I want to jump ahead now to college and then obviously to the tour, and talk about that a little bit. College-- what was that like at Lamar? You had a good team I know. And let's talk about that for a minute.

Pretty funny story. Growing up in the Beaumont area, where Lamar is, I'm playing my junior, senior years of high school, and all these colleges are starting to send letters. Back in the day when you go on the recruiting trips, before you-- and now they're recruiting kids that are freshman in high school now-- but back in the day, when it was my years, you could go play golf with the players.

Oh, yeah. Different rules.

Different rules. It's different now. But you could go meet them. You have a host. There's a few things we did. And so I went on a couple of walk-throughs, TCU, LSU. I went to UT. I went to Texas A&M, which was a massive two-day deal for me. And long story short, Baylor and Sam Houston State, and there's a few others from around the country, but I really-- for some reason, I don't know why-- but I wanted to stay local.

Long story short, through all those couple of years of digging through the letters and being so surprised that all these coaches want me-- and I think I went all the way up to seventh or eighth ranked in AJGA rankings during high school, so I was pretty good player. I could really play. And I had potential to be great, but I knew I had to get better if I wanted to become a pro. I never even knew there was a Lamar golf team. This is the funny part.

So I get recruited by all these big schools and I'm thinking, all right. My girlfriend at the time is going to Texas A&M. All my buddies from my high school in all the sports are going to UT, A&M, Baylor, TCU, SMU, LSU, all the big major schools. Go on a few recruiting trips, go to A&M and I am blown away. Bob Ellis at the time, legendary coach for 25 years. Ryan Palmer just graduated.

I've got a really great friend of mine, Dwayne Morley, at the time. He's my host. I show up. Two-day deal. Play golf. Hang out with all the boys, the $30 million rec center they just built. And I'm blown away. I'm like, "I'm coming here. This is it."

The night before, I'm spending time with Dwayne Morley, and he's saying, hey, I just want to let you know that Bob Ellis is supposed to retire next year. We don't know what's going to happen. I may be transferring. And I'm like, what? I had already made up my mind I want to go here, and now at the last second you're telling me this.

And I'm going, hold on, hold on. This is one of the top 20 programs in the country. It's perfect. My girlfriend's going here. Three of my best friends are going here. And now you're telling me the coach is going to retire, and I'm coming here for him.

Your girlfriend's in the mix. I like it.

She's in there. She's in there at the time. Absolutely. I'm a little country boy trying to do the right thing. So I show up and I go to his office. I was 17-years-old, green as can be, and my dad and mom came with me on the recruiting trip. I'm with another guy named Steven Rude, who's also from Texas, from here, from Houston. A great player. He and I were both seventh and eighth ranked in the country. So we both go on the same recruiting trip.

I sat down with Bob Ellis in his little office and my parents were outside. He sits down-- and he's just super cordial and professional-- slides this paper over and he said, son, you sign those papers, you're a Texas Aggie. And I literally said to this day-- I couldn't believe-- I was nervous. I'm shaking. I'm tired, we stayed up late that night before.

And I sat there and I said, coach, I have a question. I said, I hear you're going to retire next year. Is that true? And he said, it is. He said, but I'm still going to be around. We're going to have an interim coach. Everything's going to be fine. I'm still going to have my fingers on the [INAUDIBLE]. And I'm thinking, everybody I'd asked the weeks prior and months prior, what is the most important thing in college? It's the relationship between you and your coach. It's what I've always been told.

So I'm thinking, I can't do this. So my gut instinct was, coach, I really appreciate this offer-- offered me a full ride, obviously. I like, coach, I've got to wait. I can't do this today. I want to talk to my parents. And the conversation went-- he was great. He was like, I totally understand, no big deal.

So I walked out. Everybody thought I was going there. My parents are outside the door, ready for me to come out as a Texas Aggie. And I come out, and it's dull and quiet. My mom and dad are like, you OK? And I'm like, well, I didn't sign. I said, I want to talk to you guys a little bit more about it.