By Tod Leonard
Photo By: Sean M. Haffey
February 13, 2023
The reality gap for Marcus Byrd is almost too wild to grasp at this moment. On Thursday, the 25-year-old mini-tour pro will tee it up in the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club outside Los Angeles. It’s one of the new "designated" events on the PGA Tour that features most of the best players in the world and a $20 million purse. It’s also hosted by Tiger Woods, whom Byrd will meet for the first time after being selected for the Charlie Sifford Memorial Exemption that goes each year to a golfer of color.
It doesn’t get any dreamier for a man who desperately wants to someday compete alongside these guys every week.
Yet, after these wondrous two weeks are over, with Byrd also exempt into the Honda Classic next week, he will be back to the hardscrabble life he’s had on the road for the last two years. He doesn’t have a home or a car. He spends some time and stores his belongings with his grandmother in Washington, D.C, and with his mom and sister in Atlanta. But for much of the year, as he’s playing on the Advocates Pro Golf Association (APGA) Tour and in any other tournaments that work into his schedule, Byrd relies on the kindness of his friends and fellow players to make it all work. Someone’s couch is as good as a hotel bed to him. He hitches rides to some events and shares the cost of a rental car at others. He eats as healthy as he can on a shoestring budget. All this, and he plays a game that requires the utmost in fitness and focus.
“I feel like it’s whatever makes sense at the time,” Byrd explained in an interview last week. “There are so many different things in trying to live this dream.
“It’s definitely been hard,” he added. “Some weeks are better than others. It’s just the sacrifice I have to make. I knew what it was going to be like starting out, that my back was going to be up against the wall. But this was something I believed in fighting for, and that I was going to take the punches on the chin when they come.”
Byrd is among countless players in golf’s minor leagues who live paycheck to paycheck; with no guaranteed contracts, or even assured pay for a week’s worth of work if they don’t make the cut, the pressure on mini-tour golfers is enormous. It’s basically thrive or disappear. None of us have a real idea of how many talented golfers never made it simply because they didn’t have the cash to keep grinding toward that one big break.
That’s where Byrd has been. At the same time he turned professional in late 2020, the man who started him in the game at age 3 and was his biggest supporter, his father Larry Byrd, died of complications of COVID-19 after suffering for years from COPD. Marcus’ mother, Karen Jefferson, has been disabled since suffering severe injuries in a car accident when her son was 9. “What keeps me going is seeing what she’s been through,” Byrd said.
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