{"id":17885,"date":"2026-06-08T16:06:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T16:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/17885\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T16:06:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T16:06:14","slug":"im-a-39-year-old-real-estate-agent-who-just-played-in-the-masters-its-mentally-exhausting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/17885\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m a 39-year-old real-estate agent who just played in the Masters. It\u2019s mentally exhausting"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story is part of Peak,\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak\u2019s newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brandon Holtz won the 2025 U.S. Mid-Amateur to qualify for a spot in the Masters. He shot 15-over and missed the cut. He lives in Bloomington, Ill., with his family.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pretty sure I could see my heart beating through my chest on the first tee.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just to even be on the practice green with those guys was surreal. Then I walked up and saw my name on the board. I played with Bubba Watson, a past Masters champion, and Nico Echavarria, who has had a heck of a year. And then they called my name.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I looked at my dad and was like: This is real stuff, man. Here we are.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a 39-year-old real estate agent. For me to be there was super unlikely. In a little bit of fairness to myself, I\u2019m ranked somewhere around 3,000 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings. But I\u2019ve only played in one USGA event and I\u2019m one for one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That was the 2025 U.S. Mid-Am, which I won in September and got me my spot at the Masters. As I understood it, the invitation would come sometime around Christmas. That\u2019s exactly what happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My son and I were outside shoveling snow in the driveway. The delivery guy shows up and gives me a tearaway envelope and I knew that had to be it. It was just a simple one-card invitation.<\/p>\n

Big things come in small packages, right?<\/p>\n

I played college basketball at Illinois State and was always first in the gym, last out. I just never gave up. If I wasn\u2019t good at it, I was going to do whatever it took to be good at it.<\/p>\n

I kind of had that never-give-up attitude.<\/p>\n

Golf had always been secondary for me, but when I graduated from college, I still felt I had a competitive drive in my bucket.\u00a0 I said: Alright, I just got done with basketball. I\u2019ve still got to find something to do. Let\u2019s try golf for a couple of years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I tried the mini tours and played professionally from 2010 to 2014, but it wasn\u2019t anything sanctioned. I wasn\u2019t sponsored in any way. I was just doing it on my own. The goal was to play for two years, and if I got better, I\u2019d keep going.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I made it to year four and then realized it was time to give it up.<\/p>\n

I still kept my pro status. People would ask me: \u201cOh, you\u2019ve got your pro card?\u201d Well, you don\u2019t really have a card. Actually, maybe if you\u2019re on the PGA Tour you do, I don\u2019t know. I was never on the Korn Ferry or the PGA Tour. But I kept my professional status because it was fun to play in the Illinois Open every year. I had some success too, got second a couple of times.<\/p>\n

But I got to the point where I just wasn\u2019t playing or practicing enough. I was playing in only one event a year. I had a good group of buddies, and I wanted to get my amateur status back so I could go play in amateur events with them. You know, have fun and talk some garbage.<\/p>\n

The intention of getting my amateur status back was never winning the Mid-Am. That was not in my sights at all.<\/p>\n

I played five practice rounds at Augusta before teeing off Thursday. I\u2019ve never seen a golf course play so difficult. Mentally, that golf course is 18 holes of complete concentration. Every shot in those 18 holes has to be so precise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Standing on the first tee was emotional, but at the same time, I was there to compete, so I had to block out those feelings. I\u2019ve played basketball in front of a lot of people before \u2013 not quite as many people as I\u2019ve played in front of today \u2013 but I do have a space for that mentally in my head because I\u2019ve been there before. That helped a little.<\/p>\n

I just got up there, took a deep breath and said to myself: Just take it back and swing it, man. Who cares where it goes?<\/p>\n

And I ended up hitting it down the fairway.<\/p>\n

Mentally, Augusta is exhausting. I\u2019m a bigger guy, but physically I wasn\u2019t tired. I was mentally tired. I feel like at a lot of golf courses that the Average Joe like me plays, you can take a couple of holes off and hit a couple of squirrely shots and you\u2019ll be OK.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not to the precise, exact yardage at Augusta, you\u2019re in trouble. That was mentally exhausting. I honestly don\u2019t feel like I hit the ball that terribly even. It was just, if I needed to hit it 160 yards, I maybe hit it 157 or 167. And you just have to hit the exact yardage.<\/p>\n

That was so mentally hard for me.\u00a0 It was hard for me to understand: Hey, dude, back it off a little bit. Give yourself a little bit of grace here. Because it is that hard. It is that difficult.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I just looked at the scores and Rory McIlroy is 12-under through two days, and I\u2019m sitting here thinking: What the hell? I have a whole extra appreciation for how good these guys really are.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When I got done with my round on Friday, I gave my dad a big ol\u2019 hug. I got to the locker room and just took a big deep breath. I just wanted to take it all in.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a super competitive dude, and I wasn\u2019t happy with how I played. But I just played in the Masters, man. I did it.<\/p>\n

\u2014 As told to Jayson Jenks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is part of Peak,\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[44,7445,1271,7446,2960,1599],"class_list":["post-17885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-masters-tournament","tag-golf","tag-illinois-state-redbirds","tag-masters-tournament","tag-mens-college-basketball","tag-peak","tag-sports-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}