PGA Tour pro quitting golf to become a high school teacher

PGA Tour pro Daniel Summerhays is set to hang up his clubs at the end of this week and embark upon a new career as a high school teacher.

Summerhays, 36, is perhaps best-known for finishing third in the 2016 US PGA Championship at Baltusrol. He also wound up in a tie for eighth in the US Open at Oakmont the same year, finishing 65th overall on the FedEx Cup standings and banking just over $2million for his efforts.

After losing his card at the end of 2018, he spent last year on the Korn Ferry Tour, where he made the cut only five times in 19 starts, with just a single top-10 to his name.

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Following surgery on both feet and ankles in early February, coupled with the coronavirus-enforced lockdown of the game’s pro tours, he has decided to go a different way after this week’s Utah Championship in his home state.     

“It’s hard to say it, but after a pretty long, above-average career on the PGA Tour, I’m going to step away and go another direction for a while,” Summerhays told the Deseret News. “I’m going to try the education system and move into a teacher-mentor role rather than the touring-golf-pro role.

“The last several years it’s been in the back of my mind. Your kids get older and you love being around them and you start searching for ways to be home more and more. So I’ve loved being home especially through the coronavirus.”

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Summerhays, whose brother Boyd coaches Ryder Cup star Tony Finau, added that time at home as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown had given him the opportunity to re-evaluate his career. Beginning this autumn, he will start teaching some classes at Davis High School, which he attended as a kid, while also serving as the school’s golf coach.

“The best way I can put it right now is that the thrill of competition of tournament golf is outweighed by the satisfaction of being at home and being a part of my kids’ everyday life and being with my wife,” he said.