Sauce Gardner is one of the NFL’s best at shutting down wide receivers. The New York Jets cornerback found trying to ace another sport a bit tougher this summer.
The two-time All-Pro picked up some golf clubs and hit the course during the offseason after getting the itch to play after having some fun during a University of Cincinnati alumni outing last year.
And let’s just say it wasn’t quite the same as swinging at driving ranges and golf simulators.
“Man, every time I hear the word, ‘golf,’ I don’t know,” a smiling Gardner said Wednesday after the Jets’ first practice of training camp. “It was just a blessing to have that side quest, part of my offseason.”
The 23-year-old Gardner posted videos on his social media accounts of his swings, using YouTube tutorials to help, and his progress through various courses. Two-time U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau responded to one of Gardner’s posts asking for tips, saying he would give him a lesson to “get you dialed in.”
Gardner raised some eyebrows last month when he wrote on the social platform X: “Never thought I would say this, but golf is harder than football.”
For a guy who has made the Pro Bowl in both of his NFL seasons and never previously played golf, that makes sense. But was it just the frustration from a few — OK, several — bogeys?
“I still believe it,” Gardner said. “I’m glad I can clarify it a little bit more. Like, if you had to start from the beginning from, like, not knowing how to play football and not knowing how to play golf, I feel like it’ll be harder for you to learn golf. … I’m just talking about the learning curve and everything.
“And it’s one thing to be able to hit on like a simulator and then going out there on actual golf course and going through all the things that you’ve got to go through. I don’t even want to talk about it because I had some horrible days.”
One of them included being scared off the course by a coyote.
Gardner did break 90 once right before training camp, a personal best.
“That’s a good start,” he said with a smile.
But how’s his putting coming along?
“Horrible,” he acknowledged. “Horrible.”
Gardner, who enters this season ranked as the NFL’s No. 1 cornerback by The Associated Press in a preseason survey, found some similarities between golf and football — particularly with bouncing back from a poor shot or play.
“It’s got to be one of those things where it’s like, that play’s over with, just like with golf: That shot’s over with,” he said. “It just helped with my mental a lot. Just being able to go out there and, in golf, you just hear nature and it’s quiet, you know? So it really helped me like slow my mental down.
“And I try to make that apply to the football field, especially if I have a bad play or something like that, just come back down, tone it back down.”
Reporting by The Associated Press.
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