During Sepp Straka’s junior season at the University of Georgia in 2013-14, he struggled so mightily that he failed to qualify for the men’s golf team. A bad case of the chipping yips forced him to take a redshirt season. Making the PGA Tour, let alone becoming a tournament winner, seemed a longshot at best.
“I wasn’t very good,” Straka said. “I never really thought I’d make it as a pro. It was more of a dream.”
That dream became reality and in late February of 2022, Straka played inspired golf, erasing a five-stroke deficit entering the final round with three birdies on his last five holes to win his maiden Tour title at the Honda Classic. In doing so, Straka became the first Austrian to win on the PGA Tour.
“You try to believe that you can win, but until you actually get it done, it really is hard to believe,” he said.
Believe it or not, this story begins at Golf Club Gut Altentann, 10 minutes outside Salzburg in the heart of the Salzburg Alps, where Straka’s mother, Mary, ran the golf shop at the Jack Nicklaus designed course. Later, she took a similar role at Fontana Golf and Country Club, south of Vienna on the edge of the spa town of Baden. This is where Straka learned the game from his father, Peter, and at age 11, Straka and his fraternal twin brother – Sam is 2 minutes older – participated in a golf summer camp. Until this time, Straka was devoted to soccer, starring as a goalie, but after the camp Sam made the executive decision that the brothers were going to take golf seriously going forward.
The Straka family moved from Austria to the U.S. to be closer to his mom’s side of the family in Valdosta, Georgia, when he was 14. Georgia coach Chris Haack signed the brothers as a package deal. Finally, in Straka’s senior season, after overcoming a 7-8 month stretch during which he felt as though he couldn’t hit a green, Sepp’s game clicked into a higher gear and he turned pro in 2016. Yet he was so discouraged by his poor start to the 2018 Korn Ferry Tour season that he had already registered for Q-School again in July. Ye of little faith, Straka won the following week at the KC Golf Classic and secured his PGA Tour card for the 2018-19 with a T-3 at the KFT Tour Championship.
Straka qualified for the FedEx Cup Playoffs in each of his first three years on Tour but his claim to fame as a pro probably was being the first-round leader at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics. He realized his practice lacked structure…
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