Putting together an issue of Golf Digest typically involves hanging out with cool people in nice places, but February 2026 stands out. Cover star Ben Griffin and feature interviewee Jim Murphy are both great guys coming off banger seasons. Griffin won three times on the PGA Tour, made the U.S. Ryder Cup team and got married. After an NFL star was caught reading Murphy’s book on the sidelines during a playoff game, Murphy sold so many books and delivered so many talks across the world, he had to take a hiatus from one-on-one mental coaching. Griffin and Murphy don’t work together, but one connection is that not long ago, each faced a stressful amount of financial debt.
Apogee, the very new and very grand three-course club in Hobe Sound, Fla., with a whopper initiation and probably the best practice facility in the world, is an incongruous setting to hear someone talk about $17,000 in unpaid credit cards. The story of Griffin quitting mini-tours during the pandemic and taking work as a mortgage broker, only to try pro golf again after backers watched him shoot 63 on his own ball in a member-guest, has been told elsewhere. Yet hearing straight from Griffin how his mind-set morphed across these two chapters of his career was revelatory. “Being under that financial strain I played fearfully, always aware of trouble and always away from trouble. But you just have to accept that all golf courses have trouble and take it on. None of the best golfers in the world play with fear. I also came to learn that if you’re on mini-tours and don’t believe you could be winning on the PGA Tour right then, you have no chance. Any pro who says they need a couple of years to develop is wasting his time.”
Perspective and a sense of humor often come in pairs, and Griffin was very funny on set. After we accidentally broke his Ryder Cup team-issued alignment rod, he said, “That’s OK, we only used those to rest my driver head-cover on.” Then he held out a club waist-high and imitated Scottie Scheffler’s pre-shot routine with deadpan accuracy. “I see Scottie do this, so figured I should do it, too. It really looks like I’m checking my grip, right?”
We laughed just as hard at Winged Foot, the day a few of us editors stole a perfect late-season round with Jim Murphy. Wagging our tails over lunch inside the comfy dark of that famous grill room, Murphy’s light spirit turned serious when he told us about the lowest moment of his life. After devoting five years to writing his self-published book, he’d burned through his savings and was $90,000 in debt. Somewhat like Griffin, serendipities combined with a second wave of self-belief. While Murphy demurely refers to himself as a messenger of ancient wisdoms rather than their author, a large reason he has become a trusted guru to many athletes beyond golf is because he has struggled so authentically. Overcoming personal failures in baseball, business and life, Murphy has practiced what he preaches.
“Deep down every person’s greatest need is to be loved,” Murphy said to our table. “When an athlete chases winning to get praise and feel love, that athlete becomes unable to play fearlessly.”
It’s not often that Golf Digest devotes outsize attention to a mental coach but Murphy is worth your attention.
Golf, fear, money—words that clench the gut. Although one truism of our era is there’s no longer a purse big enough to make pro golf interesting on its own. LIV Golf, so many reformatted made-for-TV events, Tiger Woods’ predicting a “financial windfall for everyone” should the PGA Tour successfully restructure as for-profit in the next couple years—it makes a lot of us pine for times when a guy like Lee Trevino could say, “Pressure is playing for $5 a hole with only two in your pocket.”
Such nostalgia misses the point. Today’s heroes perform under the threat of compounding interest. Here are two I recommend getting to know.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
