Nick Hardy’s Glass Is Full Enough

A tale of two golfers: PGA Tour member Nick Hardy after five missed cuts, and PGA Tour winner Nick Hardy after his maiden victory. Both can be heard in two separate episodes of Any Given Monday, recorded five weeks apart. Host Ryan French said, at the end of the first recording, that he knew a win was imminent for Hardy. You might chalk that up as a nice way to wrap up a conversation - leave it on a high note - but something else was going on. The Hardy who missed five cuts in a row, and the Hardy who just won the Zurich Classic of New Orleans with partner Davis Riley, are the exact same player. Hardy just needed to remember how much water is in his glass.

Nearly two months ago, Hardy missed his fifth consecutive cut at the Bay Hill Invitational. The promising 27-year-old, with two PGA Tour top-10s on his resume, was in the midst of the longest missed-cut streak of his young career. 

Another player in Hardy’s group became the subject of a rules controversy and intense scrutiny in the second round at Bay Hill. Most players in Hardy’s shoes would have avoided bringing attention to themselves, given the series of events. Most players would have found a safe space on a driving range, or putting green, or in a coach’s office. But a bold Hardy decided to embrace the moment, and talk about it on the Any Given Monday podcast.

“Golf is funny. I appreciate you reaching out to me to talk during this time,” Hardy says in the first podcast. “Many reporters don’t reach out to players who aren’t playing great, and don't reach out to players who are struggling at times. I envy times like this more than most because you learn so much more about yourself.” 

Hardy articulated how he had lost focus on the most important tenets of his game. He examined old ideas that helped fuel earlier success, and identified his recent shortcomings.

“I violated a lot of sins that we had at Illinois (University of Illinois golf team),” Hardy says. “Coach Small got us to play golf, like if you think of a glass of water, and no matter how much water is in that glass, it’s enough. I’ve become too focused on what’s not in that glass.”

Hardy had fallen into a trap that catches so many new PGA Tour players - they perform poorly and think the answer is to grind longer and harder, ignoring the routines that earned them success in the first place. They see the strengths of other players and work towards perfection in that area, ignoring their own strengths. Hardy exhausted himself in the wrong ways trying to attain perfection, forgetting such a pursuit is unrealistic. 

He remembered coming back from a wrist injury in 2022 and arriving at The Glen Club in Chicago for a Korn Ferry Tour event. Hardy hadn’t touched a club in a month while recovering, so when he arrived on-site, the very idea that he could compete being so unprepared, seemed preposterous.

“I showed up to the golf course at The Glen Club on that Sunday or Monday, and hadn’t touched a club in a month, and I’m like, am I really going to play this week? I don’t even know,” Hardy says. “I played and I shot -23 under and lost in a playoff, and it was probably the best golf I’ve played. It showed me a lot.” 

Hardy concludes as long as his glass has even a drop of water in it, it’s enough to succeed

Golf courses and setups on the PGA Tour are not for the faint of heart. Most of these courses require precision and punish mediocrity. Hardy was struggling to create any positive momentum on courses where sometimes, stretches of pars are all players can hope for. He needed to find a spark. Teaming up with friend, Davis Riley, at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, provided it. The two won the tournament the weekend before last, and joined Any Given Monday together to discuss it. 

Coming into the week of the Zurich Classic, Riley and Hardy had seen similar results in the past season. The two men also had similar game styles, which was something to build on. Each man was playing with nothing to lose. Having been partnered before as junior golfers in a similar format at the 2014 Wyndham Cup, the two had history - and trust. 

“With these tour courses and how hard the setups are, it’s hard to get momentum going sometimes,” says Hardy. “All it takes is a little spark. And I think, for me, this week, we got off to a good start on Thursday…Davis especially. He made a lot of the putts to get us started early.” 

The alternate shot format of the second and final rounds is the most nerve-racking. Players have a difficult time finding and maintaining their rhythms, being used to playing for themselves on every shot. The pressure of playing for the team, and hitting every other shot, increases during the alternate shot days.

“When I look back on it, shooting six or seven under in alternate shot is really impressive,” says Hardy. “We did not talk about the pressure. We just said to each other every day, hey, we’re gonna go win this thing.”

“There wasn’t a lot of strategy to it,” Riley adds. “It was kind of one of those things like, hey, I played the evens (holes) last year and he played the odds. So let’s just keep it the same this year.”

The two saved their best for the final round, firing a sizzling 65, closing with birdies on four of the final six holes. The clutch duo bested the Canadian team of Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin, by two strokes to capture the title. Now Riley and Hardy are PGA Tour winners and have the perks that come with it. 

“Obviously you have it in the back of your head you’ve got a two year exemption,” says Riley. “That’s huge because I feel like - hopefully that wasn’t a worry for me and Nick - everybody has it in the back of your mind. But there's definitely a level of stress relief there where you can just feel like, ok, I’m pretty set for the next couple years, and I can just go play stress-free golf.”

Hardy adds the security that comes with winning adds something even more valuable: the ability to invest time in yourself. “When you’re in the position like we were last week, it’s so much about the day-to-day grind of just trying to get the ball in the hole, and doing whatever we can to get the ball in the hole now,” Hardy says. “Now we have pockets in the schedule to work on our games and reinvest the energy into getting better.”

Hardy and Riley are looking forward to adding new, elevated tournaments to their schedules. Riley is playing for the first time in this week’s Wells Fargo Championship, and looking forward to the PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club. Never having been to Europe, Hardy is excited to make the trip to the Genesis Scottish Open, and adding Maui to his schedule for next year’s Sentry Tournament of Champions. He hopes to be propelled to Olympia Fields Country Club in front a hometown Chicago crowd, for the BMW Championship in August.

 “Playing at the BMW would mean a heck of a lot to me,” he says.

Until then, Hardy’s water glass remains full enough.

Listen to Riley and Hardy on Any Given Monday on Apple, here, and on Spotify, here.