“You don’t play with a legend like that and a great player and not ask him any questions.”
Penny Hardaway stared intently, studying Collin Morikawa from the tee box on No. 18 at TPC Southwind in Memphis Wednesday.
Memphis basketball’s head coach – and a legendary NBA figure – was the pupil this time.
“I never asked him one golf question until we got to No. 18,” said Hardaway, who was part of the group playing with Morikawa during the pre-FedEx St. Jude Championship pro-am. “I was saying to him, ‘Out of respect, I have to ask you some questions about the game.’ Because you don’t play with a legend like that and a great player and not ask him any questions.
“So, he gave me some information and I hit a great drive and a great second shot onto the green.”
So, what exactly did Morikawa coach Hardaway up on and what was his evaluation of Hardaway, the golfer?
“He’s really good. He’s actually really, really good,” Morikawa said. “I think he had a handicap of 2 today. He made some legit − I think he made two actual birdies, like normal birdies without his handicap. He was striping it.
“He’s such a tall guy, and that’s obviously how basketball players are, and he’s had, I think, six knee surgeries, so he asked me on 18 something he could work on just about rotation and getting it around the corner a little bit better. He hit some balls out to the right. Look, it was impressive. I didn’t know what to expect, and sometimes you see a 2 handicap and they’re not a 2, but I actually believe him. He’s a great player, and just a great guy to hang out with for nine holes today.”
Hardaway said Morikawa isn’t the only high-level athlete’s brain he’s ever picked.
“It’s the same with how I feel when I’m around legends of the game of basketball or whatever their sport is,” Hardaway said. “Just to ask them, ‘What makes you great?’ ‘What do you think about out there?’ All that goes into me coaching as well. You keep feeding for information, it kinda motivates your guys.”
Apart from the free lesson from the two-time major winner, Hardaway relishes the opportunities he gets to be on the golf course – especially when it involves two of the biggest pillars of the Memphis community in St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and FedEx.
Hardaway describes golf as his “peace,” even though he downplays his skill level, describing it as “not even close” to those of the professionals. He said he never envisioned himself taking up the sport while he was blistering the competition on the hardwood as a teenager at Treadwell or a young adult with the Tigers.
“Not once,” he said. “In my neighborhood, it was all about basketball, football and baseball. Never about golf. Even though we had Chickasaw Country Club in our neighborhood, we never even thought about it.”
Hardaway will get a chance to play another round at Spring Creek Country Club in Collierville on Thursday at the Danny Thomas Celebrity-Am. He said he will also be back at TPC Southwind as a spectator for the FedEx St. Jude Championship throughout the weekend.
Commercial Appeal sports writer Josh Crawford contributed to this report Reach sports writer Jason Munz at jason.munz@commercialappeal.com or follow him @munzly on X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter.
