. He had an idea of what he was getting into.
"You can be great at one thing and not good at golf," Rice, the host of the Fresh Express, said. The tournament is raising money for his foundation.
Rice was passionate about golf, and he worked at it. He'd found the sweet spot as an NFL receiver and he was an accomplished enough golfer to know what the sweet spot felt like when he hit a golf ball properly - if not in a tournament playing as a professional.
Rice, a scratch golfer, was understandably nervous before the first round Thursday at TPC Stonebrae. He knew that six pro athletes, including former NHL player Brett Hull, had competed on the Nationwide Tour and missed the cut before Rice tried.
"To me the mental preparation and toughness in golf blows away what it takes in any sports," Hull, then a scratch golfer who played as an amateur, once told Sports Illustrated.
John Brodie is probably the pro athlete who made the most successful transition to pro golf. The former 49ers quarterback played the Champions Tour from 1981-1998 and won one tournament while recording
12 top-10 finishes.
Rick Rhoden is the next most successful male pro athlete/golfer.
Rhoden, 56, pitched in the majors for 16 years. He excelled on the celebrity golfers circuit, making some $2-million there. He had three top-10s on the Champions Tour.
Then there's Babe Didrikson Zaharias. She won two gold and one silver medal in track and field in the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. Turning to golf, she won the 1948, 1950 and 1954 U.S. Women's Open. Zaharias made the cut in the three PGA Tour events she entered in 1945. The Associated Press in 1950 named her the best female athlete of the century.
But just about every other pro athlete has found little if any success as a pro golfer. NHL Hall of Fame goalie Grant Fuhr tried to qualify for the Canadian Tour at least a couple of times but didn't make it.
He played a few Canadian Tour events but there's no record of him making a cut. Fuhr, 47, is now the director of goaltender development for the Phoenix Coyotes.
Rice was clearly uncomfortable as he sunk on his maiden voyage. He opened with a double-bogey. He left a shot in a greenside bunker. His swing looked ungainly. He shot 44 on his first nine. He putted horribly and said his putter was "toast," and that he planned to melt it down.
"I wanted to shoot my jersey number 80," Rice said after his round.
"But the wheels came off completely [in the first round]"
He did improve in the second round yesterday, but finished last in the field. He averaged 34 putts a round. At least he hit nearly 70 per cent of the fairways.
"It's a hard world, and it's a hard game," the British writer Bernard Darwin once wrote, most eloquently. Rice learned this truth again in his debut as a pro.
Will he play again? Of course he will. He's a pro athlete. He's not about to give up on a dream.