Free Willy 2 Fire
Rhoda Siket
Before I met Willy Wilcox, I thought nothing was more addicting than hitting a perfect golf shot on the PGA Tour. But that was before Willy recently called me from a drug rehab center to reveal he had almost died. After that close call, he was finally ready to unburden himself of all of his secrets.
As the story went, a wrist injury and deteriorating play sent him back to the top minor league circuit, the Korn Ferry Tour, in 2018. In our first competitive round together, Willy hit a shot over the flag and into the top of a thick bush. He was riding the cut line with a few holes to play and no margin for error. With his ball wedged between the leaves of a heavy plant, at eye level and the target behind him, Willy aimed a lofted club to the sky and made a wristy, ascending bunt. The ball popped over his shoulder and onto the green within 12 feet of the hole. It was an impossible shot he made look routine.
In our practice rounds together, Willy occasionally mentioned that even those close to him knew little about his story. Finally, in the summer of 2020, he was ready to open up. We sat on faded blue couches overlooking the parking lot of a Holiday Inn Express in a nowhere town on the Korn Ferry circuit. This would be the first of many deep conversations between us; he said that by sharing the details of his journey he hoped for catharsis but, more importantly, he eventually wanted to help others who were struggling. A bottle of red wine sat on the table between us. Even for a Tuesday night, it was quiet. The distant sound of vehicles echoed off a couple of strip malls. We nursed the wine from paper coffee cups as the sun went down.
Willy fidgeted uncomfortably. He recalled how he finished seventh on the Korn Ferry Tour money list in 2013, achieving at the age of 27 his dream of earning a PGA Tour card, only to get suspended before the ensuing season had even started. Willy shook his head, took a sip and continued.
For Willy, the rushes of life on Tour were a means to something cheaper. More accessible. More dangerous. Deft golf shots meant he could experience another kind of rush, sometimes in the heat of competition. Even as he became an elite PGA Tour player, he nosedived into the life of a severe drug addict.
This work ethic helped earn Willy All-America honors at Clayton State, and the only thing that kept his drug consumption in check was a lack of money. When Willy realized how much he could earn with his golf swing, the notion of reining in his addiction eroded. The mini tours with the largest purses traversed the Southeast, which meant Willy was never far from his drug connections and his hometown crew.
As the grip of heroin squeezed him, he needed to escape. He left Alabama. Left the Deep South. Left the world as he knew it. He hid away on St. Croix. He got clean, spending his days in the salt water, pouring himself into training and working out. He started smoking more weed to dull the craving for something harder.
Later that season, Willy shot a 59 in the final round of the Utah Championship. His increased weed consumption required constant water intake in case he was drug-tested during competition, the theory being the water would dilute the chemicals in his system so he could pass the test. He became complacent toward the end of the season and failed his second test of the year, leading to a suspension that meant five months away from competition.
The suspension left him reeling. He had just achieved the dream of earning a PGA Tour card, but now he was relegated to watching his fellow pros compete in the Fall Series without him. He was a finely tuned race car slapped with a boot. As part of the suspension, the PGA Tour required Willy to visit a doctor and attend eight counseling sessions. Despite that, Willy began to backslide into the throes of addiction.
Professional golf had been hard on Lanto. He had been living with his mother and begun amassing credit card debt from all of his tournament and travel expenses. A free place to live and the opportunity to practice with a PGA Tour player were too good to pass up.
Willy had been away from PGA Tour competition for months. He had missed the Fall Series, a crucial stretch of tournaments for a recent Korn Ferry Tour graduate looking to advance his career. If Willy hoped to qualify for enough tournaments in his first season to retain his PGA Tour card, he would need extraordinary play. He delivered. At the Sony Open in Hawaii in January 2014, he played his way into the last group on Sunday after shooting 69-66-64. He tied for eighth with a final-round 71 and earned $119,000.
Early in the summer of 2014, Lanto was almost out of money and back living with his mother. He had missed six straight cuts on the eGolf Tour. With $176 in his account and contemplating a career outside of professional golf, Lanto caddied for Willy in The Greenbrier. For the first time, Willy told Lanto he had been abusing opioids, and Lanto witnessed up close what drug withdrawal looks like: the sickness, the shaking hands, the unsteadiness of it all. And yet somehow, almost inexplicably, Willy played nearly flawless golf and tied for fourth.
At the end of 2014, his first season on Tour, Willy was playing the last regular-season event, the Wyndham Championship. He needed to finish 12th or better to keep his card. Early in the tournament his hands were calm. For the first couple of days, he took whale-sized doses of hydrocodone: 6,000 milligrams of acetaminophen per day (twice the daily recommended maximum). He was a ticking time bomb.
The vicious cycle continued: He would swallow an excessive number of pills to numb the pain of addiction, which led to more pain, which led to more pain pills. Something in his lower back was producing waves of stabbing agony. His organs ached.
He pocketed a $75,000 bonus for finishing 97th in the FedEx Cup standings, but who knows what happens had he teed it up at TPC Boston. Maybe he plays well enough to climb into the top 70 and earns a spot in the BMW Championship. Once there, maybe he plays his way into the Tour Championship, where he would have been guaranteed $175,000 and secured coveted exemptions to big-time tournaments for the following season.
But his health and play deteriorated and worsened in the following seasons. At the end of the 2021 season, after losing his remaining playing privileges on the Korn Ferry Tour, Willy retired. At the age of 36.
When he emerged after a week in treatment, Willy looked like a younger man. He began tweeting about his struggles and says he feels reborn. He acknowledged it would not be an easy journey, but he had successfully completed the first step. It was a significant stride for a guy who for 20 years had been fighting his demons and lying to everyone, including himself, about his addiction. He has visions of making a comeback to professional golf, starting with some Monday qualifiers.
I had glimpses of the story I was about to hear. A dot here, a dot there, with the promise that when the dots were connected, the constellation formed would be dark and otherworldly. These pieces had been shared in passing during practice rounds. As someone who was trying to reach the PGA Tour, I was thrilled to play alongside Willy at Korn Ferry events. He had been to the promised land \u2014 a few successful seasons on the PGA Tour during which he was among the ball-striking leaders, contended for tournament titles, earned more than $2.5 million and made a hole-in-one at the iconic 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass during the Players Championship.
Two holes later, Willy\u2019s tee shot sailed toward the Atlantic. His hopes of playing the weekend were about to vanish with his Srixon. Suddenly, his ball propelled out of the water as if thrown by Poseidon himself; it had caromed off a rock and bounced 30 yards back to the fairway. Willy capitalized on the luck, made the cut and shot 66 the following day. That was when I learned to never count out Willy.
We played together often after that round. With his thin frame and approachable demeanor, Willy is unassuming. His speedy swing reflects his hyperactive personality. He\u2019s quick-witted, smiles easily, asks thoughtful questions and often has a joke at the ready. Willy loves stand-up comedy and has an encyclopedic knowledge of Seinfeld. He speaks lovingly of his family \u2014 his \u201Cbrilliant\u201D older sister, his \u201Csaintly\u201D mother and his \u201Chard working\u201D dad. Before the start of one Korn Ferry round, I was struggling with my swing. Willy approached my caddie and quietly suggested a simple swing fix. After my caddie passed the tip along, I didn\u2019t miss a shot for two rounds. There are other stories of generosity, as when Willy offered Lanto Griffin a place to live, a caddie job and financial help when the struggling pro needed it most. Lanto went on to win the PGA Tour\u2019s 2019 Houston Open and became a top-50 player in the world.
\u201CMy biggest memory of Will\u2019s golf is sitting there thinking this guy\u2019s gonna be on Ryder Cup teams,\u201D Lanto says. \u201CThis guy\u2019s gonna win majors. This guy\u2019s gonna win multiple times on the PGA Tour. He hits the middle of the face more than anyone I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201D
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