Through the second half of the NFL season and a short, but memorable run in the AFC playoffs, Josh Allen had little trouble shouldering the majority of the offensive workload for the Buffalo Bills.
He hoped to do more of the same on the links while paired with Keith Mitchell at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, held recently near Monterey.
The duo came up short in the iconic event, however, finishing four strokes below the cutline at 15 under.
For Allen, who loves the game so much he gave all his offensive linemen new clubs as a Christmas present two years ago, struggling in such a picturesque setting wasn’t originally easy to swallow. But the cannon-armed QB learned to live with the pain.
“I’m so competitive that I was just so frustrated the whole week and not playing well,” Allen told USA Today’s Mackenzie Salmon on Radio Row ahead of this week’s Super Bowl matchup. “But to look out and see the beach and the water, and it being 70 degrees at 10 o’clock in the morning with the sun shining down … it was hard to be mad.”
Allen might not be where he wants it to be just yet but with his competitive nature and work ethic, it won’t be surprising if his raw talent eventually shines through in his golf game. He’s already connected with one of the game’s greats. Allen dressed up before a game against the Miami Dolphins as 2021 PGA Championship winner Phil Mickelson and said the two have talked a handful of times.
“I’m not the best player in the world, I’m not going to tell you that I am, but when I can hit it, I’m going to hit it far, a long way. And it’s something that I enjoy to do, though,” he said in advance of the event at Pebble Beach. “My favorite thing besides football to do is to be out on the golf course and hitting shots and hanging out with the boys and having a good time.
“I played a little bit growing up. My dad and mom would take me out every once in a while. But I really didn’t get into it really until college. That’s where I figured out I loved to do this and I want to do this as much as I can.”
As for the nerves that come with hitting a ball in front of a massive gallery, Allen insisted they’re incredibly different than the butterflies he deals with during an NFL game.
“It’s the polar opposite, right? Instead of using silent cadence and you can’t even hear your own thoughts, to your thoughts being the loudest thing you hear on the golf course,” Allen said. “And sometimes that’s almost as scary as it being super loud.
“But just the mental toughness that you have to have as a golfer and you have to bounce back after a shot, you have to bounce back after an interception. … You can’t let your last shot or your last throw dictate your next shot or your next throw and you got to be good on that end of letting things go and just trying to find out how you can best move forward.”