Young still discovering the secrets to golf, life
STATELINE, Nev. — Steve Young hasn’t discovered the secret of life, but he has discovered something much more precious: the secret of golf.
When I talked to Young here Thursday night, on the eve of the American Century Championship, he sounded like a guy who just bought a map to a lost gold mine and was saddling up the burro.
“I had the best golf day of my life today!” Young said. “Things I’ve never done before, you know, drill 300-yard drives then put it within a foot, two or three times. I’ve never done that in my whole life!”
I probably should have slapped Young back to reality. Doesn’t he know that claiming a major breakthrough in your golf game is an affront to the golf gods? Still, I heard him out.
His revelation came near the end of our conversation, which, upon further review, had a theme — discovery. Or at least seeking. He talked about the keys to health and fitness, NFL quarterbacking, solving football-related head trauma, and reviving the 49ers.
It was uplifting. If Young truly has found the secret of golf, anything is possible.
“It’s so funny,” Young said. “I don’t play much. The kids (he and wife, Barbara, have four, ages 9-17) don’t really like the game. I love golf. I watch it, I go out in the backyard, I love to dream about it. Every night I fall asleep playing Pebble.
“Golf is big part of my life, but I just don’t get out as much as I’d love to. But I think about it a lot. And because I play in this tournament, and I play in the AT&T (Pebble Beach National Pro Am), I want to get better. And so I’ve actually spent a lot of time just thinking about the game, and it’s actually paying off.
“I’d come back from fiddling in the backyard, hitting Wiffle balls, and tell my wife, ‘No, I’ve got it! I think I’ve got it. Honey, I think I’ve figured it out!’ And after about 35, 40, 50 times of me saying that, she’s like, ‘Yeah, you’ve figured it out,’ because it always falls apart.
“But I finally did figure out something that I think’s going to work for me for a while. Look, I don’t play enough to be competitive, but all of a sudden I’ve got something that I know when I pull out my driver, I’ve got an idea, I’ve got a plan . ... Finally, golf theory’s starting to make sense to me, at 55 years old.”
Then he laughed like a mad man in a movie. And by the way, Young is 56.
I was reminded that Young played football without a helmet. Just one play, but a memorable one. But head trauma is no joke, as Young knows.
A concussion knocked Young out of the game for good, and inspired his agent at the time, Leigh Steinberg, to take a lead role in football-concussion awareness and study.
Young said he has zero symptoms of football-related brain damage and knows how lucky he is. “I’ve got my fingers crossed.”
He is somewhat of a missionary for a tech system called SyncThink, developed by a Stanford professor to objectively measure the immediate effect of head blows.
“It’s a tremendous tool, we’ve got to get it out there,” Young said, adding, “I want the world to know about it because it’s objective and it works.”
Young is a freak of nature. He played 15 seasons in the NFL, plus two in the USFL as a sometimes running back, and he’s healthy as a horse.
“I’m kind of lucky,” he said. “I walk OK. I’m really fortunate. It’s funny, my wife and I started going to Orangetheory (group personal-training workouts that involve high-intensity intervals). They do a lot of treadmill, a lot of rowing. I find myself really hooked on it because I’m running. I run hard.
“My joints, I’m really fortunate, because I know a lot of my compatriots don’t have the ability to run that way now. So I feel very fortunate that everything’s working. And my goal is to keep it working . ... I tell my wife it’s really exciting, because I do feel like it’s a celebration of the fact that I can really do it still.”
Young, like so many 49ers from the Bill Walsh glory days, still considers himself a 49er, and is — you guessed it — super enthusiastic about how the organization is re-embracing the old players.
“There was just a big, huge gap of time, from 2000 to maybe 2012 or ’13,” Young said of the period when the organization didn’t reach out to its veteran players. “But in the last couple years, since John (Lynch) came, it’s been a sea change, and an effort. And I don’t think it’s really about me, or Jerry (Rice), or Joe (Montana), or any individual. I think there’s an embracing of the excellence.”
Young said it’s about presenting role models to the current players.
“You’re a 49er, you’re expected to behave this way, you’re expected to be great. You need every edge in the NFL, and I think they’re doing a nice job of using the past to try to give a real jolt to people’s efforts.
“You want guys in the locker room yelling, ‘This is not who we are, we’re 49ers!’ It makes a difference in football; it’s a strange sport.”
Young added: “We built something, we were ahead of the game for a long time. We not only revolutionized offense, we revolutionized how you travel, how you treat people. We developed the first true partnership between players and owners. We just changed the game in almost every way you can . ... And you don’t want to leave that behind, and I think we’ve reembraced it, which I think is positive.”
While Young is discovering so many secrets of life, and is reconnecting with the 49ers, will he try to connect with Jimmy Garoppolo, the new quarterback on the block?
I asked Young if he’s had a chance to sit down with Garoppolo.
“I’ve meant to do that for six months, so you’re reminding me,” Young said.
What might Young impart to him?
“I’ve watched the game change in some ways, but the intellectual rigor to be great at this position remains,” Young said. “And the few guys who are willing to put the time into literal schoolwork — the memorization (of plays), owning the data, (achieving) almost reflexive recall — those guys are going to be great.
Young noted that New England’s Tom Brady is one such student, and Garoppolo was Brady’s understudy.
“Tom does that, Peyton (Manning) does that, (Drew) Brees. Those guys dig in and memorize and own the data.”
The league is trending to short-stay quarterbacks, Young said, so there’s a tendency away from the QB memorizing volumes of playbook material. The true bookworms and grinders are rare.
“It’s amazing how few guys are willing” to do that work, he said. “I understand it. It’s a pain in the butt to go to school. ‘I make 30 million dollars a year and I never had to go to school, why would I want to go to school now?’
“But that’s the secret. People ask me all the time, ‘What’s the secret?’ That’s the secret.”
Now, circling back to the secret of golf: It’s a work in progress. Young finished minus-7 Friday, so he’s no threat to pull off a dark-horse win. But he was satisfied with his round.