PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Millye Hale said a prayer for her only son, Blaine, when he embarked for the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 2015:
God, let him go when he’s ready.
Blaine Hale was twice a first-team All-State selection at Lake Highlands High School in Dallas with aspirations of playing college golf for his dream school, Oklahoma State. Before Hale could sign, however, the Cowboys fired their head coach, Mike McGraw, who later would take the lead job at Baylor. The new staff at Oklahoma State would offer Hale merely a walk-on spot while McGraw chose to honor the Bears’ prior commitments, which left no space for Hale. Oklahoma head coach Ryan Hybl had little room as well, with four players already committed in Hale’s recruiting class, yet he couldn’t deny that the burly teenager with the powerful, homemade swing and Texas-sized smile had something special. So, Hybl squeezed Hale in on scholarship.
Millye remembers getting a call from Blaine toward the end of his first semester in Norman. He had failed to crack the travel roster for each of the Sooners’ first four fall events, and Hybl was debating redshirting him. But qualifying had just wrapped up for Oklahoma’s fall finale in Hawaii, and Hale had played well enough for the individual spot in that event.
“I answer the phone, and he goes, ‘Mom, I qualified for Hawaii!’” Millye recalls. “I hang up the phone and I’m like, ‘Well, I guess he’s ready. Thank you, Lord.’”
It wasn’t but a few minutes later when the phone rang again.
“It’s Blaine, and he tells me, ‘I just got a text from Coach Hybl, and he’s not taking me,’” Millye continued. “And I hang up and go, ‘I guess he’s not ready.’”
Blaine Hale would get his chance the following spring, and he tied for sixth in his Sooners debut. From there, Hybl said, “He never looked back.” Hale led Oklahoma to the match-play stage of the NCAA Championship in each of his four seasons, and he went 2-1 during the Sooners’ 2017 national-title run outside of Chicago.
“One of those timing stories,” Millye says.
Blaine Hale’s career has had at least a few of those.
Eight years later, Hale stood in front of a few cameras on the second-story veranda of Sawgrass Country Club’s clubhouse, all 6 feet, 3 inches and 235 pounds of him trying to contain his emotions. Through three rounds of PGA Tour Q-School, Hale had fired nothing above 67 and sat second on the leaderboard. With the top five and ties after 72 holes earning PGA Tour cards, Hale was asked about the prospect of going from mini-tour player with just one world-ranked start to his name to playing on the biggest professional golf tour in the world.
“God’s in control,” Hale said, his voice cracking before he paused briefly. “It’s all I got.”
After a few seconds, Hale gathered himself enough to continue: “It’s a great opportunity, but I’ll be where I’m supposed to be next year.”
About 48 hours later, Hale had his answer: He belonged on the PGA Tour.
“I didn’t think it would be me, let me say that,” Hale said. “But pretty exciting to be able to get it done this week. … This is just an awesome opportunity. I’m thankful that I played well with it.”
Family over everything ❤️
— Korn Ferry Tour (@KornFerryTour) December 19, 2023
Blaine Hale, Jr. had the support of friends and family cheering him on all week as he earned his @PGATOUR card at Q-School presented by Korn Ferry. pic.twitter.com/SPa9n5lt00
Hybl wasn’t surprised. Hale was his big-game hunter in college. Hybl would often send Hale out first, and Hale would whizz out of the gates and usually deliver either a low round or match-play point. Hale’s 4-and-3 drubbing of Oregon wonderkid Norman Xiong set the tone for Oklahoma in that 2017 NCAA final victory over the Ducks, which also boasted reigning U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark.
When Hale was a junior, the Sooners were part of Golf Channel’s “Driven” docuseries, a season-long project that Hybl initially had reservations about participating in – until he realized his players performed better when the cameras were on them. Especially Hale, a natural-born leader who not only lives for the bright lights but to lift those around him to be illuminated as well.
“There are a lot of guys that go above and beyond your expectations, and this guy did that 100x,” Hybl said. “I wish I could have 10 Blaine Hales on every team.”
The cameras just didn’t follow Hale to the pros.
Graduating in the pre-PGA Tour University era and passed up for sponsor exemptions, Hale was relegated to Monday qualifiers and the mini-tours while many of his peers swiftly climbed the PGA Tour ranks. He missed by a shot at second stage of Korn Ferry Tour Q-School in 2019, and two years later he fell a few shots short at first stage. He remembers running through every shot on that nine-hour drive home from Lincoln, Nebraska, while thinking, “Man, is this just never going to happen for me?”
“I kind of felt like I was behind everyone else,” Hale said.
Hale finally earned his first – and still only – world-ranked start at the Korn Ferry Tour’s Veritex Bank Championship in April 2022, and just like in college, he debuted strong. But his T-26 would be one stroke shy of qualifying for the next week’s event. A couple months later, Hale’s car was stolen while he was getting lunch and shopping in Dallas with his fiancée, Allison, just days before their wedding. Among the items inside: Hale’s Bible, his journal and years of entries, and his golf clubs.
“Kind of crazy,” Hale said.
Just wait. Hale’s car has never been recovered, but a little over a year after the theft, Hale got a call from an employee at Dallas Golf. Someone had come into the shop trying to sell some custom-built clubs, among them a set of Tour-spec’d Srixon Z-Forged irons and Cleveland Golf RTX 4 wedges. Sensing they were stolen, the employee began to do some investigating, which eventually led him to Hale. Reunited with his sticks, Hale immediately put most of them back in his bag, including his trusty Ping G425 driver.
“I didn’t play my driver for a whole year,” Hale said, “but when I got it back, it just felt right back in my hands.”
Hale won the Oklahoma State Open just a few weeks later, birdieing his final hole to clip his former college teammate Max McGreevy, who had just wrapped up his sophomore campaign on the PGA Tour. Hale then comfortably advanced through Q-School’s first stage before firing a closing 66 to survive second stage.
Talk about timing.
When Hale and his fellow competitors arrived last week on Florida’s First Coast, they were greeted by windy conditions, which preceded a massive rainstorm and cool temperatures. Sunday’s scheduled final round was washed out, pushing the final-stage finish to Monday for a third straight year. Hale, though, didn’t mind. He’d played well in worse.
Hybl points to the final round of the 2018 Big 12 Championship at Southern Hills. The Sooners held a slim lead as the weather turned gnarly – temperatures in the 40s, spitting rain, bone-chilling wind.
“Blaine is first off for us, and I’m sitting down at the bottom of the fairway,” Hybl recalls. “He drops a bomb right down the pipe, and he walks up to me, and he’s got the biggest grin underneath his umbrella, and he goes, ‘Man, I just love stuff.’”
Fast forward to final stage, and Hale played all four rounds without a jacket.
“I’m probably a little bit thicker than some of the other guys,” Hale said of his decision to wear just a short-sleeved polo while others were bundled up.
It’s a lot more than that.
“That’s who he is,” Hybl said. “The guy has a knack for being able to fight through adversity with a smile on his face knowing that he’s already beaten people on the golf course.”
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA - DECEMBER 16: Blaine Hale Jr. holds the pinflag on the 18th hole during the third round of the PGA TOUR Q-School presented by Korn Ferry tournament at Sawgrass Country Club on December 16, 2023 in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. (Photo by Keyur Khamar/PGA TOUR via Getty Images)
PGA TOUR
On two water-lined layouts, Hale took no penalty shots.
He carded zero double bogeys or worse.
And that burly frame of his packed a ton of patience.
“When you’re lacking in something, a lot of times you’re not just given patience, you’re given an opportunity to be patient,” Hale said. “I think the last three years for me has just been an opportunity to grow in patience. Yeah, golf hasn’t looked how I thought it would turning pro. I tell people all the time, being a professional golfer is not necessarily glamorous when you’re not playing on the PGA Tour or Korn Ferry Tour. It’s driving to middle-of-nowhere Kansas for a Monday qualifier or driving to small-town Oklahoma to play a mini-tour event, and you pack your clubs in the back and you’ve got your shoes and your extra clubs, and it’s just you and the open road for a lot of that. That’s the stuff that people don’t see that really is the hard part of professional golf.
“I even told my wife last week when I made it through second stage, to me it was almost hard to tell people that I was a professional golfer because they’re like, ‘What Tour are you on?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, I play mini-tours, I play glorified money games, I play Monday qualifiers.’
“Actually getting to say I’m a PGA Tour golfer might hold a little bit more merit now.”
Hybl says he’s been asked a few times now if Hale is ready for the PGA Tour having played just one world-ranked event. To Hybl, there’s no difference to winning on the Tour’s developmental circuits and getting the job done on, say, the All Pro Tour. “There’s just as much pressure at the Oklahoma State Open as there was yesterday,” Hybl argued.
“He’s ready for that type of moment because he really thrives in that situation of pressure and eyeballs on him, and he’s always played with a pretty heavy chip on his shoulder like, Hey, people don’t think I’m as good as I know I am,” Hybl added. “He believes in himself, and he’s got big, big, Tour-type game because he hits it long and high, which a lot of guys don’t do out there.
“So, people ask me, ‘Is Blaine ready for this?’ And I’m like, ‘Hell yeah, he’s ready for this.’”
