NFL players past and present will arrive on the island tomorrow for the second Bermuda Golf Classic.
Among them some serious golfers with enough game to give the professionals a run for their money.
Jay Feely, the former Arizona Cardinals kicker, has a handicap of +1.4, Billy Joe Tolliver, the former New Orleans Saints quarterback and a driving force behind the tournament, is +1 and Jerry Rice, who briefly toyed with the idea of trying to make it as a professional golfer has a handicap of two.
Although professional athletes being good at multiple sports is nothing new, Ray Hamilton, a former defensive lineman with the New England Patriots, believes NFL players are naturally inclined towards golf.
A player’s competitive nature aside, Hamilton, who spent nine years in the league as a player and 27 as a coach before retiring in 2013, points to the constant drilling in fundamentals and technique as the key to his own single-figure handicap.
“I think throughout an athlete’s whole life he’s trying to be perfect,” Hamilton said. “And golf is just a game where you continually strive to get better.
“Everything in football boils down to fundamentals and technique. Golf is the same thing.
“Unlike a football field, where every field is 100 yards long, and 53 yards wide, and the goalposts are in a certain place, every golf course is different, which makes every shot in golf different, so you really have to rely on your fundamentals and technique to get good at it.”
Hamilton knows a little bit about mastering fundamentals and technique. A nose tackle who played in 132 games between 1973 and 1981, he then went on to coach at the Patriots during their run to the 1985 Super Bowl, before spending time in Oakland, New York, Jacksonville, and for the last five years of his career with the Atlanta Falcons as the defensive line coach.
As a player Hamilton was not the biggest on the field, or the most naturally gifted, and puts his longevity in the league down to being willing to work very hard on his game.
“Every year in the league I was always voted smallest defensive lineman,” he said. “I wasn’t going to overpower or outman anyone. I was pretty quick, but still I wasn’t very big.
“You’ve got to know what your limitations are and what you need to get better.
“That same thing has carried on over to my golf game. I very seldom play with players that I can drive the ball past. Everyone I play with out drives me, but I’m a fundamental player, I’m going to be in the fairway most of the time, and I’m going to have a good short game.”
As a coach Hamilton took that mindset to work with him, and it showed in the results his defensive lines produced, and the players he worked with. With the Cleveland Browns in 2001 the team tied for fourth in the AFC with 43 sacks, his 1998 defensive line at the Patriots managed 25 of the team’s 36 sacks, and as a member of the Falcons he was part of the coaching staff that came within one game of reaching the Super Bowl in 2012.
“Defensive lineman, aside from quarterbacks, are probably the most highly scrutinised position, most highly drafted position, and unfortunately the position with the most NFL busts,” Hamilton said.
“They don’t have a whole lot of experience coming out of college as far as the NFL goes, so teaching those guys the fundamentals of NFL techniques is essential. A lot of those guys are surprised at how much work I did on technique, just on basic fundamentals; footwork, pad level, none of the fancy stuff, just the basics.”
Hamilton was invited to play in this week’s tournament by Marcus Stroud, the Jaguars defensive end he coached between 2003 and 2007, and who had a Pro Bowl career. For Hamilton, who considered himself as something of a father figure, coaching players was not just about on the field, but off the field too.
That approach was instilled in him from an early age by Donald Burns, his coach at Frederick Douglass High School in Oklahoma City.
“He was the guy that really drove us all pretty good,” Hamilton said. “He saw some potential in me and stayed after me to get things done.”
Hamilton will try and get things done this week too, and whatever happens there will be a new champion. Lawrence Taylor, who narrowly beat Tolliver at Port Royal last year is not returning, and the likes of Feely, Rice, and the rest will be able to give free reign to the competitive zeal that gave them such impressive careers in the NFL.
