Of all the receptions Jerry Rice made during his Hall of Fame career, catching the golf bug could be the most enduring.
Jerry Rice retired from the National Football League in 2005, spending the last four months of his remarkable career in training camp with the Denver Broncos. During those final weeks, he also spent time pondering, if not honing, his future craft outside of football. Dancing? No. Playing golf. Yes. And plenty of it.
"I can't remember all the courses, but I used to play Inverness," Rice recalls. "They knew me around the area because I'd call and say, 'Look, I'm in town and I want to play golf. Do you have anyone in the pro shop that can play with me?'
Even the private courses, they'd find someone to play with me. On my off-day I always was striking golf balls or playing a round somewhere."
Rice, who will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this summer, started playing golf in the late 1980s. He thought he would pick up the game in a snap. Like so many others, Rice found golf to be a challenge. Today he is a plus-1 handicap.
"I want to be a plus-3 before April," Rice said in December.
Why this month? Rice will host a Nationwide Tour event in Hayward, Calif.— the Stonebrae Classic played Apr. 15-18 at the TPC San Francisco Bay at Stonebrae. Not only will he play in the pro-am round early in the week, but he will also compete for the tournament championship.
"Golf is something I'm really serious about," Rice said. "These are aspiring golfers trying to get to the PGA Tour, and because I'm hosting I get an exemption. This might open up some avenues for me in a sport that I really have a lot of passion for and I enjoy."
As one of many former professional athletes who compete annually at the American Century Championship in Lake Tahoe, Rice has shown progress, finishing 21st in 2007, 19th in 2008 and 10th in 2009.
"It's very contagious," he says. "You're going to get out of golf what you put into it. If you're working your butt off and doing all the right things it's going to pay off. You'll have those days where nothing is going right for you. But that one shot keeps you coming back.
"Maybe the Nationwide Tour, if I play well, is going to open some doors for me. But I wouldn't rule out the Seniors Tour. If I'm out there I want to represent it the right way and not have these guys on the Nationwide Tour look at me as another celebrity trying to get into the spotlight."
Should Rice somehow make the Champions Tour after he turns 50 in 2012, he’d follow fellow San Francisco 49er John Brodie—who had one win (the1991 Security Pacific Senior Classic) and 12 top-10 finishes on the Senior Tour—as the only other former NFL player to make the transition.
Don’t be against him. If there's one athlete whose dedication toward excellence could never be questioned, it's Rice, who retired as the NFL's all-time leader in pass receptions with 1,549 during a 20-year career. He knows that becoming a professional golfer will require a substantial amount of work.
"The commitment would have to be there," Rice said. "I've got so many other things going on right now that I'm trying to accomplish off the football field – being a mentor for players, working for the DeBartolo Sports and Entertainment.
"What I have found out about golf is, you have to be around it 100 percent."
Contributing Editor Sam Adams is a former Rocky Mountain News
columnist and standup comedian.