Meet former ‘guacamole guy’ set for his PLAYERS debut

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Ten years ago, Rickie Fowler won THE PLAYERS Championship in a dramatic three-hole playoff that extended to a fourth hole, as Fowler birdied TPC Sawgrass’ island-green, par-3 17th for the win.

PLAYERS first-timer Kevin Roy, 34, was asked Wednesday morning to name the 2015 PLAYERS champion. Roy remembered Fowler was the champion, but he wasn’t able to watch the action in real time. He was busy slinging guacamole at the Green Lemon, a Mexican restaurant and margarita bar in Tampa, Florida.

Roy, a former college teammate of Xander Schauffele at Long Beach State, worked various odd jobs to make ends meet as a young mini-tour pro in the mid-2010s. One such job was at the Green Lemon, where he buzzed around with a guacamole cart and interacted with restaurant patrons.

This week, the patrons will watch Roy tackle TPC Sawgrass (THE PLAYERS Stadium Course) as a first-time participant at THE PLAYERS, the PGA TOUR’s flagship event. Roy is a second-year TOUR member; he earned his first card via the 2022 Korn Ferry Tour, lost it, and regained it via the 2024 Korn Ferry Tour. Roy has notched three top-20 finishes this season (highlighted by a T6 at last week's Puerto Rico Open) and stands No. 74 on the season-long FedExCup standings; he qualified for THE PLAYERS via his FedExCup position.

It's a long way from that guacamole cart, with Roy competing for a $25-million purse roughly three hours northeast of Tampa. It’s not lost on him.

“Ten years ago … I was known as the guacamole guy,” Roy said Wednesday at THE PLAYERS. “I was pushing a cart around, making guacamole. It was just doing whatever I can to make a little bit of money to keep this crazy dream alive. To sit back and look at it now and realize that we’re playing in THE PLAYERS, is really cool.”

Twenty-plus professionals will debut at THE PLAYERS this week. There’s long-hitting 20-year-old Aldrich Potgieter, who finished runner-up at last month’s Mexico Open at Vidanta to comfortably secure his spot at TPC Sawgrass. There’s shorter-hitting 32-year-old Brian Campbell, who defeated Potgieter in a playoff in Mexico to punch his ticket to northeast Florida (and a full TOUR exemption through 2027). Several first-timers in this week’s field were in high school as Fowler conquered TPC Sawgrass on that memorable Sunday in 2015, watching the action from their parents’ couches.

Then there was Roy, pushing a guacamole cart and hoping to just get a crack at the Korn Ferry Tour (which he eventually did in 2019), let alone the PGA TOUR. Roy was buoyed by his family’s belief: His dad Jim is a former TOUR pro and longtime teaching pro in the Syracuse, New York, area, and his brother Kyle (two years older) is a longtime golf buddy and adversary dating to their youth. The entire Roy clan was on the scene for Roy’s #TOURBound celebration at the 2022 Korn Ferry Tour Regular Season finale in Omaha, Nebraska – and they were the last ones that lingered into the evening hours, reminiscing on the day and the journey.

Last year, Kyle Roy was diagnosed with colorectal cancer that progressed to Stage 3, and his younger brother played on the Korn Ferry Tour with a heavy heart. Roy stamped a custom ball marker “F*ck cancer” as an inspirational memento, and he played the most consistent golf of his career with 11 top-25 finishes to punch his return ticket to the PGA TOUR.

Kyle Roy underwent multiple rounds of chemotherapy in his arduous battle, and two days before Christmas, bloodwork and scans showed no evidence of disease. It meant a happy start to 2025 for the family, in both golf and life, and this week’s PLAYERS appearance is an extension.

Earlier this week, Roy ran into his former college teammate Schauffele at TPC Sawgrass (Roy was a senior at Long Beach State when Schauffele was a freshman). Roy was working on some chip shots when he heard someone approach from behind. “God’s country!” quipped Schauffele, an inside joke from Roy’s depiction of upstate New York dating to their college days.

Schauffele is the better known of the duo, as the 51st PLAYERS gets underway Thursday, but one of TPC Sawgrass’ enduring traits is its ability to produce a wide scope of winners – superstars and grinders, bombers and plodders. With 144 players in the starting field, the leaderboard come Sunday afternoon is anyone’s guess.

Nobody would be surprised if Schauffele found himself in the mix down the stretch. But why not a PLAYERS first-timer like Roy?

“It means everything,” said Roy of being here. “It’s THE PLAYERS, arguably the best field in golf. So to be a part of it is pretty amazing, really.”