Starting next year, just call Hunter Mahan, “Coach.”
That’s because the 41-year-old former six-time PGA Tour winner and former U.S. Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup player is set to begin coaching the boys’ golf team at Liberty Christian, a private, college preparatory Christian school located in Argyle, Texas.
“I asked randomly about the head coaching golf position because I thought it could be fun and interesting and something completely out of my comfort zone but something I have a lot of knowledge in, and the coach was retiring so I threw my name in the hat,” said Mahan, who is taking over in the spring season. “When you talk about God’s path for you, it just became so clear for my wife and I. We plan on moving (to Argyle) next year from Dallas and for the kids to start attending school there.”
Mahan reached a career-high world ranking of No. 4 on April 1, 2012. That made him the highest-ranked American golfer at the time. But he last won in 2014 at The Barclays, a FedEx Cup Playoff event, and his game went into steep decline. Mahan’s longtime caddie John Wood and swing coach Sean Foley both are reluctant to say why Mahan lost his mojo, but agree that having three kids in diapers and enjoying being a stay-at-home dad factored into it.
Photos: Hunter Mahan through the years
“He had a lot going on besides golf for the first time in his life,” Wood said.
“When he was at the course, he wanted to be at home and when he was home he wanted to be at the course,” Foley said. “He kind of fell out of love with the game if he was in love with it in the first place.”
Despite having one of the best golf swings of his generation, Mahan attempted to make swing changes with instructor Chris O’Connell and they backfired. Mahan’s short game, which was never a strength, became problematic when his trademark fairways-and-greens game no longer was automatic. Mahan stepped away from the PGA Tour after the 2020-21 season – he still has limited status as a past champion – but said it was the right time for him.
“If you don’t love it on Tuesday, you can’t love it on Thursday. It’s just never going to work that way,” he said, noting it was everything before the competition that was a struggle for him. “It was actually a rather easy decision based on that. I have four kids at home and a family and it was clearly my time to do something else. I didn’t want to keep playing just to keep playing because I could.
“I didn’t want my kids on the road with me. I wanted them at home going to school and being with their friends. Uprooting them for my life didn’t feel right to me and it wasn’t right for them. I wasn’t going to ask them to do that. It just didn’t make sense.”
Hunter Mahan, left, and Zach Johnson during the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles.
He made just two cuts in his final 20 starts on Tour during the 2020-21 season and appeared in the last of his 453 career tournaments in July 2021 at the 3M Open.
With three girls and a boy ranging in age from three years old to 10, the former Oklahoma State Cowboy golfer has been happy handling car-pool duty. He has shown talent as a TV golf commentator, handling analyst duties for the world feed at the Ryder Cup in Rome this year, reprising a role he performed admirably in 2016 and 2021.
“When you listen to him speak, he’s fantastic, right?” Foley said. “The guy didn’t say anything to anyone for years but when Hunter talks it’s very well thought out.”
A larger role in TV will have to wait, at least for Mahan’s kids to grow older.
“It’s something I’ve thought about,” Mahan said. “But it requires too much travel that I’m not willing to do right now given the attention that I want to give to my family.”
Mahan mused that he could be the start of a trend of players enjoying shorter careers. Mahan earned more than $30 million in official money and despite never winning a major, he had nothing left to prove.
“When I joined the Tour, Vijay Singh, Kenny Perry and Jay Haas were in their 40s and having their best years. They were on Ryder Cup teams. I don’t think that’s going to happen anymore,” Mahan said. “The money is going up so much and the pipeline of new players coming through is so good, guys are going to be like, well, I’ve made so much money do I really want to grind at 45 and travel all the time? Golf is getting younger. The youth of golf is going to be at the forefront.”
Foley, for one, agrees that careers on the Tour will trend shorter.
“Ludvig Aberg isn’t going to be a unicorn. That’s going to be the norm. Every year there is going to be a kid coming out here and contending almost every week,” Foley said. “Is it going to be like other sports where he’s going to lose his advantage by not having as much time to work on his game once a guy settles down and has kids? There are 34-year-old defensive backs in the league that know everything about offenses, know how to run routes, their wisdom is amazing but they’ve lost too many steps to stay in the league. I think golf can be like that.”
Mahan says he plays occasionally but rarely hits balls and it’s not even a monthly thing he does anymore. None of his kids have the golf bug just yet, but he imagines that coaching a high school golf team will get him to play a bit more. Mahan won’t be the only former standout athlete coaching at Liberty Christian. Former Dallas Cowboys tight end Jason Witten is coaching his son on the football team and Olympic gold medalist Jeremy Wariner was named the track and field coach in July.
“They take pride in their athletics and academics and also give the kids a lot of opportunities for a well-rounded education,” Mahan said.
Of the pending move to the tiny suburb of Argyle north of Fort Worth, Mahan said one of his daughters calls it “city-country.” It’s not too far from the Tour’s annual stops in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex but it might as well be a world away from his old life as a tour pro.
“I miss the people I spent so much time with but I don’t miss the grind, day to day. What it takes out there is so all-consuming and I don’t miss that,” he said. “It’s very taxing and I hit my limit and it was just time to go.”