Mackenzie Hughes joins the pod in early March at Bay Hill for a short conversation on the state of pro golf, LIV vs. PGA Tour, being a father of 3 kids 6 and under, and childhood memories playing golf in his native Canada.
All right Garrett Johnson here with McKenzie Hughes Mackenzie eighth year on the PGA tour how does it feel right now yeah it’s uh it’s it kind of feels like it’s gone by really quick um I I won my rookie year and that seems like uh a
Long time ago but also at the same time I it’s hard to believe I’m here in year eight so uh very uh thankful to have uh had the time I’ve had so far and um hopeful that uh we’ll be have have you know many more years to come on the BJ
Tour for sure and and I think about practice schules and you know you got three kids now how does your practice schedule priorities change now with with the three kids yeah it looks a lot different uh when I first got on tour it was pretty much uh go to the course and
Um spend seven eight nine hours sometimes at the course and you know with my wife at work I was really you know I had the the Daya myself I had um you know my my time was very flexible and now with three kids school pickups and drop offs and activities uh that’s
Changed a lot so now my um my priorities and my my schedule needs to be a lot lot tighter and more efficient but uh yeah it’s um it’s a great problem to have I’ve got three beautiful kids that I love uh dearly and um yeah it’s been
Great what’s your favorite thing to do with the three kids I know they’re all different different personalities but what types of things are fun you know the other day I mean just uh taking a long walk uh finding playgrounds going exploring uh talking with them uh it’s
It’s just neat to see them you know develop and uh evolve as they get older uh my oldest is very very curious lots of questions you know how things work and just talking to them and explaining those things that’s uh it’s a lot of fun you got to explain like why they can’t
Watch certain movies right as well too i’ imagine yeah I mean my oldest son he’s six he loves to watch YouTube and I have to explain to him that like you know this is not something we have to to watch all the time and it’s really not
Real life if you know I’m trying to explain to him that this is not really like a um it’s not reality you know you know you got these kids playing these video games and they’re playing with their dad all day and you know I’m like
This is not this is not what we’re going to be like uh you know growing up we’re not going to be playing video games all day and but just like you know trying to have those discussions like he you know at one point he wanted to be a YouTuber
And I’m like well that’s that’s fine but there you know there’s lots of more things out there um and so so just yeah um he’s getting pretty smart though so um yeah the questions are getting harder and harder but uh yeah it’s been been a
Lot of fun being a dad I think that it um it’s fun when they’re like they’re at a tournament like this and um you know I can leave the golf course and whether you’ve played Bly or great it doesn’t matter to them so that’s always a lot of
Fun to come home to and um yeah been it’s been really nice what’s the hardest part I know for me I’ve got three young kids as well um and it’s just hard hard to tell them no sometimes or it’s hard to uh you know stand your ground on
Certain things but what do you feels the hardest part about being a dad uh well yeah I think that’s like you said you have to you have to be able to say no sometimes and you have to be uh you have to enforce things and you
Have to be strict at times when you know that you’re you know you’re right and that what you’re saying is in their best interest even though they’re they’re not so convinced you know that they shouldn’t have a job GI bow ice cream right before bed um you know so like
There’s times where you have to you have to be that guy and it’s not always fun um but you know it’s the right thing to do and it’s um you know in their best interest so that’s that can definitely be uh can be a challenging uh balance
Yeah and and thinking about younger kids I think about when you were younger growing up in Hamilton cold cold climate how did you keep your passion for golf and keep be able to practice during those younger days yeah honestly like when I was um growing up in the winter I
Didn’t really play a lot in the winter uh I would play other sports hockey um basketball just different different sports to keep myself busy um so that was a big thing uh for me was that I didn’t really I didn’t burn out as a young kid
Trying to play golf all year round uh I think that’s something that helped me um kind of maintain that hunger if you will like I when I when spring came around night the grass was starting to clear and you know the snow was melting I mean it was like Christmas you know you’re
Like oh we’re so close and you can smell it and you can you know you can smell spring and you knew that golf was around the corner and to me that’s really exciting and um you know still like some of my Fondest Memories in Canada are
Those like those first few days you get out in the course after The Long Winter and um you know you see the grass you hit a few shots and you feel the turf and um so that’s that’s um yeah that’s kind of for me like grow up in Canada
That’s kind of how I I felt like I I managed it some guys were different but for me that was um that was my my route and there’s a lot of Canadians out here doing well Cory Connor’s a number of guys um I wanted to also ask you about
The state of the game PG right now and I know you did a Walkin talk with CBS just mentioning how uh players sometimes have at this day and age have a warped sense of what their value is what their worth is and and kind of what how would you expound on
That well I think my my biggest the big the point I was really trying to make make um on that walk and talk was that um you know it seems to become like the money has become like the the main focal point of professional golf and I’m not
Going to sit here and say that money is important I I want to have you know I want to be able to buy food for my family I want like I mean making a living is important no matter what you’re doing you want to be you know
Fairly compensated for what you do um so I’m not here to denounce that money is not important but it is just that it’s become the entire Focus it’s like it’s consumed the sports it’s become all that uh you know it seems that we’re focused
On so I think for me it’s just that um I don’t play for those reasons it’s an added bonus that my first real love and passion as a sport became my career but that’s not my why um and I think that um it would be really nice if you know for
The fans we weren’t necessarily slamming that down you know their throats um people don’t really care people don’t care how much professional athletes make they want to see Great Performances and they want that to be the highlight and the in the focal point of why they’re watching you know and this battle
Between Liv and PJ tour I mean you know it’s doing way more harm than good so I know that people would say competition is good but for the game of golf I don’t think that this is um a good competition right and you know you’ve talked about
Pathways back what does that look like for some of these guys you know how how will that look and and how have you kind of chocked that up or what’s kind of been your thought on that yeah that that is a question that I’m uh not qualified
To answer I mean the the pathway back will be decided by um you know probably the the top tier of the PGA Tour and uh the executives and Jay um but that is a really complicated answer um because I know that there’ll be a large portion of
The membership that wouldn’t be um in favor of that but as a whole I think it’s it’s what needs to happen I just don’t know how you um how you make it happen um and the other point is like you probably only have I mean if it
Happens next year or in two years I mean you don’t have many guys uh with status remaining on live so you’re talking maybe what five six seven guys at at most probably that have status so to me you know you could find a way to work
Those guys back in if they so choose but the reality is they might not want to I don’t there’s there’s not you know a guarantee that those guys come back and play many events at all but it would be nice if you played an event like Riviera
With a ton of history and a great field and if you added you know five or six of the best players in the world that are you know playing on live right now um you know the cam Smiths and the DJs and the ROMs I mean those guys Brooks should
Be playing with Rory and Scotty and those guys so um yeah I I hope it happens but I don’t know how it happens when you were talking about membership a second ago too like and and how another question is like how do you compensate you know accurately the guys that did
Stay um and I know there’s SSG and there’s different things that kind of come to the Forefront but kind of what’s your thought on that overall yeah I think overall it’s a it’s a it’s a positive thing for the tour but you know the compensation and all
That it’s it’s a bit tricky um you know I don’t know hasn’t even rolled out to me I don’t know you know who they’re compensating and how they’re compensating people but um I think any investment in the tour you know signifies that there’s some stability long term which I I think
Through the live emergence there was some doubts there for a while you know you just wondered you know can we sustain with this threat and it appears as though we can um but what that looks like long term I don’t know um what this Sports Group comes in and does or tries
To do I don’t know um I probably know you know as many details as you do so it’s uh it’s it’s all been fairly um surface level stuff so far and hopefully we’ll find out more soon well Mac appreciate your time and uh good luck here early part of the Season all right
Appreciate it thank you
