How paddle boarding helped Chris Kirk become a winner

Those early tee times notwithstanding, Chris Kirk says he’s not a morning person. But when he lived on St. Simon’s Island in southeastern Georgia, one of his favorite things to do was to get up and go paddle boarding at sunrise.

That’s when the Atlantic Ocean was the calmest. Kirk would paddle out into the blue-green water, the morning’s light shimmering on its glassy surface, for 30 or 40 minutes. Sometimes he’d sit down or stretch out on the board, alone in his thoughts.

“I think it has some similarities to being on the driving range by yourself when you're a kid just kind of working, trying to get something just right,” Kirk says.

“You feel like you're just kind of standing on the water, walking on water a little bit. Just being out where you could barely see the shoreline with nobody around, it was so kind of peaceful and calming.”

An added benefit? It was also good exercise for the lanky Georgian who admits that he isn’t exactly the kind of gym rat some PGA TOUR players are. Particularly if the waves were up when Kirk returned to shore, he could get in a little surfing, too.

“I struggle with that,” the 6-foot-3, 175-pounder admits with a smile. “… I just really don’t enjoy working out that much. But being able to do something like paddle boarding was really a great release.”

Kirk now lives on a 40-acre retreat outside Athens, not far from the University of Georgia where he was a member of the Bulldogs’ 2005 NCAA title team and winner of the 2007 Ben Hogan Award. His paddle boards are stored at the home of his parents, who live on a lake. Someday, though, he hopes to the sunrise calls him back to the ocean.

Kirk actually started paddle boarding on something of a whim. He missed the cut at the 2010 Melwood Prince George’s County Open in College Park, Md., on what is now known as the Korn Ferry Tour and was headed home, looking for something to pass the time.

Kirk called Mac Barnhart, who was his agent at the time, and asked him what he knew about paddle boarding. He told him he wanted to try it. So, the next day, the two men drove to Jacksonville Beach, Florida and rented a couple of boards.

Suffice it to say, they were hooked. Kirk and Barnhart both ended up buying paddle boards that day and bringing them home to St. Simon’s Island. Turns out, another friend and local icon, World Golf Hall of Famer Davis Love III, already had one – but he hadn’t quite caught the bug yet.

“We were talking to him, saying this is awesome, you’ve got to try it,” Kirk recalls. “And he's like, oh yeah, I have one of those. And we're like, of course you do.

“So, the three of us went out a ton, Mac and Davis and I, and we'd go out in the mornings. Mac and Davis even opened a paddleboard shop for a little while. And then it became this whole huge thing. And it all came from me missing the cut and wanting to do something on the weekend.”

The story gets even better, too.

After essentially spending the better part of next week on his paddle board, Kirk went to Arkansas and won the Fort Smith Classic – his first victory as a pro. He would go on to win again that summer and finish second on the Korn Ferry Tour money list to lock up his PGA TOUR card.

“We paddled every day for a week,” Kirk said with a grin. “And then I went and won the tournament the next week. So, we're, like, this is the answer to being a professional golfer.”

Kirk, a four-time winner on TOUR, was a quick study. He learned early on to jump off when he felt like he was going to fall rather than risk a collision with the board.

“Learning on relatively flat waters is a very easy,” Kirk says. “I don't know why anyone ever gets on a kayak ever. It's so much better. It's kind of the same thing. You can go in and out wherever you want, but I mean, a kayak kills my back and wears out your arms.

“On a paddleboard you’re using your whole body standing up and you can see everything better. It's awesome.”

With the exception of a lightning scare when he was out on the water one day, Kirk hasn’t had any mishaps on the paddle board. He can’t say the same about skim boards, though.

After the pro-am at the (Korn Ferry) Tour Championship at Daniel Island later that year, Kirk was in the ocean for a little R&R and lost his balance on a skim board. The result was an avulsion fracture of a bone at the base of his left thumb that sidelined him for several months.

“So yeah, no more skim boarding,” Kirk says.

These days, Kirk’s three energetic young sons – aged 3, 7 and 9 – keep him busy.

The oldest, Sawyer, is “just obsessed” with baseball, he says. The middle child, Foster, likes baseball, too, but he also enjoys fishing and shooting his bolt-action single-shot .22 rifle at the range on the family’s property. The baby of the family, Wilder, is usually up for anything but he particularly like wrestling with his dad and riding the trails in Kirk’s 1976 Bronco.

Balancing their “me and dad time” with his kids is all-important these days. When they’re older, though, don’t be surprised if Kirk and his family get back to St. Simon’s Island on a more regular basis, maybe even buying a second home there.

“We moved away really for being closer to family and to make travel easier for me,” Kirk says. “But we still love it. I wish we got down there more often than we do, and we talk about it all the time.”

And when that happens, Kirk might have to buy some more paddle boards.