Sarah Hoffman recently moved in with a co-worker at Michigan Medicine so that her parents wouldn’t be at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19. That first night, the co-worker apologized that she didn’t have a dresser for Hoffman.
“That’s OK,” Hoffman told her. “I don’t have a dresser for nine months out of the year.”
Such is the rather remarkable life of Sarah Hoffman, a Symetra Tour player who recently returned to her career as a nurse during a nationwide pandemic.
“I just couldn’t keep sitting on the couch and not helping my friends who were on the front lines,” she said.
There’s nothing about the Hoffman file that’s standard. She didn’t grow up playing AJGA events. Didn’t compete in any tournaments outside of country club golf until the summer before college. In fact, Hoffman was set to play basketball in college until she took an abrupt turn to Grand Valley State.
“I’d only broken 80 twice in high school,” she said.
They laugh about it now, said former teammate Allie Tyler. The time Hoffman stood on the first tee of her first tournament qualifier at Grand Valley State and hit a worm burner.
“It maybe didn’t even reach the red tee,” recalled Tyler.
Oh, but that just makes the story all the better. The way Hoffman worked her way into the lineup by the spring season and went on to win 11 times at Grand Valley. That she got so good in such a short amount of time that her college coach, a former touring pro, told her she’d someday regret it if she didn’t at least try to play at the next level.
It wasn’t until her senior year that Hoffman decided to pursue the highly competitive nursing program at Grand Valley.
“I think she changed her major maybe four times,” Tyler said of her brainy friend.
To this day, Hoffman remains the only nursing student Rebecca Mailloux has ever coached at Grand Valley. It took five years and a summer to graduate from nursing school. For that entire fifth year, Hoffman didn’t touch a golf club.
When she finished school, Hoffman, the youngest of four, had a sit-down with her parents about turning professional. Her father, a financial planner at Merrill Lynch, told her there are two reasons businesses fail: Either they run out of money, or they quit before they’re successful.
Hoffman knew her game wasn’t ready, and she wanted to self-fund. So she moved into her parents’ basement and took a job at Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor. For two years she worked the night shift and banked around $60,000, enough to get her started on the journey. She’d work two shifts from 7 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. and two shifts from 11 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. On her days off, she’d practice.
“I do remember one time I was playing in the Michigan Amateur,” she said. “I worked a 12-hour shift and then teed off an hour after I stopped working. I was up for over 24 hours. We had a rain delay and I was just chugging Red Bull.”
Hoffman can’t remember what she shot, but it was enough to get her into match play.
After a couple of years, she turned pro, going to Q-School for the first time in 2016 at age 26.
During the offseason, Hoffman returns to work full-time as a nurse from October to December, earning enough money for the next year.
In 2018, she joined West Orange Country Club in Windermere, Florida, and had to work her way into the men’s group. They wouldn’t let her play in the big Friday skins game, but agreed to a nine-hole match.
“I started talking trash to them and shot 33 from the tips,” she said. “They realized I could hang with them and at the end of the year, threw a big going-away party and donated enough money for my entry fee in Q-School. It was awesome.”
There are times Mailloux can’t believe that Hoffman is still pursuing the dream, given all the bad breaks she’s endured at Q-School alone. There was the crazy stomach bug that left her throwing up on the golf course. Another year, her grandfather, the man who introduced her to the game, died during Q-School. And then last year, one of her ribs popped out of place and she was forced to withdraw.
“The kid just can’t catch a break,” Mailloux said.
There’s something about this balancing act between tour life and nursing, however, that gives the 29-year-old a unique and refreshed perspective.
Hoffman has worked in the orthopedic trauma unit since 2014. She can put a bad day on the golf course in perspective after taking care of patients who are fine one day and then find out they may never walk again after a catastrophic car accident.
Golf is inherently a selfish game. During the season, she enjoys being able to focus on what she needs to realize her dream of the LPGA.
“It can be exhausting to be a nurse and constantly putting others first,” she said, “missing your lunches or taking a patient to the bathroom when you have a full bladder.”
At the end of the golf season though, she can’t wait to get back to helping people. It’s in her blood.
“She cares,” said good friend and fellow tour pro Katelyn Sepmoree. “That’s really the best part about Sarah. She cares about the people around her and what’s she’s doing.”
Because elective surgeries have been put on hold, Hoffman’s unit now looks considerably different, with patients battling any number of diseases and conditions, including COVID-19.
“We went from 229 patients admitted with COVID-19 to 95 as of yesterday,” Hoffman said on Sunday. “Had those numbers kept on growing, it would’ve been very scary and we would’ve run out of ventilators. We are just so thankful that didn’t happen.”
The course is open at Hoffman’s childhood club, Travis Pointe, but the practice facilities are still closed. She works three 12-hour shifts a week and works on her game the other four days. The Symetra Tour is currently slated to restart in early July. Hoffman said she’ll taper off her nursing duties when she gets three weeks out from competition.
Hoffman has never wanted to give herself a timetable for success. She knows that her blue-collar approach makes her older than most. But she also feels like it has given her a mental edge.
“I wanted to be able to keep on playing,” she said. “I didn’t want to have any regrets.”
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