{"id":952588,"date":"2026-11-04T18:34:19","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T18:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/952588\/"},"modified":"2026-11-04T18:34:19","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T18:34:19","slug":"ben-griffin-talking-about-his-college-teammate-earning-his-pga-tour-card-will-hit-you-in-the-feels-australian-golf-digest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/952588\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Griffin talking about his college teammate earning his PGA Tour card will hit you in the feels \u2013 Australian Golf Digest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The world of pro golf is a tough one. Paychecks are on the line every week and jobs are on the line at this point in the year. But there are certain relationships that matter just as much, and in the past week, we\u2019ve seen Ben Griffin involved in two such situations.<\/p>\n<p>First, the three-time winner was right there off the 18th green on Sunday evening to congratulate his buddy Andrew Novak earning his first solo PGA Tour title (the two had teamed up to win last year\u2019s Zurich Classic).<\/p>\n<p>  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/golfdigest.sports.sndimg.com\/content\/dam\/images\/golfdigest\/fullset\/2021\/261103-novak-griffin.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.966.644.suffix\/1793725895605.jpeg\" alt=\"2303043581\"\/> <\/p>\n<p>Sam Hodde<\/p>\n<p>RELATED: How Andrew Novak made a bit of golf-and-football history<\/p>\n<p>It was a nice scene, but just a couple days later, Griffin got even more emotional when talking about another golf buddy. That would be Austin Hitt, who recently earned his PGA Tour card for the first time by winning his maiden Korn Ferry Tour title. And who did it after losing his dad to cancer a couple years before.<\/p>\n<p>Griffin and Hitt were college teammates at UNC, where Griffin says Hitt was his de facto \u201cyounger brother.\u201d Anyway, good luck not getting emotional watching Griffin getting emotional as he talked about Hitt on Tuesday ahead of his title defense at the World Wide Technology Championship.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Ben Griffin grew emotional as he watched his <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/UNCmensGolf?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">@UNCMensGolf<\/a> teammate and de facto \u201cyounger brother\u201d Austin Hitt win last month\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/kftchampionship?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">@KFTChampionship<\/a> in Virginia to earn his first PGA Tour card.<\/p>\n<p>Hitt\u2019s dad Chip, who was a standout junior golfer in Virginia, died of cancer two years\u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/OKFtxMNCHt\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/OKFtxMNCHt<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 PGA Tour (@PGATour) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/PGATour\/status\/2117763956211126628?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">November 3, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the good stuff, as they say. We\u2019re not sure how Hitt will fare in his first PGA Tour season, but it\u2019s a pretty safe bet that he and Griffin\u2014and Novak\u2014will be playing a lot of practice rounds together in 2027.<\/p>\n<p>RELATED: Our expert picks to win the World Wide Technology Championship<\/p>\n<p>This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n<p>    <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world of pro golf is a tough one. Paychecks are on the line every week and jobs&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[4225,64,63,755,138747,44,85],"class_list":["post-952588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-article","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-golf-digest","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952588","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=952588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}