A Look Into The Life of a Professional Athlete: Matthew Wolff

The goal: play professionally.

Growing up playing sports, everyone dreams of taking their talents to the highest possible caliber of play. But not all athletes are lucky or talented enough to do that.

Matthew Wolff, however, was.

From Agoura Hills, Calif., Wolff started swinging golf clubs around the age of 4 with his dad. After recognizing his natural talent for the sport, parents Bill and Shari Wolff put him in lessons and began traveling around the state to tournaments.

But as a child, Wolff didn’t want to put all his energy into golf. Taking a step back from the sport, he searched for a passion in other sports. After playing football, basketball, baseball and soccer in middle school, though, Wolff returned to golf in high school.

“Really I just knew I wasn’t ever going to be big enough to be good at any other sport,” Wolff said. “I decided to get back into golf and I’m so glad I did.”

Golf, nevertheless, is a rich man’s game. Many country clubs, especially in California, consist of wealthy members who take days off of work to drink and smoke cigars with their buddies while hitting a few balls here and there. But for athletes who take the game seriously, it’s more than just a good time on a Sunday afternoon.

Wolff, throughout his life, met athletes who would inevitably inspire him to be better than he ever envisioned for himself. One in particular had a large pull in Wolff’s decision of where to attend college.

Austin Eckroat, 20, is currently a junior at Oklahoma State University and has been playing golf with Wolff for over five years now. Eckroat decided to take his talents to OSU as a freshman in high school and spent a lot of time telling Wolff about the incredible program there. When it came time for Wolff to pick the school where he would continue his golf career, OSU was the ultimate decision.

“Just seeing him make so much progress over the years is incredible,” Eckroat said. “Matt has always been a close friend of mine so more than anything I’m proud of him. With all the fame he’s acquired these past few months, he’s still the great guy I grew up golfing with. And even though I’m four months older,” he emphasized jokingly, “I look up to the guy.”

Entering a program famous for producing professional golfer Rickie Fowler, Wolff knew he would have large shoes to fill if he ever wanted to make a name for himself. But when reminiscing on his collegiate years, they aren’t all success stories.

Freshman year was rough for Wolff. He needed time to adjust to the new lifestyle he was not yet accustomed to and it was evident in various tournament performances.

“I didn’t place in a single tournament all year,” Wolff said. “It was such a defeating feeling, knowing my team was doing so well and I wasn’t contributing to any of their success.”

After OSU won the NCAA Championship trophy in 2018, though, Wolff recognized his strengths and weaknesses and entered sophomore year with an entirely new mindset: succeed.

In the next year, Wolff would earn six individual tournament wins, including the 2019 NCAA Division 1 individual championship. This success is what ultimately made him realize his real potential to go pro, so that’s what he did.

After completing his sophomore year of college, Wolff made his first professional appearance at the Travelers Championship in June of 2019. Within one month, he would win his first PGA Tour victory at the 3M Open in Blaine, Minn.

Immediately, he was overwhelmed with fame and fortune; more attention than he had ever known. He packed up his life in Oklahoma and moved to Jupiter, Fla., where he currently lives.

“This lifestyle is not something anyone could’ve predicted,” Wolff said. “My family still isn’t used to the luxuries that I’m fortunate enough to give to them. Honestly, I’m not used to it either.”

Although his family didn’t really struggle to make ends meet, Wolff never really vacationed as a child. His parents invested in him and his passion for golf, and now he says he’s giving back.

“I fly my family from the west coast here to Florida as often as I can,” Wolff said. “They just believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself, and they deserve the world. So that’s what I try to give them.”

Wolff’s mother Shari has always seen his potential, in more than just a ‘mother-supports-son’ kind of way.

“Matthew had such a strong passion for the sport from such a young age,” Shari Wolff said. “Golf just made sense to him, in a way that it didn’t for some grown men who’ve played the sport for decades. When I finally realized that he was moving to an entirely new time zone, away from all he had ever known and from me, I was scared. But I was confident that he would succeed at OSU because it really felt like home when we visited. The people, the environment, all of it. It just made sense for him. So he went.”

As a mother whose youngest son was moving away, Shari Wolff worried that he may stray from the great young man she had spent 18 years raising. But he never did.

“To this day, Matthew still goes out of his way to make others happy,” Shari Wolff said. “And that’s just another reason to be grateful for him. He is still the boy I know and love and he’s never going to change. I know it.”

Wolff is currently on the cover of Golf Digest, November edition, and will be competing in the upcoming QBE shootout in Naples, Fla. on December 13.