PGA Tour players don’t retire often. Not really. Not publicly.
Some go on to play forever, gracefully transitioning to the Tournament of Champions, racking it up for Charles Schwab points from South Dakota to South Florida until the end of time. Others play as long as they can, clinging to status even as it diminishes, letting go one rung at a time until there’s no denying the fact that both feet have reached the ground.
But we don’t often get the kind of farewell tournaments we see in other sports. We don’t get newspaper thank-you ads or tearful, reflective press conferences—not unless you’re Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer when it finally happens in your mid-60s or mid-70s. So we often miss the perspective of life on the margins, the exit interviews of professionals who have made it work for a while but eventually hit the bottom.
Enter Martin Trainer.
In some ways, Coach’s career is strange and unique. For a while he had a similar trajectory to Ricky Bobby, either pretending to win or lose the cut; he climbed the PGA Tour through multiple Korn Ferry Tour victories and then won in his first season, which capped off several more years of status.
But in other ways Coach can speak to the typical professional tour experience better than the guys we usually hear from, the Schefflers and Schauffeles and McIlroys and Morikawas of the world. He’s battled for status, he’s toured, he’s waited as an understudy, he’s qualified on Monday and Q-Schooled and lost cut after cut and yes, he’s won every now and then.
Now he’s taking a unique path post-PGA Tour, preparing for psychology school while considering a career as a therapist. Pro golf, he says, gives you a lot of experience with pressure and stress.
The coach shared 10 things he learned in a brand new interview about his retirement announcement at Drop zone. Parts of the five are below; you can find a whole bunch more at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
(Side note: I wrote my own pension letter a few years ago, although as a spoiler warning I never won on the PGA Tour.)
1. There are (obviously) some really cool things about being a professional golfer.
People generally assume that playing on the PGA Tour means you’re living the dream; the reality, unless you’re a top dog, is more complex. But yes, Coach confirmed with specifics: there IS many things that are wonderful.
“I think there are those exciting moments that I can’t imagine you can experience outside of professional sports. It’s when you make a long shot and the crowd cheers,” Trainer said. “It’s kind of a surreal, out-of-body experience. If you’re playing 17 at (TPC) Sawgrass, you’re hitting that ball and you hit it on the green, or let’s say you chip that hole, and the crowd goes wild.
“I don’t think it’s a very ‘natural’ experience to be in that environment, but it’s certainly incredibly exciting. And I don’t think the rest of my life will ever include a moment like that again.”
But beyond the cheer, the career also offers a certain clarity of purpose. I thought there was something similar and beautiful in the way Trainer described this piece:
“In terms of lifestyle, I think what’s interesting about playing professional golf is that you always have a goal. You always have a new week. You always have something you’re working towards. I think in our modern lifestyle there are a lot of people who feel purposeless, feel disconnected and divorced from the community, and you have this sense of purpose, I think, with golf, where you can reach your goal.
“It’s a craft. It’s a craft that feels important and meaningful. And I think that part really pushes you. It allows you to constantly look forward to something. And so it’s kind of a psychological cat. Because you always have next week, even if you bomb and miss the cut by seven shots, you can always make some adjustments on the next range and hope it goes better.”
Martin Trainer at Puerto Rico Open 2019.
Getty Images
2. Pro golf can also be brutal.
“We just talked about the good parts. I think unfortunately there are a lot of parts that are really challenging, especially from a mental health standpoint,” the Coach said. “There’s something really unnatural, I think, about flying every week to a new place, living in a hotel, never having a real sense of community, never knowing your surroundings, never having a routine that includes where you are. … When you’re in a new place, especially the first two years you’re there, I’m trying to really enjoy a year. I joined Rory Sabbatini for a practice round.
And he just looks at me with a straight face and says, ‘I played here for 24 straight years.’
“And it’s like, at some point, maybe he went to the fun little museum that they have downtown, 22 years ago. And maybe you have your little restaurant that you go to. But the years add up, and I think it’s harder over time to get excited about those things.”
For Trainer, whose PGA Tour status eventually deteriorated, a stretch to the end — especially one that ended with a splash — stands out:
“I think there was a specific moment that I think was the lowest I’ve ever been,” he said. “It was a couple of years ago at the 3M (Open). So relatively late in the season, I had a great first round. I shot like six under par or something.I was in second or third place after the first round. (Editor’s note: Confirmed, Coach opened with 65 and it was T3.) And I had just missed a bunch of cuts, so I was like, ‘Oh, finally, I’m going to have a big week. This will be my week.’
“And the second round I just completely bombed. It was really windy, tough conditions, and I just kept making bogey after bogey. And it comes down to the last hole, and all I have to do is par or bogey to make the cut.
“And I’m like, throw my iron in the water and do a double take. And I was so devastated. And that’s something I’m not going to miss. That moment just like, the complete destruction of a glimmer of hope that’s just been taken away from you is really brutal.”
3. The pressure is very real.
The coach described the pressure of the top as “an eight out of 10” but said it still pales in comparison to the competition, where it climbs to “11 or more”. His best illustration of that phenomenon? Enter the 2024 Zurich Classic, where Coach and his partner Chad Ramey ended up in a playoff against Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry.
“I couldn’t feel the club, basically,” said the coach. “And I remember afterwards, I was like, I just had so little control over what I was doing. I mean, it was really what they talk about where you can’t even think. For example, when you are on the range, you may have a wavering thought. There was no swing thinking here, there was just survival, you’re in fight or flight, and you just have to hit this ball, and it’s hard to simulate that. It’s hard to even imagine being in it. But you really use to like the most primitive form of like, hand-eye coordination at that point. You can’t really try to control the club. You’ll just rock. It is only one way. It’s rocking.”
How did it go for Coach in the playoffs?
“You know, nauseated,” he said with a smile. “I mean, I hit a good drive, but then I had a really hard putt on the fairway and I kind of dropped it. And then I had to putt after putt to par the hole to get to the next one. It was about six feet and I just pushed it all the way to the right. And I think it’s just hard to control a club at that point, you’re hitting it.”
4. He is famous strange.
The coach said he never achieved anything close to celebrity status himself — “if I went to the grocery store or walked off the golf course, no one knew who I was” — but his victory at the 2019 Puerto Rico Open pushed him alongside other all-time winners and gave him proximity to the tour’s biggest names.
“It’s really a curse in a sense,” he said. “I think regular people … they all seem to dream of celebrity and social status and, you know, being known, but I try to find something positive in it. Just going to the grocery store or getting on a flight and having people come up to you and say all kinds of weird and weird things? It can’t be a fun experience. to him long AND long again. And after a while, it’s like, you can’t ignore it, you have to deal with it. And so he went and told him – this person was aggressively trying to get his autograph in the middle of the game, and he politely told them to come and ask after the round. But yeah, dealing with that would drive me crazy. I don’t know how those guys do it.”
5. Best course on Tour? They blend together – with one exception.
As a professional golfer, Trainer said, you’re generally far more concerned with the score you can hit on a course than its history or architecture. But not always.
“You’re right that they all end up blurring together, but there are some that are exceptional,” he said. “Number one, I think by far, is Pebble Beach. Like that was the only practice round you look forward to all year.
“You assume that professional golfers love golf. In fact … a practice round, especially when you’re tired from traveling or not in a good mood, can be a drag.
“But playing Pebble Beach was always a pleasure, practice or not.”
You can listen to the rest of the interview below, or follow the Drop Zone at one of these links:
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