By the end of the 2018-19 PGA Tour season, Hank Lebioda wasn’t exactly fighting for his professional life, but he wasn’t exactly living up to his own expectations, either. He finished his rookie year 148th in the FedEx Cup rankings — outside the top 125 that guarantees a PGA Tour card for the following year, but inside the 126-150 tier that still enjoys conditional status and the roughly 15 starts that come along with it. But Lebioda knew his ceiling was higher: at Florida State, he’d won both ACC Freshman of the Year and ACC Player of the Year honors. As a pro, he’d spent just one season on the Web.com Tour before earning a promotion to the PGA Tour. But Lebioda’s first season on the PGA Tour hit its share of snags, including eight missed cuts. So when Lebioda began the three-weeks-long Korn Ferry Tour Finals with a chance to re-earn his PGA Tour card but missed the first cut, many players would’ve panicked. Lebioda rallied, though, with a T11 finish at the second Finals event, and then nailed down his Tour card on Labor Day on the last putt of the Finals’ finishing hole. Now, with a full schedule of starts awaiting him in 2019-20, Lebioda heads to the Sanderson Farms Championship looking to build the early-season momentum that eluded him a year ago.
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LYING FOUR: So, take me back to those days between Columbus and Boise. You finished outside the top 125, then you missed the cut at the first Korn Ferry Finals event. Where was your stress level at that point?
HANK LEBIODA: Oh it was fairly high. But I did my best throughout the season to be very honest through my evaluation process — in terms of where I thought I actually did play well and didn’t get anything out of it, or places where my game wasn’t great but I ended up getting quite a bit out of it — and being honest with myself and what I needed to work on going into the next week or the next stretch of events. When I finished Wyndham, I thought I’d played fairly well — not great, but when I showed up in Columbus after a week at home and played the first few days, I was actually happy with how I played. I thought I hit the ball really well. My coach, Scott Hamilton, and I had done some significant work with my driver to try to get it back in play. And I felt like we had a good setup, but for whatever reason, I just didn’t hit many fairways; I shot 3-over for the two days and had a double and a triple, and one birdie in the second round. The triple on the 14th hole ended up killing me; I couldn’t come back from it. But I felt like the things that I had worked on were either moving in the right direction or we had made some significant gains between the end of the PGA Tour season to the start of the Korn Ferry Finals. So, my stress level was high — obviously you only have three tournaments, and you don’t want to miss one of the cuts and not pick up any points — but at the same time, I was fairly confident with what we were working on and thought we had made progress.
LYING FOUR: Going into Monday at Victoria National, how were you feeling?
HANK LEBIODA: Pretty nervous [laughs]. I’m not gonna lie. But fortunately — well, I don’t know if it’s fortunate or not —
LYING FOUR: It’s all fortunate at this point.
HANK LEBIODA: Well, with the hurricane coming to Orlando about the same time, my wife and I had to figure out how we were gonna get home. It was a distraction, at least. It kept me a little occupied. Plus, being in the 126-to-150 category, I knew I had starts. I knew I was gonna have at least 12-15 starts or so on the PGA Tour next year, and I thought, “Hey, even if I shoot 80 today, the sun’s still gonna come up tomorrow, I’m still gonna be married to a beautiful wife, and I’m still gonna be playing on the PGA Tour.” It wasn’t the worst backup scenario. I just needed to remind myself, “Hey, everything will be OK, so you might as well just go out there, have fun, and do your best.”
LYING FOUR: There’s no way for you to have known this, but Golf Twitter was grinding pretty hard with you on that last putt on No. 18. What was that putt like when you were lining it up?
HANK LEBIODA: Just outside the left edge; relatively simple, to be honest with you, if you take out the entire situation and just look at the putt. Left-to-right breaker for me, which is ideally probably a little bit easier for a left-hander. It was seven feet, fairly flat, just outside the left edge. I mentioned that I saw improvements in things that we’d been working on from Wyndham to Columbus; putting was one of those things. If you go back and look at strokes-gained data from inside 10 feet, I was outside the top 165 or so in strokes-gained putting. But outside 10 feet, my highest ranking all season in strokes-gained putting would’ve been, like, 90th. So I’d been grinding on those makable putts, the putts that you probably should make 50 percent of the time or greater. The irony was not lost on me that I had a seven-footer to keep my Tour card, and I cashed it.
LYING FOUR: Did you think that you’d hit it hard enough? Because I had like two separate heart attacks between the moment you hit it and the moment it dropped.
HANK LEBIODA: Yeah, I thought I’d hit it hard enough — but the problem was, I’d left just about every putt short that day, and I’d thought that I’d always hit them hard enough, too.
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LYING FOUR: How tough is it transitioning through all these emotional ups and downs? You go from starting the Korn Ferry Tour Finals to missing the first cut, then wind up snagging your Tour card on the last putt of the last event, and now you have to turn around and hit the Fall schedule. That’s a lot to deal with in a short period of time.
HANK LEBIODA: It is. I have a really solid team around me. My wife, my caddie, agents, sports psychologist, coaches, family, friends, a really good group of people around me that I trust will always be with me — and it sounds like a cliche’, but especially a time like this when you need to lean on other people to decompress or enjoy the moment, or refocus and accurately assess what happened when I genuinely thought that I played better than I had previously.
LYING FOUR: You mentioned a sports psychologist. I did a story earlier this year about Brooks Koepka and how he processes stress. I spoke to a sports psychologist for that, and it was a really eye-opening conversation. It made me wonder why everyone doesn’t have someone like that on their team. When did you start seeing somebody?
HANK LEBIODA: I started working with Dr. Bhrett McCabe in 2017. I had just gotten done with Latin Tour Q-School, and was just in a shitty state, to be honest with you. I was pretty frail, emotionally and mentally. My game wasn’t great. I was just kinda spinning my wheels; I had missed the second stage of Q-School a few months prior, and had gotten conditional status down in Latin America. Now, for someone who plays as well as I do, that shouldn’t have been something I was happy about — but when I got got done with the final round down in Latin America, I was like, “Yes, I got conditional status!” I was just in a weird spot with my game. So I started talking to Bhrett, and I told him, “I know I’m better than this, but I can’t get out of my own way. I’m really not happy with what I’m doing.” And Bhrett made me take a step back and made me realize: what’s the worst thing that could happen if you hit a bad shot, or if you play a bad round? It’s not gonna be that bad. You’re gonna be OK. So you might as well go out there and have fun and do the best you can. And from there, we started planning practices and journaling after each round. I still do it, after every day and every round — being able to finish one round and start the next, when I’m journaling post-round. And when I’m planning my practices, it allows me to be hyper-efficient with how I work and to be able to get a lot done — maybe not in a short amount of time, but in a confined amount of time. And it always gives me the free time off the course that I need.
LYING FOUR: That was the big revelation for me when I was working on that story. The illusion of Brooks Koepka is that it looks like he’s blocking everything out, when in fact he’s doing exactly the opposite — he’s super-aware of everything that’s going on around him, and he’s super-aware of his own reactions to it. When he’s stressed out about something, he lets himself acknowledge that he’s stressed out about it.
HANK LEBIODA: In Brooks’ case, look at when everyone was chanting DJ’s name at the PGA Championship this year. He didn’t shy away from that. He even said afterward, “Yeah, I would’ve been [chanting] too. I wasn’t playing great.” But at the same time, he embraced it — he realized what was happening, and he leaned into it.
LYING FOUR: After that last putt at Victoria National, you said on Golf Channel that you’d learned from the experience of the Korn Ferry Finals. What did you learn?
HANK LEBIODA: That’s a pretty high-stress moment. I took that pressure, that feeling of needing to perform, and I leaned into it — kind of like what you were saying about Brooks. Brooks is very aware of what’s going on, very aware of situations, and he doesn’t shy away from it. And I tried to do the exact same thing. When I was standing up on 18, I needed to hit a really good drive. I said, “Well, why don’t we just hit a really good drive? Just go ahead and do it. You’ve been hitting driver well all day.” More often than not, if you have a confident swing, you’re going to hit a better shot than if you’re backing away from it or tentative. There was no reason to be guiding the shot. And what I learned was that I can do that. You can step up and hit the shot you need to, if you just allow yourself to.
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LYING FOUR: So what do you remember about the Sanderson from last year?
HANK LEBIODA: I thought it was a really fun event. Steve Jent, the tournament director, does a really good job with it. The course is fun. We played in October last year, so it was a little wet, and the rough was up — they had really thick Bermuda. The greens were really quick. I had fun. It was an enjoyable tournament.
LYING FOUR: And where are you now, compared to where you were at the Sanderson last year?
HANK LEBIODA: I was talking to my wife, and she asked me, “What are you excited for this year? What do you think is gonna be different?” And I told her that when I showed up in Napa last year, I remember meeting Brandt Snedeker, and that was the coolest thing ever. I was in awe. I was so busy looking around at everything going on and everyone that I was playing against — I didn’t have a prayer in Napa. And I just got my butt kicked and sent back home to Orlando. And at the Sanderson, I was still adjusting. At the time, it was an opposite-field event; the purse was smaller, and the field was pretty weak. And I was still too busy taking things in rather than playing my game. It wasn’t until RSM that I was able to get out of my own way and start playing golf again. So going into the Sanderson this year compared to last year, I’m ready to play. I’m ready to be there; I’m ready to compete. I’ll be excited to see what I can do on that golf course.
LYING FOUR: One of the big questions around the Sanderson this year is whether that bigger purse and being a standalone event will affect the tournament’s character. When people talk about the “identity” of a PGA Tour event, is that something that players pick up on, or is that just window-dressing that golf writers obsess about?
HANK LEBIODA: No, we pick up on it — but more importantly, our wives pick up on it. You notice it. You can feel the vibe. A lot to it has to do with the fan interactions that you have throughout the day — and I hate to say it, but how drunk a lot of the fans are and how obnoxious a lot of the fans are. You can see where the tournament is leaning toward. Like, for instance, Honda. At Honda, 16 has this massive surround, and 17 has this massive surround around the greens, and you can tell that they’re leaning into that: they want action, they want a ton of people there, they want noise. Same with Detroit. At the 15th hole — they can’t do quite the same thing that TPC Scottsdale does around their 16th hole and make it a complete stadium, but they wanted noise, they wanted action. So you can tell what vibe a tournament wants and what they lean into.
LYING FOUR: So what makes a “good” PGA Tour event? Is that kind of stuff good? Is it not good?
HANK LEBIODA: Probably the best example I could describe is San Antonio. TPC San Antonio is probably one of players’ least-favorite courses out there, because it’s re-tee if you hit a bad tee shot, and the greens are really goofy. But at the same time, it’s players’ favorite event just because of the setup. It’s the ease of everyone staying there, right on-site; they walk down to the golf course; no one bugs them when they’re walking from their hotel room to player dining; no one else is really in the clubhouse when you go from player dining to the locker room. The wives aren’t getting harassed to get in the clubhouse. Security detail has to check everybody because you’ve got random people who bought clubhouse passes, trying to get to the same place where the players are. And [at San Antonio] that’s just not the case. It’s just wives, players, and probably agents that are allowed in the clubhouse. So that makes a really good tournament. Honestly, from the non-playing side of it, that’s probably the most important thing — the ease of getting to work, and not getting hassled by security guards or fans when you’re walking from your car to the clubhouse. What else would be important? As a player, you’re always looking at practice facilities — are they near the clubhouse, are they near the first tee? Every golf course that we play is going to be in excellent condition. I know the “woke Twitter media” complains about certain setups that the PGA Tour has, but they’re all good. They may not be as firm and fast, or the rough might not be as long as people want it, but it’s always healthy, and playable and fair.
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LYING FOUR: We’ve been talking for 20 minutes now, so I feel entitled to make pretty pointed judgments about your personality. You seem really grounded: you’ve mentioned your wife a few times, and you’ve talked about all the people around you who support you. It occurred to me at some point that, with all of Tour life’s ups and downs, it would be easy to feel isolated out there if you didn’t have a good support network, but it sounds like you do.
HANK LEBIODA: I appreciate what you said. You always work to stay grounded and humble; walking around after a round and seeing all the people who want autographs or high-fives or to take a picture with you, it’s really easy for it to go to your head. It’s easy to get in a bubble in your own head, when in reality you’re just a 25-year-old kid chasing a dream. And that’s what it is. It does get lonely on the road, but I’m extremely lucky that my wife travels with me. She was a second-grade schoolteacher up until about a month before we got married. And I asked her, “I would really enjoy it if we could travel together, at least for this first year after we get married, so we can spend some time together rather than just getting married and basically doing long-distance all over again.” And she was willing to do it, and we tried it out. And we said that four months in, we’d reevaluate — because by April, as a teacher looking for a job, four months out is when you really need to be putting your resume’ out, talking to principals, and seeing what jobs are available for the coming year. And we sat down, had a conversation, and I said, “Do you want to go back to teaching?” And she said, “No. I want to stay out with you. I’m having fun, I enjoy spending time with you, and this is what I want to do.” So we went back at it.
LYING FOUR: That’s awesome.
HANK LEBIODA: Yeah.
LYING FOUR: What do the two of you do when you’re not on the road?
HANK LEBIODA: Run errands [laughs]. So, I lived in this town home that we live in for two years before she moved in — and you can imagine what a town home of a bachelor would look like if he’s only there a third of the time. So this week, we had someone who’s gonna come and clean the grout in our shower, someone who’s gonna pressure wash the railing and screen outside, someone come and install six different light fixtures; we ordered new furniture, so we’re trying to get that furniture assembled and the old furniture out. We have a nonprofit here in Orlando that collects room sets for homeless families and shelters, and it’s called the Mustard Seed. So we’re trying to schedule a Mustard Seed pickup; I was cleaning my Big Green Egg. Everything that you would consider a mundane thing, crammed into one week.
LYING FOUR: Yeah, but that sounds wonderfully mundane.
HANK LEBIODA: It is.
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