{"id":778231,"date":"2026-07-03T19:12:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T19:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/778231\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T19:12:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T19:12:17","slug":"former-mlb-player-talks-switch-to-pro-golf-and-crazy-power-he-produces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/778231\/","title":{"rendered":"Former MLB player talks switch to pro golf\u00a0\u2014 and crazy power he produces"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph first\">In an 11-year Major League Baseball career, Aaron Hicks flashed more than warning-track power. The former outfielder launched 109 home runs, most of them during his tenure with the New York York Yankees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These days, though, it\u2019s on the golf course where he really lets it fly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since stepping away from baseball after the 2024 season, Hicks, 36, has returned to the game he excelled at as a kid, and the results have been impressive. He is already a multiple winner on the Pro Tour, a circuit for current and former professional athletes from other sports. His <a href=\"https:\/\/golf.com\/tag\/long-driver\/\" type=\"post_tag\" id=\"4838\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">prodigious length<\/a> \u2014 he can drive it more than 400 yards \u2014 has become a calling card.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Appearing this week on GOLF\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/golf.com\/subpar\/?srsltid=AfmBOoorDMnX2mXoTBRMYe7r2l43vwWhkiBYQPi-6bbgTWv5Iex5UdSW\" type=\"link\" id=\"https:\/\/golf.com\/subpar\/?srsltid=AfmBOoorDMnX2mXoTBRMYe7r2l43vwWhkiBYQPi-6bbgTWv5Iex5UdSW\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Subpar<\/a> podcast with Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz, Hicks revealed that he routinely produces ball speeds north of 200 mph, with a personal best of 207 mph. For perspective, the average PGA Tour player hovers around 175 mph. Hicks\u2019 numbers are north of those of Rory McIlroy, closer to the neighborhood of Bryson DeChambeau.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Power has never been his problem. Neither, it seems, has golf.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Growing up in Southern California, Hicks was a standout junior player. He learned the game from his father, Joe, a former minor leaguer and avid golfer, and competed on many of the same courses where<a href=\"https:\/\/golf.com\/tag\/tiger-woods\/\" type=\"post_tag\" id=\"20\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Tiger Woods<\/a> honed his skills. (These days, Hicks has another connection to the Woods family: He\u2019s married to former LPGA player Cheyenne Woods, Tiger\u2019s niece.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why did he not stick to golf as a kid?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Subpar, Hicks shared the story of the moment he abandoned the game for baseball.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">His father had promised him a new set of clubs if he won a junior tournament. Hicks did exactly that. But when it came time to collect, Joe Hicks had changed his mind.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cClubs don\u2019t make the player,\u201d his father told him. \u201cThe player makes the clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">His dad may have been right, but the lesson was lost on his young son.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201c\u2018You ain\u2019t kept your promise,&#8217;\u201d Hicks recalled thinking. \u201c\u2018I\u2019m going to play baseball.&#8217;\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That decision worked out pretty well for him. But after hearing the kind of speed Hicks now generates with a driver, it\u2019s hard not to wonder what might have happened had he stuck with golf all along. You can listen to the entire episode here. You can watch the entire video below.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In an 11-year Major League Baseball career, Aaron Hicks flashed more than warning-track power. The former outfielder launched&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":778232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-778231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}