Do a Google search of Spencer Levin videos and you will quickly find footage of him kicking his hat or slamming a club or doubling over in frustration or begging his ball to stop with “please, please, please, please.” Short and slightly built, he can look like a teenager throwing a tantrum for not getting the keys to the car. If you haven’t seen Levin’s antics, he makes Tyrrell Hatton seem downright catatonic.
Peruse the comments on some videos and some people think Levin is just an outright jerk behaving like a spoiled child. Others get a kick out of him looking like an everyman golfer, including purfing on cigarettes that he chain smoked for years before quitting.
Advertisement
Have the histrionics helped or hurt his career? Only he knows for sure, but after a highly decorated amateur career, Levin has ground out a 20-year pro life with only a few notable highlights—the 41-year-old has only one victory in a PGA Tour-sanctioned event in 408 starts.
98127223
Spencer Levin was the low amateur in the 2004 U.S. Open and Phil Mickelson finished second to Reitef Goosen.
Al Messerschmidt
Still, the Sacramento native keeps pushing on, hoping for those rare and heady days when he knows he’s still got something left in the tank; days like Saturday in the third round of PGA Tour Q School in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Five shots off the lead at the outset, Levin started on the 10th hole of Sawgrass County Club, rolled in a birdie from off the green at 11 to start a streak of five straight birdies en route to an opening nine of 30. He then made two more birdies along with seven pars to shoot the day’s best score of seven-under 63.
Advertisement
With that surge, Levin has a chance to regain fulltime status on the PGA Tour for the first time since 2016-17. Heading into Sunday’s round at Dye’s Valley, he stands in a six-way tie for sixth at nine under, with the top five finishers after the final round earning their tour cards. The sixth through 40th finishers get status on the Korn Ferry Tour.
The margins for everyone near the top of the leaderboard are incredibly small. Ben Kohles (65) and Marcelo Rozo (65) share the lead at 11 under. Tied for third behind them, one shot back, are Cooper Dossey (64), A.J. Ewart (67) and John Pak (67).
In what figures to be a dramatic finish, there are 20 players four shots or closer to the lead. And for the first time this year, only five players make it through, rather than including those who are tied. So a playoff is a distinct possibility.
Levin is the oldest player among the contenders, and thus possesses both the most experience and layers of scar tissue to go with it.
Advertisement
“I’ve been doing this a long time,” he said on Saturday. “I’ve kind of seen every scenario there is. The thing you learn is that there are no secrets. You’ve just got to go out tomorrow you got to execute and play well. And that’s it.”
Levin has had his share of tour heartbreaks following a decorated amateur career that included being a two-time All-American at New Mexico, notching a 13th place in the 2004 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, winning the California State Amateur at Pebble Beach, and capturing the Porter Cup.
His path in the pros could have changed dramatically in the 2011 Mayakoba Golf Classic in Mexico when Levin was tied for first after regulation with now-Golf Channel commentator Johnson Wagner. But Levin bogeyed the first playoff hole, Wagner parred, and it would be 12 more years before Levin lifted his first tour-sanctioned trophy by winning the KFT’s 2023 Veritex Bank Championship.
1482487902
Spencer Levin was using a “Happy Gilmore” grip with his putter when he won the Veritex Bank Championship.
Advertisement
Mike Mulholland
The victory came in a classic Levin fashion. He Monday qualified into the event in Texas, and while sleeping on a friend’s couch all week, shot 63 on Sunday to win by one shot. By then, Levin was so desperate about his putting that he’d switched to a “Happy Gilmore” hockey stick grip with a broomstick putter. (He’s back to a more conventional approach now.)
“It’s kind of weird. You just don’t ever know when it’s going to happen,” Levin said the day of his win. “There were times before I thought it would happen, it didn’t. Today, it did. It was just my time.”
Is it his time again?
