Spencer Levin Is Moving on From His Bad-Boy Image, and Maybe Back to the PGA Tour

Once a hard drinker with a hot temper, the 38-year-old journeyman is sober and experiencing a natural high after winning his first Korn Ferry Tour event.

Early Monday morning, I reached Spencer Levin by phone to discuss his win from a day earlier in the Korn Ferry Tour’s Veritex Bank Championship at the Texas Rangers Golf Club in Arlington, Texas. I first met the 38-year-old Elk Grove, Calif., native at the 2004 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, where he was the low amateur with a tie for 13th. That week he mesmerized the crowds on the east end of Long Island with his steady play and a hole in one at the par-3 17th hole during the first round.

By then his reputation was cemented in the golf world as a very talented chain-smoking and heavy-drinking player who could show extraordinary displays of anger on the golf course. He carried that reputation to the PGA Tour, where he made $8.2 million in seven full seasons before losing his full-time playing privileges after the 2016-17 season. In many of those years, regardless of how he finished in a tournament, he would end the week by getting drunk, downing seven or eight beers.

Spencer Levin, pictured in 2017, has put aside his old temper and recaptured his old game.  :: Peter Casey/USA TODAY Sports

When he answered the phone on Monday he sounded tired, like he might have had a few adult beverages to celebrate his first win on the Korn Ferry Tour or any major tour since he turned pro in 2005 out of the University of New Mexico.

“Are you still in bed?” I asked him.

“Yes, but for different reasons,” he told me. “I haven’t had a drink in over two years. Me and my buddy and caddie, Grant Zider, were just up. We couldn’t sleep. It was cool. It was like a natural high. We were just sitting here. It was like we were partying but not partying.”

Levin earned his way into the field in Arlington through a Monday qualifier. With just conditional status on the Korn Ferry Tour and no PGA Tour status, Monday qualifiers have been his primary route to events over the last few years. “I just haven’t had any tournaments to play,” Levin said. “I missed a bunch of Monday qualifiers where I must have shot 5 under par to miss a playoff by a shot.”

When Levin has had the opportunity to play, his putter has often let him down. Last October at the Shriners Children’s Open in Las Vegas, he made his first PGA Tour cut in nearly five years using the Happy Gilmore putting stroke. At the Veritex Bank Championship, he used a Hammy putter, which has a triple-bend shaft and split grip. “The Hammy has rejuvenated my game to the point where I can go out and play and feel comfortable over short putts,” he said. “If you’re not making the short ones in competitive golf you may as well not even try to play.”

At the Veritex, Levin started the final round in a tie for third and six shots back of the leader, Brett Drewitt. “I wasn’t thinking about winning,” Levin said. “I knew a top 25 would get me into the next Korn Ferry event. I felt like I was playing with house money because I had Monday qualified and I was going to make some money and play in the next tournament. I was in a better situation than I was when the week started.”

That attitude led to eight birdies and no bogeys for an 8-under-par 63 and a one-shot victory over Drewitt. In the final round at the reachable par-5 10th hole at the Texas Rangers Golf Club, Levin got a huge break when a badly pulled tee shot that was headed to an unplayable spot was spit back into the fairway by a tree. He would go on to birdie the hole.

In the past a bad break in that situation might have sent Levin into a tirade including profanities and throwing clubs, but he’s mellowed some over the years. “I don’t run quite as hot as I did 10 or 15 years ago,” he said. “I think maybe it’s because I’m getting older.”

It also may have something to do with him being sober, having to be there for his three children and going through the frustration of not having a secure place to earn a living as a pro golfer. He had his last cigarette in 2012 shortly after his paternal grandfather, Buck Levin, died from emphysema, and his last drink on Feb. 3, 2021.

Sure, the ever-dangling cigarette, the epic benders and temper tantrums on the golf course are a part of the lore of Spencer Levin, but they don’t define him. With the win at Veritex, Levin is fully exempt on the Korn Ferry Tour and he has his sights on being one of the 30 Korn Ferry graduates to the PGA Tour at the end of the season.

On Monday morning as the sun rose in Dallas, Levin was still reflecting on his victory. That evening he would attend Game 1 of the first-round Stanley Cup playoff series between the Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild. It would be his first time seeing hockey in person. But right now he was still glowing and surprised with himself. He’d watched his friends the previous night celebrate his accomplishments with drinks. For most of his life, he expected that when he won that he would celebrate it with a drink. “This feels weird,” he thought to himself.

He didn’t know winning could feel this good.