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Baxter Holmes, ESPN Senior Writer
ONE MORNING IN the winter of 2005, RJ Caswell finds a 17-year-old senior between classes in the hallway of Charlotte Christian High School in North Carolina. Caswell, in his early 30s and known throughout the school as the only staffer to wear a bow tie every day, is in his first year coaching the varsity team after two years coaching in middle school, and he needs help. The new team he’s taking over was decimated by graduation and is now composed of five freshmen. Caswell has never spoken to the senior before, but the player’s fame precedes him.
Caldwell approaches the son of an NBA All-Star guard with a humble request.
“Would you play for us?” Caswell asks.
He possesses raw talent, the coach believes, and if the young player continues working, he could certainly excel in the college ranks.
Soon thereafter, a skinny teenager named Stephen Curry becomes the best player on the Charlotte Christian High School … golf team.
After leading his high school golf team, where he’d won a conference tournament and became known for massive drives off the tee, Curry’s legend would only grow. He would play with celebrities such as Tom Brady and Michael Jordan and even former President Barack Obama. He would play at events featuring PGA stars and, as a scratch golfer, more than hold his own. That success, of course, would pale in comparison to a Hall of Fame NBA career headlined by two MVPs, four titles with the Golden State Warriors and more 3-pointers than any player in history (3,390).
Still, along the way, something else happened: A coterie started to form. It would be loaded with other great 3-point shooters, some of whom were among the game’s all-time best.
Naturally, Curry would notice. They all would.
“It feels like every good shooter that I know enjoys golf as well,” Kyle Korver, an avid golfer and No. 5 on the NBA’s all-time list for made 3-pointers, tells ESPN.
Some picked it up early, others mid-career, others still after retiring, expanding this elite and exclusive group.
The question is why.
“It’s No. 2 on my priority list in my life outside of my family — my obsession,” says JJ Redick, an ESPN analyst and 18th on the all-time NBA 3-point list with 1,950 makes.
“I was playing every day,” former NBA guard J.R. Smith, who sits right behind Redick at 19th on that all-time list with 1,930 3-point makes, tells ESPN. “When I picked it up, I was playing before games. I was playing before practice. I had the bug immediately.”
Then there’s Ray Allen, No. 2 on the all-time 3-point list with 2,973, who, like Redick, calls golf his “obsession” and says, “in many ways, it saved my life.”
Leading this pack of elite shooters turned golf aficionados is Curry, who, on Thursday, will team up with fellow Warriors long-range ace Klay Thompson to play against Kansas City Chiefs teammates Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce in a charity golf event — Capital One’s The Match — at the Wynn Golf Club in Las Vegas.
The Splash Brothers pairing of Thompson and Curry stands as the greatest combo of 3-point snipers on the course, which begs the question: Why does golf attract so many of the NBA’s top 3-point shooters? Why are they often so good at it? What’s behind this bizarre link between sharpshooters on both the course and the court?
Curry, when presented with the mystery one afternoon this past postseason, pauses. At first, he says he isn’t sure. A moment later, the connections seem to emerge.
REDICK IS WALKING 18 holes and carrying his own bag as he plays a round at The Bridge in Sag Harbor, New York. The weather is less than pleasant. It’s a Monday morning in November 2022: The temperature hovers in the mid-40s, with 20 mile-per-hour winds.
Redick, who has a 10 handicap, shoots in the mid-80s, wraps up around 2 p.m. As he drives away from the club on this too-brisk-for-golf afternoon, his mind doesn’t leave the game, and he begins wondering about the architecture of the course itself.
“Why is that bunker in the middle of the fairway?” he asks himself about one hole in particular. “Everybody misses left on that fairway. Wouldn’t it make more sense if there was a bunker on the left side of the fairway?”
Redick laughs at the absurdity. It wasn’t always this way. He played a few rounds headed into his final NBA season in 2021, believing it might be a post-retirement activity. And now?
“I’m obsessive,” he says.
As for what golf unlocked in him? That’s a subject Redick finds fascinating.
”You can’t be a good shooter unless you’re in love with the process and the routine,” Redick says. “And you can’t be a good shooter unless you’re mentally tough. And I think golf is the same way.”
To become a great shooter, he says, “You have to become so obsessed, so diligent, and there’s really no other way. You can have a natural, good golf swing, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to be a scratch golfer.”
Golf scratches a competitive itch, he says.
“It’s inherently competitive, because you’re playing against the course, you’re playing against your own handicap, you’re playing against the elements that day,” Redick says.
Redick also notes the visualization required in both sports to imagine different sorts of shots from different angles or under different conditions.
Korver, for his part, began playing golf when he was young, as both of his grandfathers introduced the sport to him. (One tended to hook the ball, the other tended to slice: “And I ended up with this super unconventional way-forward-pressing swing,” Korver says with a laugh.) Korver, who is now an assistant GM for the Atlanta Hawks, played from then on, including throughout his 17-year NBA career.
“There’s a lot of similarities to shooting and playing golf,” Korver says. “Golf isn’t just striking the ball. Basketball is not just pushing this thing off my hand. Golf is a full-body thing, shooting is a full-body thing, and it’s learning how to connect your energy and your angles with tempo.”
Smith, who played for 16 NBA seasons and won two titles, came to golf much later — in 2008, when he was playing for the Denver Nuggets. Growing up, his brother, father and grandfather had played it, but golf, he says, just wasn’t as appealing to him as basketball, football or baseball, where he idolized Michael Jordan, Deion Sanders and Ken Griffey Jr.
“Golf was never really cool,” he tells ESPN.
When he finally played, though, Smith took to it immediately. He soon regretted not playing earlier — “I’d be light-years better now,” he says. Still, he’s discovered deep correlations to shooting.
“So much of it is feel, touch, muscle memory, the ability to continuously repeat that motion, that swing,” Smith says. “And from different spots, different angles, shots. There’s a rhythm, a sort of motion, and that’s why I think it’s a lot like jump-shooting, because there’s so much fluidity and movement but yet it’s still based on the structure of it all.
“That is one of the reasons why it translates, because I felt like I had so many different shots in my arsenal as a basketball player — and then golf is just a game of shots, too.”
After retiring from the NBA, Smith enrolled at North Carolina A&T, a historically Black college and university (HBCU) in Greensboro, and joined its Division I golf team, where he thrived. This year, he launched the “Par 3 Podcast,” which is centered on golf. And when he plays with other basketball players, he sees his theories in real time.
“The shooters who hit the golf ball,” Smith says, “it’s so pure.”
FEW NBA PLAYERS in history have had a shot as pure as Allen. Fewer, still, were more committed to golf, a sport he picked up from a coach in college. Back then, he was 19 and a top-tier athlete who believed he could do everything — that he was, as he says, “invincible.” Yet, as Allen watched his coach explain a backswing, he found it boring, slow, not entertaining.
Then he was invited to a golf tournament. He stepped up to hit the ball and, “the ball didn’t go five feet in front of me,” he said. “It was the strangest thing for me, because it seems so simple.”
That challenge consumed him.
“I realized I couldn’t do it, and then it became this obsession,” he said. “I had to figure out a way to get the ball in the air, because I’m like, ‘It can’t be that complicated. The ball is just sitting there. It’s not moving. Why can’t I hit it?'”
During his first five years in the NBA with the Milwaukee Bucks, Allen played as often as he could, often in foursomes and fivesomes with older men who taught him techniques and nuances. It also gave him a schedule.
“It gave me a regimen that kept me out of trouble,” he said.
Instead of staying out late at night, Allen would be in bed early.
“If I didn’t play golf, then I kind of would have been aimless and doing God knows what?” he said.
With shooting, in particular, Allen found that if he was in a rut, it often wasn’t physical but mental.
“Sometimes you’re taking quick shots, sometimes the defense is good and you’re pressing,” he said. “Sometimes when you’re in a bad rap, you’re off a little bit, you know that that system can’t flow, and that’s what golf can help you do: Just relax.'”
Allen says the parallels with shooting — rhythm, mechanics, feel — are real, though don’t manifest immediately. That, like his legendary pregame routine, it all comes down to exact repetition.
“Great shooters know,” he said, “I got to shoot my free throw, and I got to be great at it. So you’re going to get to the golf course early, just like you do in practice for basketball, and you’re going to work on different shots that you know you need to work on.”
To Redick, for all the connections, golf, like a shooting slump, can still be especially maddening.
“There’s so many different elements to [golf],” he said. “And I think, in some ways, a really good jump shot has those elements. I just think golf is way f—ing harder.”
“I can hit a good shot in golf,” Redick continues. “And there’s a f—ing bunker right there.”
CURRY LEANS BACK in his chair just outside the Warriors’ locker room at Chase Center, his arms folded, his head cocked to the side. He’s still considering the connections between high-level 3-point shooting and high-level golf.
His answer — much like his drives off the tee — is a long one. He begins by noting that both require excellent hand-eye coordination — Warriors assistant coach Bruce Fraser says Curry has the “best hand-eye coordination of anyone in the world — but then Curry circles back to mechanics.
“It’s the visualization part of being able to feel something and being able to duplicate it over and over,” Curry tells ESPN. “That’s exactly what we do with our mechanics in terms of jump-shooting. You have to have the same release every … single … time. And that’s a feel thing.”
He pauses, thinking about where he wants to go next, then resumes.
“When you teach it, it’s like in order to hit it left, you have to swing right,” Curry says. “To hit it high, you’ve got to swing down. It’s a weird dynamic of teaching the mechanics of it. But there’s a feel portion of it — when you get the club in your hand, you know you want to get that ball to do something. And you can kind of feel it.”
To describe Curry’s golf game, just ask former Warriors swingman Andre Iguodala, who has played countless rounds with him.
“He’s long [off the tee],” Iguodala tells ESPN. “His irons are money. He can shave it both ways. He’s got a soft touch, good short game and he can roll it really well. He really has no flaws. He can be errant off the tee from time to time but Steph is just the epitome of a golfer that you’re jealous of, because he’s just so good.”
Says Warriors coach Steve Kerr: “He’s not just an athlete playing golf. He’s a golfer.”
So, after retiring from the NBA, would Curry turn to professional golf full-time?
“I know for sure I will not pursue a typical PGA card or whatever you want to call it,” Curry says.
Curry knows there’s a template for ex-athletes trying to scratch a competitive itch. But he also knows how competitive he is, and how he might want to push it further, work harder and sacrifice even more time away from his family.
“It’s a very time-intensive sport and to be very good at it and practice and what I heard these pros go through, it’s different,” Curry said. “I don’t know if I’m ready for all that. But I know I’ll be good enough to compete in those other events that are fun and competitive at the same time.”
When Curry is lifting weights with his performance trainer Carl Bergstrom, the goal is to become stronger for basketball, but, Bergstrom says, “that level of training has a big impact on his golf.” And on the occasions that Curry hits a drive too long or over the green, he’ll turn to Bergstrom and quip, “That’s your fault.”
When Curry works out with his longtime trainer Brandon Payne, they actively avoid drills or moves that will impact his swing — or his shot.
“Any time you’re rotating in one direction, you tend to get stronger on that side,” Payne tells ESPN. “So you have to be careful to make sure that that golf swing doesn’t become a normal pattern of movement that shows up in a shooting stroke.”
If Curry seems out of balance (which he rarely does), the prescription can range from core work to focusing on his lower body to make sure his “base,” as Payne calls it, is solid. But Payne notes that the similarities in its impact are many — with Curry working on his long game (3-pointers on the court, driving at the range) or his short game (one-handed floaters vs. chip shots around the green).
“There’s a lot of parallels in terms of how we work,” Payne says.
Curry isn’t in the camp that believes skilled 3-point shooters are the only basketball players who can succeed at golf, but, thinking about it more, he cracks a smile.
“You get the non-shooters who get a golf club in their hand,” Curry says with a laugh, “it’s not pretty.”