No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 197: Morgan Hoffmann

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

From gambling stories with Michael Jordan at the Bears Club, to the five year process of being diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, all the way to holistic treatment in Nepal, this podcast with Morgan Hoffman is... The post NLU Podcast, Episode 197: Morgan Hoffmann appeared first on No Laying Up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yeah. That's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most! Ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the No-Lang-Up podcast joining us from Jupiter today Mr. Morgan Hoffman Morgan, what are you up to today? What's up? Yeah, it's good to be on thanks for having me Anytime tell us tell us about this seminal pro member for anyone that's never been there I never been there there You know we hear about on Twitter. It take us to this day. What's it like?

Um, I mean it's pretty much all the great players in the area that come in and are invited by the Seminole members for a day kind of showcasing their course and You know allowing their members and history to kind of encompass the great players that are around the area and that we're in town for the Honda. It always happens the Monday after the Honda and everybody kind of stays in town and migrates over there one because it's a great course and two because it's just like kind of a privilege to be invited. And I play with the same guy Mark McBride year. And the McBrides are a big family from Jersey where I grew up. And their members down here as well.

And they call him Mark radio because he never stops talking and he's so loud. And it's always a great time. We played pretty decent today, so it was fun. Is it competitive or is it just like a hit and giggle? Like what's it like? Are people out there grinding? What's it like? Are people out there grinding or what's it like? No, I mean you gotta like finish it out, but it's nobody's really trying that hard.

You know, it's like if you play well great, but I think you get your name up on the board or something, but no one's really out there, grinding for cash or anything. Is there booze flying? I'm picturing this kind of like a fun member guest, but with actual professionals. I'm trying to visualize what it actually looks like. No, you know, like there's definitely no booze flying. It's more like Ritz crackers and like lemon wedges and like around the seminal pool. But you know everybody's awesome there and they've always been great to me.

It's not like a crazy pro am for sure. It's more of a respectable like history of golf kind of thing. Where do you play your golf down there? I'm at the Bears Club. Take us to the Bears Club. Who do you see out there when you go out there? Is there kind of like a division on how the pros divide up where they play in practice? What's the biggest appeal the Bears Club take us there? The Bears Club is awesome. It's definitely the best facilities around the area.

It's really cool. There's when you park in the park and lie, you cruise into the car barn and grab a car and then go across this cool wooded bridge through like a mini forest over some swamp and takes you to the range and practice facility and then on the other side of the road there's the part three course where I kind of live over there and they just redid the greens this year so the greens of a part three

course are almost better than the big course. And it's just cool because we have free range of hitting shots and making up holes and, you know, just the members really are nice and lenient to the pros because we can just drop 100 balls on one hole in the par three course and they'll go around if we're grinding and it's really a cool spot. And what's the best about it is if you have a great practice day and then you want to go play like a late afternoon nine and then there's always guys hanging around to go have a good match. Who are the most fun guys to have matches with? Who gambles the most and who is the one that exits are the most fun guys to have matches with? Who gambles the most and who is the one

that exit on the most? Berger is always out there and he's always enjoyed shit talking in a great match and Justin Thomas is always fun. We've had a lot of part three contests and you know kid rock and MJ are always out there and willing to obviously take shots but but whatever you want as well. Is MJ easy money? Does he have a vanity hand cap or does he get too many shots? How's that work? He's been easy money for me. I've never lost against him but yeah he gets 10 shots from us but like coming down the stretch he has shots until he'll last three so if you're not up on him by then you're you know kind of guaranteed either tie or lose

because he's so clutch I'll never forget we were playing in one match and I was one up going into 18 and he had like a 30 footer to tie me and I'm like dude you're not making this like come on. He looks me in the eye. He goes Can I curse on the show? Oh, you could say whatever you want you guys motherfucker. I'm the greatest clutch player Clutch athlete all time watch this shit and he he drains it and just stares at me and points. I'm like, all right, you know, too shy. But you still feel like Brian Russell there. Yeah, it was pretty sick. I mean, it was a cool part to like even if you, yeah, say that's worth it. That's worth the story to lose whatever that was worth. Did you play for more money with MJ than you would like

JT or burger or, or how's that work from a financial perspective? MJ, he asked what you have in your wallet that day. So it's all gotta be paid cash right on the spot? Yeah, pretty much, unless you make like an obscene bet. And is he quick to the wallet if he loses, or does he, yeah, he's very slow, it's around. God, I'm fascinated by this. We got to do some kind of video

perspective on that at some point, but so I want to get we're going to get to talk to you some your background and what you've got going on What's been going on with you in recent years, but one of the we laugh at about there's always two or three things that broadcast Hammer home on each player. It's like they have a little note sheet and they don't get past the two or three things and what yours It's obviously that you fly your own plane. But I do want to hear kind of how that hobby started, how you learned it, that's something that kind of runs in your family

or how you got into flying. And I want to know some more details behind that. Yeah, I mean, it's one of my favorite things to do. It's pretty much the ultimate freedom I thought. When I was 17, I got my driver's license and I was free, but now getting my pilot's license and it's even better. But my mom has always brought us up to travel well. She's been a flight attendant

for Delta for 40 years and my father had his private pilot's license and then two of my uncles flew in the Air Force and then free United as well. And at Oklahoma State, they have a great aviation program and I did my ground school out there when I was 20 and when I left school in turn pro, I moved down to Florida and finished my in-air work down here in Florida. And ever since then, it was, you know, just kept growing and learning

and improving my certifications each year and it's been unbelievable. Now, everything except for the West Coast, I'll be flying to each event. Okay, that's what I was going to say because I, they definitely make it out that you fly to every event. But if that's the case and you're flying to a lot of events, that's what I was gonna say, because they definitely make it out that you fly to every event, but if that's the case and you're flying to a lot of events, is it, I imagine it's not easy to learn how to do that, but once you know how to do it, is it in this kind of a weird way of asking it?

But is flying easy? Like once you know how to do it, is it very easy for you? Well, the flying part is pretty easy, you know, like keeping a heading, keeping an altitude, but, you know, now you have auto pilot and for the most part it's on auto pilot for the duration of the flight. But the things that you need to be careful about is just getting complacent and not going

through your checklist because that's what you know, kills private pilots. Because most of the time, you don't have a co-pilot with you. So for me, I'm very, very diligent and a plan way ahead for each one of my flights and go through my checklist every time and it's redundant, but it needs to be. And I know them by heart and I don't need to look at them but I do and that's the toughest part I'd say because you know taking off landing is pretty it becomes I guess you could say easy after a while. You need to be prepared for the crosswind landing is the unexpected temperature drops or thunderstorms or it's just you got to be

prepared for anything. Do guys like in Jupiter try to hitch ride home with you or catch rides with you out to tournaments? Yeah, yeah. I've taken a bunch of players. Does anybody too scared to fly with you? Yeah, I mean, obviously many guys, you know, half the guys don't are too scared to fly on a G4. Well, what's the process like you said you plan stuff out pretty far in advance?

Do you have to, from an air traffic control perspective, who do you have to contact to say like, hey, I'm flying into this airport today, do they have to approve it? I like legitimately have no idea what that process would be like. No, it's funny. So everybody kind of has the same question. Air traffic control standpoint.

You don't really need to give any more of a heads up than when you're more like 20 miles out. So like four minutes out. And depending on the airspace you're going into, like if you're going into a class bravo, which is the biggest airports around the country like New York City or Orlando Miami. That's a 30 mile radius and you have to have certain instruments in your plane to fly into there. But when I talk about planning ahead it's more just weather, seeing what the fuel prices are, looking at the runway lengths, seeing which airports closes to where I need to be at the end. For the most part, it's just weather planning, because it can change so much, and the apps that we have now for planning is incredible.

I use something called for flight, and it has everything in there and it's a yearly subscription but it's so worth it. That does fascinate me so you could just be up in the air and but you know what airport you want to land at B. They don't know you're coming until you're a few miles away. Right, I mean if you're on a flight plan, like if you're an instrument flight glider, then they'll know from before you even take off. But you can fly VFR, which is visual flight rolls, and take off, not talk to anybody if you're not in any airspace. And then once you're approaching a certain airspace,

you talk to the tower or the approach control. And let them know. All right, that's the boring stuff with it. Now what's the fun stuff? Do you ever just take crazy trips on a whim? Like, hey, let's go over to here tonight or what's a fun last minute thing you've done or a real great benefit you've got out of it?

Oh, yeah, definitely. That's the most fun. My fiance now and I, we are notorious for just having a day off and sitting around and being like, oh, you want to go down to Key West, ride some scooters, have some Keyline pie, and then for dinner and come back. Like, it's so sick. How long does that take to get down there? 45 minutes. Oh my god, that's awesome.

But it's like a four and a half hour drive, so it's pretty incredible. And then, one of my tournaments so it's pretty incredible. And then one of my tournaments it's it's even more fun like the last time I was in Greensboro for the Windom we went over to Nashville for dinner one night and then like it's just cool to have that freedom once again. What's the scariest moment you've had in any at any point, taking off landing or in the air? The scariest was probably when I was still only a private pilot, so a visual flight role

is not an instrument and I was flying at night and dropping a buddy back off in Orlando. And Orlando's class braver space and you need to follow the aircraft controllers instructions to a tee and know their lingo and so I was kind and new to it and I dropped them off it's like nine at night and I knew that there was a thunderstorm kind of near the airport and I knew that the ceiling which is the lowest part of the cloud was 3000 feet

and I didn't want to go above that because I only had a short flight home so they were like all right My tail number was 431 6 Fox start at the time and They're like clear at the 3500 and on 250 heading whatever And I was like hey, I'd really like to just say at 3000 if possible. Like, no, the traffic volume's too high. You're clear to 3500.

It's like, whatever. So I went and right of the hit 3000 as expected, hit the ceiling in the clouds, went into a thunderstorm and my head hit the ceiling, my headphones came off. It was pitch black. There was a lightning around, and I get my headphones back on and the planes all over the place. And all I hear is them calling my town number and say, turn left immediately, there's a 737 headed directly at you.

And I'm like in the clouds and it's night so you can't see anything outside and you're just looking at your instruments which I wasn't allowed to be doing at that point you know and they're like I turn left to this heading and I couldn't get the plane to turn left because the wind was too strong and holy shit yeah so I was like all right well I'm gonna just descend and get down to like 2000 and you guys can figure it out. And I got down and I could see again and they were like talking to me like I was a child like, hey buddy are you okay up there? And you know, it was kind of comforting at the time because they, you never hear them break code or professionalism. And you know, it was nice to just hear that like comforting kind of voice like that they were checking in on me. And ever since then, like that was

probably within my first 100 hours of flying. And now I'm almost at a thousand. And that's kind of what stemmed my crazy planning techniques. Yeah. It made you just respect the air a little bit. Everyone kind of needs that little scare to, I don't know I've had it like with swimming once in the ocean where like I didn't fully respect the current and had like a really big scare on that. It's like, okay, that's why people warn you about that stuff.

Yeah, mother nature. All right, well let's hear a bit about kind of your background. I know you're up into Jersey, but kind of how you got that stuff. Yeah, Mother Nature. Alright, well let's hear a bit about your background. I know you grew up in New Jersey, but kind of how you got into golf. I know you played multiple sports as a kid. How you ended up at Oklahoma State from New Jersey is that kind of a normal pipeline, just a bit about your background and how you got into golf. Yeah, from Wycoff to New Jersey and grew up at our Cola Country Club and I was lucky enough my dad was a member there and it's an incredible course. They kind of called the sister course of Ridgewood where

they play the Barclays almost every year and my dad was a great golfer and my mom kind of entered me into every sport under the sun to see which one I liked best and ice hockey, baseball and golf kind of hit home for me. And at a young age I started really succeeding in golf and hockey. Obviously, the golf kind of took off a little quicker and I attended Ramopoke High School for two years. And then my junior and senior year I went to an O'Golf Academy in Hilton, which was IGA at the time and I went because Gary Gilchrist ran it and he was my coach and after that he left the Academy and started his

own in Orlando and I followed him there and finished my last year there at that academy. So leaving the house at 16 was tough on my family but it was good for me and really kind of slingshot me into a great college career at Oklahoma State and they recruited me from I guess middle high school And it was the greatest decision. It was such an incredible school. And the people were so caring. And the athletic department, it was just like a family. And I wanted to go somewhere where I knew the players were

better than me. So because I knew if I wanted to be on the PGA tour, I needed to be everybody that wasn't on tour to get there. So Peter, you line and Ricky, Fowler were there and they were good friends of mine. And I knew that if I played well against them, then I had a good shot at fulfilling my dreams on tour. So going into college, you were already of the mindset of you wanted to play professional golf. There was really no question in your mind that that was kind of what was destined for you. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah. And so when did you know that you wanted to turn pro? What was the indicator to you that it's like, all right, now it is time for me to turn professional? Well, if I would have done it over, I would have turned pro after my first year. That's when I had my best year in college. Yeah, I probably would have done it then, but you know I learned a lot and grew a lot staying three years in college and I really knew I wanted to go pro when I left New Jersey for the golf academy and I wouldn't have done that if

This wasn't my dream Alright guys a quick break I don't this might actually we might be breaking this, depending on when you listen to this podcast. You might have to credit us with breaking this news. But if you haven't heard, our friends at Calloway just signed the reigning open champion, Francesco Molinari, to their tour staff.

He's the 10th ranked player in the world. He's going to have a 14-club deal with Calloway and play the golf ball. And he said, in particular, the epic flash driver in the world, he's going to have a 14 club deal with Callaway and play the golf ball. And he said, in particular, the epic flash driver and the chrome soft x ball are what sealed the deal when testing the new equipment on the market. You notice a huge jump in ball speed and to quote, the golf ball is the best one I've ever played. The performance from T to green, especially the field of control is exactly what I want.

Callaway didn't really come out with a press release when I told Chad that I'd shot my two lowest scores in the last year, both the Epic Flash and the bag, but Francesco Monet says it, and here we go. In addition to the driver and the ball, the Ryder Cup standout will be making his Callaway Tournament debut this week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational with an Epic Flash sub-zero fairway wood,

Apex MB Irons, Mac Daddy four wedges and an Odyssey two lawn Lawn, Madison, Stroke, Lab, Pudder. Go to CallawayGolf.com for more information. Now, let's get back to our interview with Morgan Hoffman. So coming out, what was it like getting exemptions? You get sponsors' exemptions into web events. How did you go about the process of getting your card and playing on the PGA tour?

Yeah, so I got, I think I got like six PGA tour exemptions and um played okay in them, but I had to go to Q school and uh, I broke my hand during second stage mountain biking with Ricky in California, so that didn't go well. Once that healed I started Monday for web.com events and I like I'm Monday to like five or six of them and top I played 11 events and I top 10 and 10 of them and Got my card that way. What's the Monday scene like on the web tour? I mean at that point I imagine you feel like you more than belong on that scene, but you just didn't have the status.

So are you going into those Monday qualifiers, feeling a ton of pressure, super freed up, or what's that like? No, the Mondays were difficult because I played in five of them. And my first five, I think I missed by a shot or two, and never shot a book, 68. And I was like, wow, you know, I need to freaking learn how to shoot low. And it really, it helped me know my game. And it was tough, man.

Like there's so many good players, and everybody just goes at every pen, and you need to shoot well and learn your game quick. So when you got out to the PGA tour, did you feel like you were ready to compete right away or what was there a big learning curve and transitioning from playing the web tour to the PGA tour?

No, I was definitely ready. It was weird because my game was ready, but I feel like my mental game kind of took a setback because I went into this mode of like, I'm on the PGA tour now, I need to hit every fairway and hit every green and just be so consistent and follow a lot. My game is more of very aggressive and, you know, hidden drive everywhere. And so it was a learning curve in the wrong sense. It should have been easier to actually like, then I made it.

But I ended up learning after a year or two and started playing well. Well, I hear that from a decent amount of guys where they get out there and they start looking around so much at what other people are doing, how they're practicing, how they're doing something. And it gives them a bit of, maybe less confidence in their own process. Is that kind of what you're saying you kind of went through? I mean, I was confident in my process, but I felt like, I don't

know, I felt like I just needed to hit more greens. You know, like you think of a PGA tour, and like everybody's just, you know, hitting it down the middle and hitting every green and making pots and it's just like, it doesn't need to be pretty. Like, you can just, it's a, who cares? Like, I hate, I don't want to sound like I'm talking bad here, but he's a good friend of mine and look at Ryan Armer on Sunday. Like, his game isn't pretty, but he gets it in the hole better than anybody. And it's, it's impressive. And, you you know it doesn't matter what it looks like and

I think the new generation is really embracing that I feel like five six years ago ten years ago everybody's swing was just trying to be perfect and now it's just hit it hard who cares and get in the hole. Well that's what I think you know if you watch professional at the highest level PJ Torgolf on TV, you see it's a highlight reel for the most part, but like you go out and watch people play, like trying to make the cut, I at least when I'm out there, I'm shocked sometimes at how bad some of the shots are.

I think people at home, right? You're even probably as a young amateur and a college player coming up, you probably look at those guys and think that they're near perfect and that's what you need to be. But the bad shots are almost always followed by incredible recoveries and it takes so much to actually get yourselves in trouble.

But I feel like kind of what you're touching on there is the feeling of needing to be perfect had to be kind of mounting maybe a bit of extreme pressure on you. Yeah, exactly. So you retain your car for the 2014 season, you made the FedEx Cup playoffs kind of pretty deep deck in the pack, and then you played just your ass off in the playoffs, where you just like on house money, like playing free and loose, because you made it all, you famously made it all the way to the tour championship and we like snuck in at each, at each playoff of that. Yeah. You got a lot of air time during

that stretch. What was that? What was that run like? Yeah, that was fun man. It was kind of like live free freaking die hard. It was sick. It was something that can't really work. Again, I feel like I was going out at night and you know, it was kind of not really caring. You know, just going out and going at pins and it was a lot of fun and I needed to do it. It just taught me a great lesson and it was a blast and I kind of just had that motivation and knew that I needed to do this and needed to get there and I just wanted to get in the masters really bad and my avenue was to get an easelake.

Well, it either seems like guys don't go out at all during tournaments or they're super afraid to admit it. So if like, let's say, I don't know what your mindset is during a tournament, but in this particular run, you say you were going out a lot. Is there like a certain lot of guys that you know you can call if you're looking to have a good time during it's hernery week? It's a very slim pick.

You know, I didn't go out with really any players. It was like more friends in the area or agents or stuff like that. But like, that's not my scene anymore. I was young and I love like, I love eating in now and having a good meal and, you know, getting rest and but it was fun while I lasted, that's right. I was gonna say, it's so hard to get stories out of guys of crazy parties on the road,

because I mean, when you guys miss cuts now, especially you with your own play and you're jet now, like people get out of town and there's not like a, a stay around Friday night and party or ass off or anything atmosphere. Yeah, I mean, if there was something to celebrate, yeah, for sure. So at what point, we're kind of spending a lot of time,

and there's a lot more of your pro career to address specifically, but what point did you start noticing abnormalities in your health and kind of take us back to the genesis of that and the kind of the long story that ended with your diagnosis that you got a couple years ago. Well, that's the thing. Like my health always felt good. I mean, in college, I didn't eat great.

And once I got out of school, I really started working on health and eating and nutrition and my trainer in New York City, Don Celle, you know, really kind of kicked that into gear and 2011 was when I turned pro and I like stopped eating dairy then and You know really changed everything about my like physical fitness. It was an awesome change and Right when I left college I Started noticing this atrophy in my right pack, like starting in my sternum, like the middle of my chest, and it was really small. It was maybe the size of like a thumbnail, it was kind of an impression in the muscle, and I was like, oh, you know, that's weird, maybe I pulled

something or whatever, and year by year, just kept getting bigger and kept getting more at your feed toward my armpit. And it was just like frustrating. So I started having weakness there. And so I started going to doctors and trying to figure out what it was and going to HSS in New York City and getting MRIs to EKG, EMGs, nerve conduction

tests, putting needles in me, like putting die in MRIs to see where the blood's falling, like all this kind of stuff. And nobody could find anything and they would do muscle testing and say, oh, you know, you're strong, you have a good grip. Like, is there any numbness in your hand? I'm like, no, there's nothing. I you know, it's It's a little weakness and bench press and maybe my swing speed slowing down, but

It's no one could figure it out. So five years down the road. I finally Continuing the search and went to HSS again and to this neurologist because I kind of thought that it was a nerve entrapment somewhere under my clavicle and it was working down, but the guys like, you know what? I think you might have a rare form of muscular dystrophy and I was like, all right, look, I've heard everything under the sun at this point.

Now you're just sound like an idiot. And he's like, all right, well, I've heard everything under the sun at this point. Now you're just sound like an idiot. And he's like, all right, well, let me just do a blood test and we'll see. I'm like, sure, yeah, where can I hurt? So he's like, yeah, it should be like a month or two until you get the results. And it turned out to be six months later

that I got the results. And he called me, he's like, yeah, I got the results back. You have FSH MD. I was like, all right, like how is that possible? That's never been in my family, you know, like how is this possible? And he's like, I don't know, but, you know, good luck, like, see you later.

I was like, all right, that's sweet, you know, and you're a great doctor. And it was really frustrating and... Well, so backing up there, I mean, does it seem like this, you know, you kind of went through the story pretty quickly, but this went on for five years, you said, were you at all kind of bitter about the process of how it went to get to that diagnosis, or did you think that all the avenues you went down eventually led to this? Or do you look back at it and like how did somebody not see this earlier? I don't know. I mean through the process I've got pretty cynical about doctors and like they just

don't really care. You know it's kind of like a conveyor belt of people that they see and more like dollar signs and you know, like you really need to find somebody that cares about you that's close to really give it their effort because when you have a case like this, it's, you know, it takes time to figure out and most doctors don't have time. So yeah, it was really frustrating and you know, after I got diagnosed, I went to a specialist, supposedly the best MD guy for FSH and the country down in Miami and he's like, yeah, you definitely have it, but there's nothing we can do. There's no cure. So come back in like 10 years when it's worse and we'll give you some physical therapy. I'm like, that's when it really hit home and I was like, you know what? Fuck this. Like, I'm going out of the country to find something. And that's what kind of stemmed my holistic search. Yeah, I want to talk about Nepal here in a second. But so now, again, we're talking about

like a five year span of dealing with this. What's it doing to your golf game? I mean, you mentioned the swing speed is slightly decreasing. And it doesn't sound like it was extremely noticeable. Like, did you notice a huge dip in your play or did you have to correct for this or how did this relate to your gain? You know, it's just more of like swing speed and kind of strength.

Like I was never like some days I would be kind of tired of getting exhausted quicker. But it's more just like my swing speed but you were just getting worse and worse. And I needed, yeah, that's pretty much it. You know, my swing hasn't changed that much now. I guess it has because it's gotten a lot shorter. I've been in the gym as much as I can be and it's still not like getting back to where I used to, but it's now it's like we're jumping way ahead and I'm learning a new game. So yeah, how does the disease affect you? I mean, what is it?

What parts of your body is it currently affecting? And has it as it slowly grown over the years? And do you have a timeline for what that's going to look like over the next decade or what is that like? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, so to answer your first question, my right pack is like 80% gone. So it's just like if you lift your arm up and you look at your ribs, you know, next to your stomach, that's what my pack looks like.

So there's just no muscle. So you just see ribs and then the left pec, I have about 80% of it, so 20% is gone then. My right quad, there's like a chunk kind of out of it. But ever since this treatment in the pallets, I haven't really noticed anything getting worse, which is really exciting. And I'm still taking these herbs from there and waiting on other blood tests to see how it really worked. All right, so let's take me to Nepal. How did you end up going there? What are your ties to Nepal? When did you go? How long were you there? What was going on there? I want to hear as much as you've got about that. Yeah, so after that visit in Miami, I was like,

I'm looking up complete out of the box situations here and trying to figure this out. So I found online this doctor Robert Morse, and he's a, I don't know how to describe it. He's a holistic healer, but is just a guy that pursues changing people's diets dramatically and having food cure you, by eating certain types and certain times and how many servings and what type of vegetable all that kind of stuff. So ironically, he was in Tampa, so I drove over to see him and I still believe in his approach to this day. It just takes a lot of time. But he told me,

he's like, look, he believes in your ideology, which is the study of your eyes to tell you what's going on in your body. So like the membranes, like in your pupils are around the edges and all that stuff. And then like gives you a full body check. And he's like, look, you have great genes and are very strong. And he goes, if I was trying to fight disease off, I would want your genes.

I was like, well, that's awesome. Thank you. Now, what do I do? And he said, I need you to eat a raw vegan alkaline diet, which is basically just fruits and vegetables. kind of stuff. I started not eating meat like a year and a half ago and it was awesome and great change and major increases in energy. And then he's like, you know what, if you really want to speed things up, I suggest you start on a cleanse. I was like, all right, great, I've heard about cleans all the time, you know, let's go. Because I want you to eat red grapes for 16 days and just drink water. I was like, all right, let's do it. 16 days? Yeah, so I, I bought, I calculated that, like, to get a decent calorie account amount each day. I had to eat 800 red grapes a day so I was eating 800 red grapes a day for 16 days and in the first four days I lost 11 pounds and you know crazy amounts of weight

and zero energy obviously and his whole thing was like waiting for a... I don't remember the word, but some kind of big thing to happen in your body. Like have a fever or start throwing up or you know that kind of stuff. And it never really came and I went back to him and I was like, look how long he's just gonna take. You know, I want to get back on tour like I can't... I can't be playing golf right now if I'm like look like a scared girl and he's like I don't know you know it's gonna work but it could take

two months a good take two years and I was like all right well I'm gonna look for other avenues here so at the time my girlfriend Chelsea was in Nepal because she loves helping kids and we when I was, when I was 20 my best friend Sean Einhaus who his mother is from Nepal. We started a charity over there and helped build a school and I gave kids computers and that kind of stuff and I've been over there several times before and I just love the people and so Chelsea was over there helping at camp Hope it's to help these kids from the earthquake a few years ago, which they still haven't rebuilt their Their cities and all the parents are rebuilding the cities while the kids go to school in Katmandu and

So she was there and ran into school in Kathmandu. And so she was there and ran into San Gita who is Sean's mother. He played a Oklahoma State with me, Sean Einhaus. And they were having dinner one day. And she's like, yeah, I'd love to be free to meet this doctor. His name is Dr. Kamal Josee. And he's a healer. And he's cured hundreds of people with cancer and he's kind of ticked that off the list as, if you have it, it's easy to cure. And now he's onto muscular dystrophy and he's been treating a patient here with muscular dystrophy in Parkinson's

for the last few weeks. And he's been in a wheelchair for 25 years, never walked and now he's walking within two weeks and show he's like a few. If this situation over there that your big cleanse doesn't work, I think you should come try this. I was like, all right, we'll get me more details and the guy's like, all right, come here for 90 days, we'll prepare the herbs, just give us like two months to prepare. And then you can come over and it's a 90 day treatment. And I flew over, it was 90 days of herbal,

aeravatic treatment of me just pretty much laying on a bed and then rubbing these herbs that they would mash up in front of me every morning on a stone slab. I would be there for a two hour session in the morning and a two to two and a half hour session in the evening. And the stuff smelled terrible. It was like it's not relaxing. It's not a spa. Yeah, they don't speak English. I had to have a translator there. I mean, it was an incredible incredible journey and Maybe one of the toughest things I've ever done, but you know, I think

Like now when I put my hand on my chest where the atrophy was where I could just feel ribs now if I flex I can kind of feel like a little muscle in there which I've never I haven't felt since 2011. So it's pretty exciting. I'm not making any claims. I don't want to, you know, have a public statement and say anything about being cured or whatever, but in the process and I'm still taking these herbs that he gave me and I'm still waiting on a blood test. I see if anything has changed genetically because every single day when I was over there, I just studied food. I studied plants and vegetables and how they can heal you. And it's just insane. You can change your genes.

insane, like you you can change your genes and people you know in the In the states North America really don't believe that like you know no one's taught that and I've personally talked to many people who have changed crazy crazy things in their body So it's looking up right now and that's things in their body. So it's looking up right now and that's, uh, has kind of stemmed my start for this foundation of mine that we're trying to build a health and wellness center to help MD patients and not only do that, but educate people that food can heal you. And it's so, it's so exciting. And, you know, you don't need all these antibiotics and pills and you just need to know what to eat when to eat it.

Tell us more about the foundation then. Are you taking what you learned into Paul and applying that, interpreting it and applying that here? What is the foundation going to be? My foundation is called Morgan Hoffman Foundation and my goal is to build a health and wellness center and the health and wellness center are willing to compass a full health one stop shop.

So you come in if you're feeling sick or you're feeling depressed or if you have muscular dystletal or dystrophy, come in, you get up like a blood panel, you see a doctor, you see a nutritionist, you go through everything you eat for your gummy worms that you sneak under, like behind people's backs,

or the soda that you have, every single thing you eat, every day will be analyzed and kind of redone. Then you have meditation classes. You'll have a, there'll be a gym there, a full on kitchen and bar and there'll be a gym with trainers and physical therapists and everything you need to kind of revamp your health

and get you back to where you want to be. Well, I'm feeling pretty guilty about this cookie wrapper. I have a sitting in my desk right here that you're saying that. So what is your diet like now? I mean, golf, you know, is I think a hard sport to kind of really stick to a strict diet, especially when you're traveling a ton. So do you make your own food when you're on the road? How do you, how do you kind of apply all this

to, you know, still maintaining your role in professional golf? make your own food when you're on the road? How do you apply all of this to still maintaining your role in professional golf? Yeah, I mean, it's difficult. You can argue that. But I mean, if you do your research, like you can find restaurants that are along your diet, or you can find how stores are grocery stores with organic food and stuff.

But my diet is, I would categorize it as a raw alkaline vegan. So I don't eat any animal products. I try to eat all my vegetables as raw as possible. Try to limit oils and any type of sugar at no sugar at a sugar at all. So I just eat fruits and vegetables and get my proteins from like rich chlorophyll,

rich vegetables like spinach and kale and really dark greens, also like seeds, almonds, nuts, that kind of stuff. Wow, okay. That sounds intense. Are you, I mean, is the kind of the approach that you took into Paul? Is this a place you'll go back to to get more treatment like that? Or is it something you kind of take the lessons learned there and just apply that into your everyday life?

Well, he claimed that I should be good and I wouldn't have to come back, but like if it doesn't work, he wants me to come back. But I don't know if I'm not sure what my next step will be if this avenue didn't go as planned. But I'm thinking positively and I love it there. I mean And I'll definitely go back and spend time there again for sure. So what is the current state of your game and your body now as it relates to your game? Do you feel like you're on the upswing?

Are you just getting back into things? Kind of from a health perspective, your back playing. Now a full schedule on the PGA tour. Is that accurate? Yeah, I am. I, it's tough. It's like learning a new game. I'm 30 yard shorter off the tee.

A whole club shorter on my irons. But my wedges are sick right now. My short game is awesome. Potting is coming around. So it's just like feeling that pressure again and being on the PGA tour. It's going to take a couple of weeks. And I actually feel really good about my game,

even after missing the last few cuts and a really full solid about what I've been working on and learning, you know, now this new me kind of thing and it's really exciting. I'm pretty pumped to accept this challenge. It seems to me, and just in here in this, here in Utah, the story, that, you know, we kind of look at professional golfers and see big teams around them and kind of think that there's people guiding them and helping them make all these decisions.

And I'm sure you have family and your fiancee support around you, but it seems like you're taking a lot of this direction of your health and life into your own hands. Is that accurate to say? And is that overwhelming at all? Yeah, it's very accurate because even my team, my trainer, he's against me eating vegan,

he still believes that meat is good and like, you know, everybody's gonna have their own beliefs and, you know, you gotta put time and effort into the research and food that you eat and yeah, I've taken a lot of it into my own hands, but I'm along the journey. I'm finding many people that are doing the same thing and hearing their success stories and it's just incredible. So, it's really cool. Well, I remember seeing a lot about the golf outing you had for your foundation, but just kind of hearing your story puts the whole thing into more perspective, I guess, now looking back at it. But tell us about kind of that day,

and are you doing that again? What kind of funds were raised on that day, and all the people that were involved in that? Oh, yeah, it was an incredible day. It was, it was even crazier because right when I got back from Nepal, I like, I didn't really have any sales service over there. And once a week, I would check in, turn the light on, and see what's going on, and having everybody help me with it, and get it all together, and kind of running it from a very secluded place. And it turned out to be incredible.

We had a big concert the first night and a dinner with Jake Owen perform and it was silent auction, live auction. Then the next day we had two shot guns. We had so many people come out and support. We had 55, five sums and it was just unbelievable from all the pros you dedicated their time to the celebrities and NHL, NFL players coming out and we also had another silent and live auction the next night and it was it was really cool. It was the most special thing that I've ever seen and we raised a million and a half dollars. My obscene goal was like if we can raise 500 grand in the first year, I think it would be absurd. We tripled that and it was really humbling to see that support come out from New Jersey in my hometown and

it was really cool. And yes, we are definitely doing it again bigger and better this year. Everything that happened last year will be even more improved on and we're deep into the planning process already. We just announced the dates, August 4th and 5th at our Coalwood Country Club. It'll be the same kind of format as last year, concert and probably two concerts this year. One Sunday, one Monday and it's the Monday of the Northern Trust, the first plough event, which I think is a Liberty National this year.

So it'll be easy for Pigeotore players to get to because it's like 20 minutes from the course. And that'll be pretty cool. Well, if there's a way for us to get involved, I'm volunteering that without even checking with the rest of our game. So, thank you. Well, Morgan, thanks a ton for telling your story, man. That's, I know I've read about it, but hearing it in your own voice is,

it means a lot and it's kind of a, had an effect on me just sitting here. I'm sure the listeners will love, will love hearing it and I appreciate you taking the time to tell it. Yeah, awesome man. Thanks for having me on and allowing me to tell my story and wish you all the best and hopefully see you

soon there. Same to you. Cheers. Thank you. Be the right club. Be the right club today. That's better than most. That is better than most. Better than most.