Name: Cole Hammer
Age: 26
Hometown: Houston
College: Texas
Years pro: Year 4
Residence: Soon to be Dallas
Favorite golf course?
Pine Valley
How many holes in one do you have, and do you have a personal favorite?
Five. And yes, hole 3 at Pine Valley.
Favorite golf hole?
Wow, that's difficult; there are so many good holes. If I had to pick one, probably 14 at Pine Valley.
The university you would have attended if not Texas?
*very long pause* Vanderbilt.
Favorite city to visit on the road?
Boise.
How much time do you spend watching golf tips on Instagram?
Zero minutes and zero seconds. Now, I will watch swing videos. Like Tiger hitting chip shots or Rory Masters highlights, I'll watch stuff like that.
Favorite fast food chain?
Chipotle.
Rank these: Winning the Walker Cup, Winning NCAAs as a team, Winning the Western with Mom on the bag
Winning NCAAs
Winning the Western
Winning the Walker Cup. Being on the Walker Cup team is more satisfying than winning/losing the Walker Cup. I still would have remembered the Walker Cup fondly had we lost.
Which Walker Cup did you enjoy more?
Seminole. It was at home, and I had a lot of family/friends out there watching.
As a junior player, who did you think was going to conquer the golf world?
Daniel Martinez. I thought he was literally going to be the next Tiger Woods when we were twelve.
What did you learn in college?
I learned that junior golf was not nearly as important as I thought it was.
One hot take that you swear by?
Oh my gosh… I don't know. *after sitting with him for an hour, and melting into his off-the-record persona*:
It's impossible to play a professional round of golf under 5 hours
The NFL is more entertaining than college football
College golf doesn't make everyone better; the high-level guys should turn pro right out of high school, like in tennis
Roger Federer is the greatest athlete of all time
Texas might be the worst golf state for the amount of golf played there
Professional golfers are programmed to give the most boring, non-confrontational answers possible
The Korn Ferry Tour shouldn't go to South/Central America
I would tell my kid to go play for Ryan Hybl
What is one thing about professional golf that most people underestimate?
How much time is spent away from the golf course during tournament weeks, and how easy it is to become distracted.
What is one mindset hack you think separates you from most?
The realization that no matter what happens on the golf course, everything is going to be alright is what separates me from a lot of people. I think a lot of people view it or feel like it's life or death, and it certainly can feel that way in the moment. But if you give yourself grace, and for me, I've just realized that God is in control and I'm going to do everything that I can to make it happen, but if at the end of the day it doesn't work out, you know, I've got people that love me and I can wake up and try again the next day.
What's the hardest truth you've had to accept about your own game?
Hardest truth… that the main battle I face is the 6 inches in between my ears rather than any technique I'm working on.
Word Association:
Golf: hard
Failure: essential
Texas A&M: sucks… or cult… can't decide… actually, scratch that: delusional
Perfection: impossible
Optimism: important
Faith: ……. everything
This was my first time interviewing someone, and it showed. I learned a lot. Cole is a good friend of mine, so I assumed he'd let his guard down a little bit and speak freely.
I was wrong.
Professional golfers are wired to be polite. Corporate. Safe. Even with friends, even with good intentions — once the red button is pressed, something switches. Their guard immediately goes up. As he worked through my questions, I could see it happening — honest or easy? What I really think, or what will be accepted and glossed over?
I know this because we sat around for 90 minutes after I hit the stop button, and talked openly. About how golfers are told never to complain. About how disagreement feels impolite. About which golfers are tough and which are soft. About how convenient it is for professional golfers to speak conservatively without saying, really, a damn thing.
Which led him to the realization of: I need to be way more opinionated. What's life without a few lines in the sand? If someone says something at dinner that I disagree with, I need to speak up.
Golfers are coached to sound the same. Coached to stay neutral. Coached to never let the armor crack.
In most other sports, we see the cracks. The emotions spill out. Josh Allen stood in front of cameras after another heartbreaking loss and couldn't fight back tears. That's what people connect with — that sports are life or death when the ending is more bitter than sweet. We know it's not, but we want to know that they care as much as we do.
But in golf, all of that stays buried. The emotions are hidden. Their opinions? Overshadowed by cliché.
It's easy to point the finger at them and say do better. But I think the blame is shared. My questions need to get better. This needs to become something that pulls these guys out of the cliché and into the space they don't usually show — not a polished sales pitch packaged as insight. That is my goal with this.
Not everyone in professional golf is interesting. Not everyone is likable. And that's okay, we don't need to pretend. But a lot of them are. And that's what will keep you guys coming back — you never know who is going to surprise you.
That's the part worth hearing about.
Drew Murdock aka Murda
