In all the youth-heavy field at the Sanderson Farms Championship, you’d be hard pressed to find a more different pairing than Maverick McNealy and Braden Thornberry.
They are not without some similarities. Thornberry and McNealy — who find themselves grouped for the Sanderson’s first two rounds — both are the world’s former No. 1-ranked amateur. Both grew up interested in something other than golf: for McNealy, it was hockey; for Thornberry, it was dirt bikes. Both were star college players: as a sophomore at Stanford in 2015, McNealy earned the Haskins Award as the country’s best player; two years later at Ole Miss, Thornberry won the NCAA individual championship and the Haskins Award too. Both played for the victorious United States team in the 2017 Walker Cup, after which McNealy turned pro; just over a year later, Thornberry did the same.
They both began their pro careers saddled with can’t-miss, next-big-thing expectations — and then, they both discovered that there’s no such thing.
Both struggled through their first seasons on the Korn Ferry Tour: McNealy placed 65th on the 2018 money list, tallied just two top-five finishes, and missed five of his last seven cuts. Thornberry was 101st in the Korn Ferry points race in 2019; he’ll be back at Q-school this fall to secure his Korn Ferry status for 2020.
Braden Thornberry hits out the thick rough alongside the fairway of the 16th hole at the Country Club of Jackson.
For now, this is where their similarities end: for McNealy, the next 12 months are more predictable. In his second Korn Ferry season, McNealy finished 23rd on the season-long points race to earn one of the regular-season’s 25 PGA Tour cards. McNealy played his way into the Sanderson on his own merit; Thornberry needed a sponsor’s exemption.
And playing alongside one another on Thursday, the striking contrast between Thornberry and McNealy could lead one to wonder how in the world they’ve shared so much overlap. Thornberry attended Mississippi public schools; McNealy’s father is a member at Monterey Peninsula Country Club (among others). At 6-foot-1 and 170 pounds, McNealy looks like an extra from “The O.C.”: his grey Under Armour polo snug but not tight against his trim frame, his navy Under Armour trousers (with matching navy belt) tapered through the leg and resting perfectly atop white Under Armour shoes. Every stitch of him falls perfectly into place.
Thornberry could just as easily be your playing partner at a local muni — big smile and soft around the edges. He’s nowhere near disheveled, but his loose-fitting Footjoy polo and untailored khaki pants (the leg bottoms pool on top of his shoes) could’ve come off the rack at Dick’s Sporting Goods. When Thornberry made the turn on Thursday, a fan in a powder blue Ole Miss polo shirt caught Thornberry’s eye. “Hotty Toddy,” the fan offered. “Yes sir!” Thornberry replied.
Their swings are no less stark. McNealy’s is fluid and effortless, with a perfect backswing stopping short of parallel, and a perfect followthrough finishing perfectly balanced. Repeatable — perhaps robotic: two practice swings, then the strike.
Thornberry’s swing, on the other hand, looks like he found it at a garage sale. He stands beside the ball (the moment lasts hardly long enough to describe as “address”), jerks the club inside, pulls it high off-plane at the top of his backswing, then wrenches the club down and smashes down on the ball; somehow, there is a followthrough. It is not the sort of swing that one would teach, but then again, no one taught it to him: Thornberry learned it on his own. And it works.
There is a joyfulness to Thornberry’s game. He finds trouble, then gets himself out of it. Birdies feel stolen, like the euphoria of stealing a cookie from your grandmother’s cookie jar; a routine fairway-to-green progression seems out of character. On Thursday at the Country Club of Jackson, Thornberry pulled his tee shot badly left at the drivable, 309-yard 15th hole; from 65 feet, he pitched his ball to perhaps a foot, and tapped in for birdie. On the same hole, McNealy’s automaton swing smashed his drive and finished just short of the green, perhaps 25 yards from the hole. But his pitch came up 10 feet short, and he two-putted for par.
If Thornberry’s style feels joyful, then McNealy’s hallmark is intensity — but not in the way that word has become synonymous with anger. McNealy is not angry. He is deeply focused, intensely aware of the challenge confronting him and all the factors weighing on that challenge.
Maverick McNealy, on the 17th hole during the first round of the 2019 Sanderson Farms Championship.
On the 17th, McNealy drove his tee shot right of the fairway into a brutal lie — no more than a foot from the trunk of an oak tree, and no more than a half-inch from a stick. No one would have begrudged him a long sigh, or even a muttered profanity. But McNealy betrayed no negativity; he walked to the ball and inspected his lie just as he would have if the ball were in the center cut. “Be sure you don’t move the stick,” McNealy reminded his caddie without a hint of condescension. Remarkably, he had a line toward the green, if he could finagle himself into an address position. If you miss, then miss right, McNealy’s caddie reminded him. McNealy nuzzled up against the tree, somehow found a reasonable address position, caught the ball clean — and missed, but not right. The ball bounded into a greenside bunker. “Left is the only place you couldn’t miss it,” McNealy quietly scolded himself.
This is not to say that McNealy is some joyless soldier, nor to say that Thornberry has cracked a code to imperfect but happy golf. They both play the game as their truest selves: in that final way, they are just alike. For all their differences, their careers are separated by the slimmest of degrees. And yet, golf is won and lost on the slimmest degrees of separation: McNealy has his PGA Tour card, and Thornberry doesn’t. On Thursday, Thornberry fought back from two-over through four holes to finish two-under; McNealy bogeyed his 18th hole to finish one-under.
It is difficult to understand how such different paths led to nearly the same place. But it is more difficult to believe that their paths will not continue to intersect.
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