Twelve years sober, a PGA pro arrives at his first major with a message
Twelve years sober, a PGA pro arrives at his first major with a message
Rupe Taylor, a 35-year-old club pro from Virginia Beach, splashed across Quail Hollow on Monday morning, all alone aside from his caddie. He played through standing water on every hole, the only golfer braving the rain three days before the PGA Championship. At least that’s what he thought before he ran into Patrick Reed on No. 12.
Meeting a major champion was another reminder of where the latest turn in Taylor’s life had taken him. Even without fans, the signage and television towers made clear that Taylor would be playing alongside and against the best golfers in the world. “It definitely hits you in the face,” he said. “There’s no denying it.”
Taylor, one of 20 PGA professionals who qualified for the PGA Championship, arrived in Charlotte on a mission beyond golf. He wants to use his platform, however modest, to share his life story in the hope that it may help others. Taylor has been a recovering alcoholic for 12 years, since a harrowing incident left him hospitalized and facing jail time. He received help, got sober and fulfilled one of his grandest dreams. He wants others to know they can, too.
“I’m grateful to be here,” Taylor said. “Even if you have done the same things, you can wake up tomorrow and start fresh. God is willing to forgive you for anything and everything you’ve ever done. If you’re willing to forgive yourself for your own mistakes, other people will also do that for you. Everyone makes mistakes.”
Taylor, who has been sober for 12 years, plans to use his platform to talk about forgiveness and fresh starts.
At Albemarle High in Charlottesville, Taylor felt he needed to drink to fit in with the party crowd. Drinking became a normal, every-weekend pursuit. He sought any excuse to have one drink, and having one meant he would have six or eight or 10 — however many it took for him to feel comfortable in his own skin.
“That would lead to blacking out,” Taylor said. “Because I didn’t have a turn-off switch.”
As a senior, he was suspended from school and kicked off the golf team the week before regionals. “My first indication that things were a bit off the rails,” Taylor said. He told himself other people had done the same thing, and he was just unlucky to be caught.
His parents had introduced him to golf when he was 10, when they bought him a set of clubs for Christmas. He didn’t play in elite competitions beyond his high school team, but by the time he graduated he had become a scratch player. He graduated from North Carolina State with a degree in golf management.
The night of Aug. 8, 2013, changed his life. Taylor was 23. He went out to have a couple of beers with a friend. He remembers nothing from the night, only the next day. He woke up in a hospital in arm restraints and felt fortunate he wasn’t in prison. He asked his mom, “Did I kill somebody?”
Taylor had been in a minor car wreck, spared significant injury to himself or anybody else. “I was very lucky nothing way worse happened,” he said. But he had been arrested and faced a raft of charges that carried the potential for jail time, including driving while intoxicated with a blood alcohol content between 0.15 and 0.20, more than twice the legal limit.
“If I didn’t start making changes, my life was going to end up in a very bad spot,” Taylor said.
Taylor accepted he could not control drinking on his own. He committed to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, attending two or three per week for two years. He still maintains contact with several people from the meetings.
Taylor met his wife, Baylee, through an online dating app in 2014. On their first date, Taylor shared everything: He was an alcoholic. He had been sober for almost a year. His court case had been delayed, and he still didn’t know whether he would spend time in jail.
“He laid it out on the table,” Baylee said. “I guess some people could see it as a red flag. For me, I’m pretty optimistic. For someone to be that open and honest was a huge green flag for me.”
Taylor pleaded guilty to his drunken driving charge and avoided jail time. Meeting and then dating Baylee reaffirmed Taylor’s commitment to sobriety. “She helped me start having fun again and made me realize I can have fun without drinking,” Taylor said.
As a golf instructor and club professional, Taylor faced constant temptation. Alcohol is enmeshed in the game, whether it’s a few beers purchased from the beverage cart or cocktails in the clubhouse.
Taylor was one of the few players who splashed through the wet course for a practice round on Monday.
“In the golf world, drinking is a pretty normal thing at a lot of these high-end, private clubs,” Taylor said. “It’s almost encouraged that the pros mingle and mix with members. Just having a Coke isn’t necessarily the thing most members are going to be like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s a cool guy I want to go hang out with.’”
At times, Taylor has had to resist pressure to drink to blend socially at golf events. He knows he can only make a ripple, but he would like to help shift alcohol’s predominance within the game.
“The industry has at times made me feel like I don’t fit in,” Taylor said. “After golf tournaments, there have been kegs of beer made available for free. If I want a soda, I need to go in and buy it. How is that a normal thing? All of these guys who have played golf for five hours are going to sit around and drink beer, and then they have to drive home? That doesn’t make sense. It’s just a social norm that exists in the golf scene.”
In 2021, Taylor founded Play Better Golf Now, a teaching center that lets him avoid the long hours of working at a club. He still represents Virginia Beach National Golf Club, which allows him to use its facilities. For 99 percent of his practice, Taylor uses the simulator he installed at his home studio.
Taylor played the best golf of his life over the past two years, a period that overlapped with the birth of his 18-month-old daughter, Noah. To Baylee, it was not a coincidence.
“For him, it’s never been about his ability,” Baylee said. “It was more mental. When we had Noah, it was just a total life shift where you’re like: ‘Wait a second; I get to go out there and have fun. This isn’t life or death.’ His mental shift was in such a healthy spot.”
Taylor had made the PGA Professional Championship, the qualifying event for the PGA Championship, once previously. This year, he started to feel as though he could advance. He won a one-day Middle Atlantic sectional event with a 67 that felt as though it could have been a 65 or a 64, and it put him back in the qualifier.
He opened with a 72 that left him hovering around the cut line. He knew even par would put him in the mix, so he told himself to stay patient. He broke par in the second and third rounds and rose into the top 10. “I caught myself thinking about [the PGA Championship] once in the middle of the third round, and I hit the worst tee shot of the week,” Taylor said. “I was like, ‘Okay, we can’t do that anymore.’”
“If you’re willing to forgive yourself for your own mistakes, other people will also do that for you,” Taylor said.
Taylor stayed steady in the final round, finishing in a tie for ninth. Walking off the 18th green toward Baylee, he started to cry. He hugged Baylee and told her he loved her.
“Just to know he has the ability to hang with these guys is just really cool for him to see,” Baylee said. “He’s just dreamed of this for so long.”
This week, Taylor has not altered his approach of setting goals based on process rather than results. He wants to be able to look himself in the mirror after each round and know two things: He gave complete effort on every shot, and he had fun. He’s also realistic about his chances to contend on a brawny, long course set up to challenge the best players in the world.
“You may remember Bryson DeChambeau said Augusta National is a par-67 for him?” Taylor said. “I would say this is a par-76 for me personally. I’m basically treating it as if there are eight par-5s.”
But Taylor is not at Quail Hollow to win, anyway. “I’m an open book,” he said. He wants people to know how he made it to a major championship — and how it could matter for them.
“I feel blessed that God let me live through all the poor decisions that I made,” Taylor said. “I do feel as if I have been put on this Earth for a reason. My life was spared in enough instances for whatever reason. It’s gratitude. Just a sense of purpose.”
Quail Hollow will be a brutal challenge for Taylor, but he isn't judging his week by his final scores.
