Kyle Lowry ponders the question.
“How badly are you addicted?”
Lowry comes clean.
“You know how they say cocaine is a hell of a drug?” the Toronto Raptors all-star point guard says. “Well, golf is a hell of a drug.”
Lowry got turned onto it when he was young by someone he trusted, and he’s never been able to shake it — not that he wants to.
Now the kid from North Philadelphia plans summer trips to the world’s most revered golf destinations. After a recent Sunday afternoon start with the Toronto Raptors against the New York Knicks, his first move was to pull up the Valspar Championship on his phone in the visitors dressing room at Madison Square Garden to follow Tiger Woods going for his first win in his comeback. (Woods finished second). What had him most excited about making his fourth NBA All-Star Game? Following Woods hole-by-hole at the Genesis Open.
He’s in a Masters pool – “I won it last year, so that’s big for me” — and in his spare time he’ll head over to the TaylorMade Canada headquarters to take some cuts on their state-of-the-art launch monitors to keep his feel over a long winter.
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Lowry is a golf nerd. And he’ll be watching every minute of the Masters this weekend like millions of his ilk.
“It’s been a great thing for me, to be honest,” he told me recently when asked about his fervour for the game. “The relationships I’ve built, the courses I’ve been able to play, the places I’ve been around the world, just by golfing … It’s been fun, it gives me a hobby that I enjoy and I’m passionate about.”
Like a lot of NBA players early in their careers, before kids and family provide more ballast, Lowry had a lot of time on his hands, especially in the off-season. It was his high school coach, Dave Distel, who identified the potential for problems and proposed a solution.
“Even if you know Kyle now, he’s just a puppy that never stops,” says Distel, who has known Lowry since he was 12 and coached him at Cardinal Dougherty in Philadelphia. “He just is constantly going and going and moving and wanting to do things and playing around until it’s time to crash and go to sleep and that’s kind of the way he’s always been.
“I told him your life can’t be consumed, now that you’re in the league, by just working out. You have to expand your horizons. I had been playing golf since I was a little kid and I said, ‘You gotta try it.’ It’s a great way to meet people. It’s a great way to network. It’s mind-engaging. It’s a thinking-man’s game.
Lowry grew up in North Philadelphia, a tough, crime-ridden neighbourhood. Golf was not on the menu. He was skeptical.
“Golf in North Philly? No. Hell no,” says Lowry. “Golf was golf. I never thought about it. I never knew about it. I was more like, ‘What is it?’
Distel persisted.
“He questioned it at first. He really did,” says Distel. “So I just said, ‘Come on. Come out with me. We’ll go out and throw my bag on a cart and we’ll just go play.'”
Lowry’s first reaction?
“I was like, I cannot hit this little ball that’s not even moving. I gotta get better at this.”
Lowry was hooked.
This was what Distel — who has played golf since he was a youngster — had in mind all along. When you’ve known someone since he was 12, guided him through some tumultuous high school years and helped steer him in the transition from college to the pros, you sometimes have feel for what would be good for him, even if he doesn’t know it.
Distel had no more basketball to teach his most accomplished player, but there were still many lessons to pass along.
“We started off just teaching him like you would a kid — golf etiquette; someone’s away; someone’s about to putt; you stand back and you don’t talk; when do you pull the flag, raking bunkers, you name it. All of that stuff that golfers take for granted he had to learn it.”
And now Lowry loves it. His favourite golf trip was to Scotland to play the Old Course at St. Andrews.
“It makes you concentrate on golf. You have to change your game, play the ball on the ground, listen to your caddies, be patient. You think you should chip it, but it’s better for you to putt it.”
He’s played in Spain and China and Brazil. He’s played Pine Valley Golf Club, one of the most exclusive clubs in the world and often rated the top course in the United States. He’s played Teeth of the Dog in the Dominican Republic, one of the top courses in the world, and Oakmont Country Club, site of nine U.S. Opens.
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Distel, who has since retired from coaching, takes a trip with him almost every summer.
“I’m just blessed to be the old white guy he doesn’t forget,” he says. “He doesn’t have me reaching for my wallet all that much. He’s very generous and I’m humbled by it. We thoroughly enjoy each other.”
But there are some places Lowry hasn’t been able to crack yet. He trades golf stories with Steph Curry, the NBA’s foremost player, a scratch handicap who has played at Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters, twice. “I’m totally jealous,” says Lowry. “I have to get on his level. I got win championships so I can go play Augusta.”
His dream foursome would include Barack Obama and Tiger Woods, but not Michael Jordan, whose reputation for high stakes golf precedes him.
“I can’t afford to play with Michael,” says Lowry.
He’s worked hard to improve his game, evolving from a beginner trying to break 120 to a respectable 12.5 handicap – a mid-to-high 80s golfer with gusts to the low 80s. But the 32-year-old sounds like any other Canadian golfer with a busy job, and a young family, lamenting the slow-coming of spring, firm in the belief that all that’s holding him back is time.
“The problem is I’m in a cold city so I don’t get to practice as much,” he says. “If I was in a warm city during the season I’d practice all the time and play in the summer.”
Golf has been a challenge for Lowry in part because his defining features as an NBA player – hustle, physicality, turn-up-the-heat competitiveness – don’t have an equivalent in a game where being able to manage your emotions and trying less, not more, is often the key to improvement.
“Golf teaches you to be patient. You can’t say I’m going to get stronger than somebody or be more physical. With golf you have to work at it,” he says. “You have to practice your chipping. You have to practice your 90-yard shots. You have to practice your sand shots …. You have to continue to get better at the specific things you need to get better at. It’s not given to you. You have to earn it.”
From Distel’s point of view, developing that patience has translated into Lowry’s day job. The Raptors set a franchise record with 57 wins on Friday night and clinched first-place in the Eastern Conference for the first time. One of the keys has been a commitment to a more pass-heavy offence with a wider distribution of shots and minutes, which has meant less of both for Lowry. It didn’t always go smoothly but Lowry stuck with it.
“The major transformation that the offence went through, no one knew how it was going to look, and it tested Kyle’s patience, which at a younger age he didn’t have as an immature NBA player,” says Distel. “A lot of what golf teaches is being patient and trusting … Kyle said he was going to work hard and he knew it was going to be difficult and he was going to make the best effort to make it work … the patience and the willingness to try something different when something isn’t working for a long-term goal — there is no question that golf has helped him in that.”
He doesn’t have a golfing buddy among this teammates, and his habit is a source of ridicule from those closest to him, fellow all-star DeMar DeRozan in particular.
“DeMar is just a hater,” says Lowry. “He doesn’t play golf. He just hates on me. That’s all he does.”
But Lowry is still Lowry. His Raptors golf partner is John Altilia, the team’s security officer, who can confirm that the edge Lowry plays basketball with carries over onto the golf course.
“He’s a fun to play with,” says Altilia. “[But] there’s a lot of non-stop razzing from shot to shot. It’s the looks. It’s the sneers. It’s the giggles. It’s the trash-talk out there. He’s very competitive … but he’s such a down-to-earth guy when he’s out there he makes it very, very comfortable.”
Clinching the first seed early comes with its rewards. Lowry can plant himself in front of the television like millions of golf fans this weekend, watching the Masters, enjoying a job well done before the playoffs start.
The only complication is Toronto has a game Sunday night against Orlando, starting at 6 p.m. – or just when the leaders will be coming around Amen Corner.
What will he do if Tiger Woods is among them?
Lowry pauses for a moment.
“Ah coach, my knee’s sore,” he says, laughing. “I think I’m going to sit this one out.”
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