The player for whom ‘Swan Lake’ is not a water hazard

Aaron Beverly is surely the only player competing at The Genesis Invitational this week who has danced in “The Nutcracker” – seven times – as well as “Swan Lake” and “Don Quixote.”

His mother introduced him to ballet, and he took lessons for 14 years.

“I always keep it as like my two-truths-and-a-lie statement because no one ever believes it, especially when you look at me,” says the athletically built, 6-foot-3 Beverly.

His father introduced him to golf, and that one stuck. This week Beverly will realize a lifelong dream when he tees it up at The Riviera Country Club. He is the recipient of the Charlie Sifford Memorial Exemption into The Genesis Invitational, hosted by Tiger Woods.

Since 2009, the exemption, which honors the first African-American golfer to play on the PGA TOUR, has been given to a deserving golfer from a minority background. Among past recipients are four now on TOUR: Harold Varner III, J.J. Spaun, Cameron Champ and Joseph Bramlett.

“It means a lot,” Beverly says. “The first thing that I thought about after learning that I got the exemption was just Charlie Sifford and the path that he had to take to earn his TOUR card and be a Jackie Robinson for us. …. It's a great honor to have my name be mentioned alongside his.

“And then the second part was obviously this being my first TOUR event that I get to play in. That's just exciting. That's a dream come true. … And then the third part, obviously being that Tiger Woods hosts it. So, you add all those things up and it’s just like a ball of excitement and something that I'll never forget for the rest of my life.”

A merger of golf and ballet

The first golf tournament Beverly, 27, remembers watching with his dad was the 1997 Masters, which Woods won by 12 strokes. Ron Beverly, who died five months after Woods won his 15th major in 2019, gave his son a set of plastic clubs when he was 3 years old.

That was also around the time Aaron’s mother, Laverne, took him to his first ballet class.

“This is the way she tells the story,” Beverly says. “The first hour, I was great and then the last 30 minutes I sat in the middle of the dance floor and just cried.

“… And I always laugh,” he continues. “I'm like, so, you took away from that experience, like you thought it was a really good idea to just keep taking me back to class like that?”

After 14 years of ballet lessons, Beverly realized he liked practicing chipping and putting more than the leaps and jumps of a danseur. That said, he admits he was “way better at ballet than I was at golf for a long time,” and he even took an advanced dance class as a college senior.

What he loved more than anything, though, was getting up at 5 a.m. and tagging along with his dad, who was a successful high school and community college football coach, when he went to a nearby executive golf course every Saturday morning.

“My dad was the biggest influence for me in the game of golf and the reason why I played,” says Beverly, who used to attend his dad’s beginner and intermediate golf classes and later served as his unofficial teaching assistant.

Eventually, Beverly picked golf, but ballet has helped his balance and flexibility.

“I don't think a lot of people understand just how hard it is to train your body as a dancer,” he says. “Knowing where everything is and understanding the moves and the routines and just the discipline it takes to be really good at it is something that has carried into golf, for sure.”

The tough road to the PGA TOUR

After graduating from Sacramento State, Beverly took a job as an assistant pro at Silverado Resort in Napa, home of the Fortinet Championship, where he worked the driving range, caddied, and gave lessons. He also worked in the pro shop. All so that he could play on PGA TOUR Canada in 2019, watching his pennies as he traveled the Great White North.

“The classic journeyman story,” Beverly says. “It wasn't very glamorous. It was the cheapest flights you could find with the cheapest rental cars you could find with the cheapest hotels … But it was a great time. I thoroughly enjoyed it.”

For the last year or so, Beverly has been working as an assistant coach at his alma mater and an assistant pro at Valley Hi Country Club in Elk Grove, California while playing on the APGA Tour and assorted mini tours. (He won the Farmers Insurance Fall Series finale on the APGA Tour last November.) A frightening bout with COVID – he lost 17 pounds in five days and wrote texts and notes to loved ones to say goodbye – sidelined him for nearly two months.

“It's been … not a very linear path to get to playing on the TOUR,” Beverly says. “But, you know, it's all just been just a pursuit to keep the dream alive. And so, you do whatever it takes.”

One thing he wasn’t prepared for is all the ticket requests this week.

“I’m like, ‘Man, I haven’t heard from you in years,’” he says with a laugh.

One of those tickets, of course, will go to his mother, who, Beverly admits, isn’t the biggest golf fan. He called her to tell her about the exemption, and while he could tell she was happy for him, she also asked, “What does that mean?” He explained that he would be playing in a TOUR event and told her she was going to come watch.

“She goes, ‘You think they'll let me take a cart?’” he says. “I'm like, ‘Mom, probably not.’ But she's so sweet. So, it was nice just having that conversation with her because it was just kind of humbling. Like I'm so excited and then like, oh, well I’ve got to explain to her what it means.”

Of course, Ron Beverly – whom his son called after every round – would have been thrilled. He absolutely loved watching Woods, whom Aaron calls, “My hero growing up.” And now they’ll be spending the week together at the Genesis, one as tournament host, the other as the Sifford Exemption recipient, who said his father will be on his mind and in his heart at Riviera.

“I don't think he would've stopped smiling since the news came out,” Beverly says. “And I know he would be on me every day, making sure I practice and making sure I'm prepared. His big thing, especially when he was a football coach, was always preparation – knowing what opponents are doing and knowing how to best prepare the team.

“It was always the same way with golf. We would go to the courses early and play and come up with a strategy. So, I know that would be his big thing. But he would just be excited for me to be living out the dream that we talked about when I was a kid.

“And I know he'll be watching all week and any good break that I get – a bounce off a tree or a ball that lips in – that has nothing to do with me. That's all him just looking out for me.”