Second Chances Rock

Rupe Taylor got one. He is making the most of it.

Have you ever had a second chance after screwing something up in a big way? Maybe it was a poor marital choice that took you 10 years to realize. Maybe it was an ill-timed social media post that cost you a promotion or even a job, or the decision to turn your retirement account over to your financial-advisor uncle, even though you had a funny feeling about it.

Mistakes – and deep regrets about mistakes – are as much a part of life as breathing. If we’re lucky, we get another swing at it, a chance to undo the damage, or as they say in 12-step programs, to make amends to those we may have harmed.

You don’t have to remind Rupe Taylor about any of this.

Taylor, 35, was one of 156 golfers competing at Quail Hollow Golf & Country Club in Charlotte Thursday in the opening round of the PGA Championship, one of golf’s four major tournaments. Ninety-eight of the top 100 players in the world are in the field, including Masters champion Rory McIlroy and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler. A fulltime teaching pro from Charlottesville, Va., Taylor qualified for the championship by finishing in the top 20 of a PGA pro event at the end of April. Nobody expects him to be in the mix on Sunday, and he won’t be. Taylor had a rough back nine Thursday and finished 9-over par. His chances of making the 36-hole cut are close to nil, barring the best round of his life on Friday. Taylor is a fierce competitor, but making the PGA cut isn’t necessarily his chief objective.

“I’m just going to do the best I can and have as much fun as I can,” Taylor told reporters before the tournament. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what I do. I feel like I won already just by being here.”

Twelve years ago, Taylor had a new degree in North Carolina State’s Professional Golf Management program, and an old drinking problem. It started in high school, when his approach to alcohol was “anything, anytime, any reason to drink.” It continued through college, and the early days of his career, working at various courses in South Carolina and Virginia. One night he went out for a beer, or two. The problem, by his own admission, was that he did not have an off switch. He drove home, or tried to. He had an accident. Police arrived. He eventually was booked on a DWI charge. Taylor remembers nothing of that night, but the memories of the next morning are some of the most vivid of his life. He was in a hospital bed, arms and legs tethered to the bed frame, his mother sitting alongside him, with her head in his hands. His mind was spinning, his shame palpable, his terror no less so.

“Did I kill anyone?” he asked his mother. Taylor saw the fear, and worry, in his mother’s eyes. There was no way to rationalize what happened, to attribute it to boys being boys, or golfers being golfers. He was a drunk driver and could be looking at jail time. Alcoholics and drug addicts will tell you that denial is the most diabolical force that they face. It’s the voice that tells you, with complete certainty, that you don’t have a problem, that people are overreacting, that nobody understands what you are dealing with. Everyone is out of their minds, barging into your affairs with no permission, boundary-breaking nut jobs who are out of control, Now do you mind refilling my glass?

That day in the hospital room, Rupe Taylor’s denial was crushed like a bug beneath a steamroller.

“I should have been dead,” Taylor says. “I easily could have taken someone else’s life. That was a wake-up call I needed, to get my act together.”

Not long after getting out of the hospital, Taylor began to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings almost every day. He accepted that he’d become powerless over his drinking and needed help. He listened as other people in the room shared their stories. He realized he was exactly where he belonged.

One day at a time – the AA mantra – Taylor chose not to pick up a drink. Everything started with that. In time he met a woman on a social-media app. Her name was Baylee. He shared his story with her, and she believed in him. They got married in 2017 and now have an 18-month-old daughter, Noah. Taylor had tour aspirations – what golfer doesn’t? – but he knew that, as a newly sober person, the stability of home and family life would be the more nurturing, and affirming, route to go. So he made a living by teaching instead of pursuing is own playing career. He has his own instructional business – “Play Better Golf Now”( https://www.playbettergolfnow.com/about) – that is affiliated with Virginia Beach National Golf Club. Being a husband and father has changed everything.

“Having (Noah) in my life has given me so much perspective,” Taylor says. “Whether I have a good round or a bad round, she just wants her dad for the next hour until she has to go to bed.”

Taylor began his week in Charlotte playing a full practice round in the rain and then meeting Scheffler in the locker room. “He was so kind,” Taylor says. “He was authentic. I talked to him for a couple of minutes and he asked me about me.”

When he qualified for the PGA Championship field, Taylor heard from a bunch of old friends and classmates. Many of them are at Quail Hollow this week to support him. So are Baylee and Noah.. Whatever his scorecard says, and whatever the outcome of the PGA Championship on Sunday, Rupe Taylor knows he will come away from this weekend feeling as though he is a major champion, a man who got a second chance and made the most of it.