AUSTIN, Texas — Ben Griffin still remembers the adrenaline rush he’d get after a good day on the job.
That’s understandable because the 26-year-old North Carolinian will be among 64 of the world’s best golfers competing for a $3.6 million top prize at this week’s World Golf Championship-Dell Technologies Match Play event at Austin Country Club.
But this deliberate, highly driven person was talking about his previous job.
Griffin, you see, until over a year ago was a loan officer for the CIMG Residential Mortgage business in his home town of Chapel Hill.
That was how he paid his bills after a rough start on the Korn Ferry Tour.
“Yeah, my biggest thrill was locking in a rate on a house for someone,” Griffin said from Georgia before catching a Monday night flight to Texas. “We’d get the (interest) rates posted at 11 a.m. each day from the banks in North Carolina. If I could find a rate that would come down an eighth of a percent from the day before from what I’d told the customer, well, that’s the most adrenaline you’d get.”
Griffin has traded that high for competing as a full-fledged PGA Tour card member. But first he gratefully accepted the sponsorships from two Missouri backers and CEO Doug Sieg of the Lord Abbett investment management firm to sign up for and advance out of Q-school and then finished second three times on Korn Ferry last season.
All in all, he’s proud of the two top-10 finishes he’s made in his 19 PGA events since securing his card over the business world of calculating mortgage points and refinancing homes that he left.
“I’d go from a cubicle by myself, and my new desk was the first tee at the Players Championship with 5,000 people watching,” Griffin said. “That’s where the perspective side comes in. I have it a lot better now. But I knew all along I was good enough to play against the best players in the world. I did in junior golf and had a relatively successful college career.”
On Tour, but not quite yet living Tour life
He’s gone from refinancing homes to making a home for himself on the PGA Tour. Sort of.
Single and frugal to a fault, he hasn’t sought to lower his own home rates because, well, he hasn’t sprung for a home yet even though he’s banked $1.7 million so far. Hey, we said he’s frugal.
He’ll stay in his $1,000-a-month apartment in St. Simons Island, Georgia, for now to build up his savings. He’s going to drive the formerly leased, silver C300 Mercedes-Benz with…
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