Mardy Fish to make PGA golf debut at 3M Open in Minneapolis

From coaching the U.S. Davis Cup team to speaking out as a mental health advocate, Mardy Fish has been able to do all that and improve his golf swing since retiring from tennis in 2015. The former world No. 7 will get to show off the latter in a big way this week when he makes his PGA debut at the 3M Open in Minneapolis, becoming the first tennis player to participate in a pro golf event.

“No one’s ever played an ATP and PGA Tour event before,” said the Minnesota native. “It’s special that it’s here as well; I was born just down the road. This is certainly a special trip.”

Fish has indeed been among the best celebrity golfers, winning the 2020 American Century Championships in Lake Tahoe along with a pair of Diamond Resorts Invitational titles in 2016 and 2018.

Following a sixth-place finish in Lake Tahoe last week, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist announced his forthcoming debut on Twitter and has already earned a ringing endorsement from golf legend Jack Nicklaus.

“We played nine holes and he drove the ball on every single hole in the middle of the fairway, further than I have seen anybody hit it who is not a professional,” Nicklaus told Steve Flink in 2018, calling Fish “the best non-professional golfer I have ever seen play.”

“I said, ‘Mardy, what are you doing? You have got a talent and you are young enough to take advantage of it. You need to go play golf.’”

Fish has also remained a big part of the tennis world, working with rising American talent and imparting wisdom from his own career and mental health struggles in a Netflix documentary entitled “Untold: Breaking Point,” released last summer.

“Mental health doesn’t care what your name is or what you do for a living,” Fish told me before the 2021 US Open. “Everyone is in their own bubble with stresses, pressures, and expectations on themselves—no matter what job title they have. Mine just happened to involve playing in front of a lot of people, but my issues would be no different from any other person’s.”