PLAYER RECORD
3 PGA Tour wins: 2013 Sony Open, 2014 Honda Classic, 2017 Shell Houston Open
BROADENING LANDSCAPE
LINKS PLAYERS MAGAZINE 2019 ANNUAL EDITION
Art, or science?
Maybe it’s not the debate we make it out to be. Even the most creative players—those who shape their shots like a sculptor softens the roundness of her subject’s cheekbones—spend time in the equipment trailer, getting the specs on their wedges just right.
The nerds aren’t winning either. All the calculations in the world can’t overcome an untimely gust of wind or greens softened and slowed by an overnight downpour. Sometimes you still have to play by feel.
All of this just might leave Teil Duncan laughing. Oh, she’s not a golfer. But she’s married to one, a three-time winner on the PGA Tour. And Duncan is an artist, a painter to be exact. So when she and her husband, Russell Henley, spend time relaxing in the North Carolina mountains or along the shores that fill so many of her works, there is no debate. The beauty in front of your eyes puts everything else to shame.
Russell can agree. He broke onto the Tour in 2013 and won his very first event, the Sony Open at Waialae Country Club on Hawaii’s island of Oahu. “I get to go back as long as I want and play that tournament in an extremely awesome location,” he says. In other words, he enjoys a palm tree leaning in the wind about as much as anyone.
We are all in such need. It’s not about earning your way. I realized what a beautiful picture that was and fell in love with Christ immediately.Henley’s appreciation for Hawaii shows how broad an American’s affections can be. He’ll turn 30 during this year’s Masters, but Henley was born and bred in Georgia, growing up in Macon and attending the University of Georgia. The Bulldogs won the NCAA golf championship when Henley was 16, so his eyes were never drawn elsewhere in those days. “That was a pretty easy choice for me,” he laughs. In 2010, he won the Haskins Award as the nation’s outstanding college golfer.
For plenty of players, even a successful collegiate career does not mean a smooth path to the PGA Tour. “It’s hard,” he knows. “I have some buddies I’ve known over the years who are phenomenal amateur players and played pro golf, but they didn’t make it to the PGA Tour.”
Henley, though, went through, during the last year when Q School permitted a direct path to the big tour without a year on the Web.com Tour first. And then lightning struck.
Only the most attentive golf fans knew who Henley was when he shot to the top of the leaderboard with two 63s to begin his full-time Tour career. In addition to his strong college résumé, Henley had won as an amateur on the Nationwide (now Web.com) Tour. But this was something bigger.
On Saturday, Tim Clark narrowed the gap with a 67, but Henley still led by three, and when Clark threw a 63 of his own at Henley on Sunday, the Georgian responded with another 63 himself. There was no touching the rookie.
Immediate success isn’t always a harbinger of good golf to come, but Henley has reason to believe it didn’t hurt him at all. “I think it was a blessing for sure,” Henley says seven seasons into his career. “It was hard, because I got into all the big events that year, including the Masters, but it showed me what I needed to work on. I look back on it and I have learned a lot from everything that happened.”
But Henley is only talking golf here. Underneath, a simmer of dissatisfaction was further fed by the win. He had been noticing for some time that all his achievements in the game never seemed to be enough. “You don’t ever truly get filled up when you accomplish worldly things,” he says. “If anything, winning my first event on Tour let me down. It’s been quite different since I realized that in my life.”
That difference was spurred by Teil, the sister of a close friend’s wife. They had enjoyed a couple of dates in the fall of 2014, but Teil “knew our beliefs didn’t match up and we were on different tracks,” Russell says.
She asked him if he would read a book with her. It wasn’t just any book, Russell knew. It was an argument for the validity of the Christian faith, by New York City pastor Timothy Keller. “I didn’t want to read these books just because I was attracted to Teil,” Henley says, “so we split up for a while.”
Eventually, though, he realized this was something he wanted to pursue. He started to talk to Teil again. And he started reading those books: The Reason for God, The Prodigal God, and then Mark and Galatians and the whole New Testament.
“As I started to learn more and more and more, I started to understand the message as I read about who Christ was and who he said he is,” Henley explains. “I was kind of slowly saved during half a year as I was applying knowledge and putting it into my life.”
Instrumental in his understanding was the Parable of the Prodigal Son, where the younger son of a wealthy man asks for his inheritance long before it should have been his. Then he squanders the money and returns home a beggar, hoping that maybe his father will take him in. His father is gracious, but his older brother forms an angry grudge.
“I think when I understood Christianity is when the younger son is lost and tries to spend his worth on everything you could think would make you happy. Then the older son is trying to keep all the rules and earn his salvation,” Henley says. “This made me realize the reason for Christ, that my view on Christianity was wrong. We are all in such need. It’s not about earning your way. I realized what a beautiful picture that was and fell in love with Christ immediately.”
Along the way to Jesus was this woman Henley grew to admire, the artist. “She wasn’t trying to impress me,” he remembers. “She had a quiet confidence about her and she was very sweet.”
Russell and Teil’s relationship has always been about striking a balance. At the time he was making his first-year splash on Tour, she was combining business savvy with her art, taking her works out of galleries and into the online sector (teilduncan.com), where she could both present her works to a wider audience and sell them more reasonably. And since artists respond to inspiration, it would have been hard to simply become a golf fan and let her brushes go dry, as it were.
Life has changed a bit for both of them since the birth of their first child, Robert, but they’re finding a new balance. “The biggest thing we do when we have free time is work on being there for the other person,” he says. “If Teil needs to be working and painting and I am not playing in a tournament, then I need to be there taking care of Robert and doing as much as I can, so she can have time to work and not have to worry about our baby.”
It’s a good plan, but somehow you have to wonder if Russell still sneaks a peek over her shoulder to find some help for his own endeavors. He’s certainly an apt observer.
“Teil has a strong belief system in what she’s capable of doing and how she knows what works. She doesn’t let little things change her opinion of that and she doesn’t let her belief in what she knows she can do fluctuate.
“I’m not going to wake up tomorrow and be as flexible as Dustin Johnson and fly my driver 320 yards. If I hit a good one, I can hit it over 300, but I have a specific way I play the game, and I’m not going to change the way I do things. Watching Teil, her ideas change for the different things she paints, but she knows and believes what’s best for her painting and that’s what makes her great at it.”
Mutual respect is a powerful force in a marriage, but the Henleys aren’t claiming perfection. “We go through times where we struggle like anybody else,” Russell says, “but we try to be patient with each other. We try to go back to the Bible, where Jesus said you have to get the log out of your own eye before you get the speck out of someone else’s eye. So we’re quick to say we’re sorry. Who knows who’s been right or wrong this whole time? We try to work with each other and be patient with each other.”
Henley has moved into 2019 with continuing status on Tour, reaching back to his third win, the 2017 Houston Open. He’s still looking for his first top 10 in a major championship, but he understands now that even one of golf’s four biggest prizes wouldn’t bring the deep-down satisfaction he always knew was missing. Partly he is reminded of this by way of his friendship with Webb Simpson, one of two players on Tour whom Henley relies on heavily for spiritual support. “If I had a nickel for every time I called Webb and asked him a question, we would have a lot of money, because I call and lean on him a lot,” Henley says. He also calls his friendship with Wesley Bryan key. “We like to call and just get involved. I don’t feel like we need to share advice, just be there for each other.”
When he gets to reminiscing about his college years, Henley is reminded of the pleasures of spending so much time with a small band of brothers—on the course, in class, at football games, all of it. “I wish I had a five-person team to travel with now,” he says.
He doesn’t. But what he has sounds even better. Teil and Robert, Webb and Wes, the Tour’s chaplains, and his church men praying back home. It’s a lot of support of the kind he wants most, the kind that allows him to see the wonder that has become the landscape of his life.
Sidebar: Ready to Play
No professional golfer walks out onto the first tee without preparing for the round. They all go about it differently, but they each have a plan.
Russell Henley’s pre-round routine includes a good meal—”Not too much. I try to just eat some eggs and some bacon and some fruit or something.” Then he’ll head to the fitness trailer for a 15- to 20-minute warmup. He’ll use the bike and some bands, wanting to feel “nice and activated.”
About 50 minutes before tee time, he goes to the putting green, then hits some balls and a few chip shots for touch. “I just want to touch the bases for warming up,” he says. “I don’t want to overdo anything, just feel like I have done a little of everything.”
His recommendation for amateur players might surprise you. “The biggest thing I would do is something active in the gym before the round, something along the lines of the elliptical or the bike—basic exercises to wake up your body, especially if you sit or drive a lot for your job. I would say waking the body up is more important than hitting balls.”