Sarah Hoffman, a Symetra Tour player, returned to her job on the course after working as a nurse during the coronavirus pandemic.
Sarah Hoffman has traded her scrubs for clubs as the Symetra Tour restarts its season this week in her native Michigan. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and golf stopped, Hoffman returned to her career as a nurse at Michigan Medicine.
Now, the 30-year-old Grand Valley State grad is one of 144 players teeing it up this week at the FireKeepers Casino Hotel Championship in Battle Creek, Michigan.
“Sometimes it felt like higher praise than what I necessarily deserved,” said Hoffman of the attention she received for going back to work in the medical field, “but I felt like I was just doing what I could do.”
The Symetra Tour hosted one event in March before the season was shut down due to the spread of coronavirus. There are eight events remaining on the schedule. The top five money leaders at the end of the season, down from 10 due to COVID-19, will earn an LPGA card for 2021. This week’s 54-hole event has a purse of $175,000 and a winner’s check of $26,250.
There are 30 Symetra Tour rookies in the field including former Florida standout Sierra Brooks. Several LPGA players are gearing up for next week’s event in Toledo by playing in Michigan.
Hoffman tees off at the Symetra Tour’s season-opening event in Winter Haven, Florida (courtesy Symetra)
Former Michigan State player Sarah Burnham has won four times during the COVID-19 break, with her first coming in late March on the Cactus Tour in Arizona, where tour owner Mike Brown presented her with a roll of toilet tissue in addition to her trophy and check. Burnham won again on that tour in April and then picked up another title on the Eggland’s Best Tour in Florida with a career-low round of 63.
Burnham, 24, then matched that 63 at the Michigan PGA Women’s Open in early July, ultimately lapping the field by 10 shots.
“It was great to boost my confidence a little bit,” said Burnham, who is still looking for her first win on the Symetra and LPGA.
Other notables in the field include former Alabama player Janie Jackson, who won the Florida’s Natural Charity Classic by eight strokes in March. Alexa Pano, a 15-year-old amateur, played in last year’s Firekeepers event on a sponsor exemption and qualified for this week via a runner-up finish on the Women’s All Pro Tour.
Alexa Pano watches her tee shot at the 11th hole during the third round of the 44th Girls Junior PGA Championship at Keney Park Golf Course in Hartford, Connecticut. (Darren Carroll/PGA of America)
Sarah Hoffman is a Symetra Tour player who recently returned to her career as a nurse during a nationwide pandemic.
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.
Sarah Hoffman (courtesy Symetra Tour)
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.
Former Grand Valley State players Allie Tyer (left) and Caitlin Bennett (right) support Hoffman at a Symetra stop.
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.
Hoffman tees off at the Symetra Tour’s season-opening event in Winter Haven, Florida. (Photo: Symetra Tour)
“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.”
