{"id":448142,"date":"2026-01-30T21:07:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T21:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/448142\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T21:07:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T21:07:20","slug":"the-difficult-balance-of-professional-golf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/448142\/","title":{"rendered":"The Difficult Balance of Professional Golf"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve all fallen victim to star watching. Names like Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy are why we turn on the TV every weekend. But the players out there battling for their jobs week in and week out are what make the PGA TOUR what it is: the greatest meritocracy in sports. This, of course, is a double-edged sword.<\/p>\n

Nothing is guaranteed out on the golf course. If you want full status, you have to grind. If you want to compete with the best in the world, you have to be willing to make sacrifices. We rarely get a peek behind the curtain of what that truly means, but Justin Lower reminded us all Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n

RELATED: How to Watch the Farmers Insurance Open<\/a><\/p>\n

Lower, the 173rd-ranked player in the world, made two eagles, six birdies, and a bogey during the first round of the Farmers Insurance Open to finish the day at 9 under, one shot back of 18-hole leader Justin Rose. For a player without full status this season, most would expect Lower to be pretty excited once he signed his card. But his mind was somewhere else.<\/p>\n

His wife is at home, 34 weeks pregnant with twins, with a three-year-old already at her side.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m just trying to get home on Monday, honestly, to try to help everything out as much as I can,\u201d Lower said. \u201cLuckily we have family close and everything. Yeah, she’s going through it right now. Life’s about to get real if it wasn’t real already.\u201d<\/p>\n

RELATED: Here\u2019s How Brooks Koepka Played in His Return<\/a><\/p>\n

With a three-child household in the not-so-distant future, Lower is using his time on the road to catch up on some sleep while he can. When the twins arrive, rest will be at a minimum. He\u2019ll have to somehow find a balance between his job\u2014if he wants to guarantee he has one next season, he won\u2019t be able to miss much time\u2014and his growing family. But the time he\u2019s already spent away this season has taken a toll.<\/p>\n

\u201c(My daughter)’s my world, for sure,\u201d Lower said. \u201cShe’s getting to the point where she\u2019s realizing what’s going on and that’s been the hardest part, just seeing her grow up. I mean, I haven’t been home in two weeks now, almost two and a half weeks. She’s going to look completely different when I get there. She’ll probably look taller.\u201d<\/p>\n

RELATED: A Player was DQ’d at the Farmers Insurance Open<\/a><\/p>\n

Off the course, he\u2019s been able to talk with her over FaceTime, but as everyone knows, that\u2019s just not the same.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve grown accustomed to seeing the same players hoisting hardware every week. For those guys, that comes with privileges, most notably the freedom to spend some time away from the TOUR if circumstances call for it. But for most of the names that fill out the fields, that\u2019s not the case. It\u2019s a treacherous balancing act.<\/p>\n

If you have no dog in the fight at Torrey Pines, lend your support to Lower. A win would mean more than we could possibly imagine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019ve all fallen victim to star watching. Names like Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy are why we turn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-448142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}