SAUCIER, Miss.—The players on The PRO Tour have done it all: Throwing touchdowns. Stealing bases. Scoring goals.
Making headlines and, for some, history.
Which leads to 32-year-old Evan Geiselman, who made his tour debut on Tuesday.
And a question, with all due respect, that is fair to ask:
Evan who?
Geiselman, after all, does not come from any of the major individual or team sports.
He is a professional surfer who competes in the sport's equivalent of golf's Korn Ferry Tour. And, with his long hair, a rarity in this collection of older, ex-athletes, boy, does he look the part.
"This just adds another dimension to our tour, getting more sports to create a wide range of players," commissioner John Smoltz said.
Geiselman got hooked on golf when he was 17. Recovering from ankle surgery — he was wearing a boot at the time — he was invited by a sponsor to a charity scramble.
He had never played the game. Not once. He grew up in a beach town in Florida and came from a family that knew nothing about golf, and everything about surfing.
"I couldn't hit the ball," Geiselman recalled about that memorable first day on the links.
He was not discouraged. About a week or two later, when the boot came off, it became time to try again.
"I went straight home and ordered clubs from the Nike site," he recalled. "I was so fascinated by the game and how hard it was."
Golf, at first glance a symbol of the establishment, may seem like a strange hobby for a surfer, a symbol of rebellion.
Not in the case of Geiselman, however, who is friends with PGA Tour veterans Rickie Fowler and Sam Ryder.
"Golfing is very individual and surfing is very individual," he pointed out. "The decision-making is on you and I love that."
Geiselman, who has never taken an official lesson, gets frustrated with an errant shot or missed putt — who doesn't? But he doesn't stay down for long.
It is easy to understand why.
In late 2015, on the island of O'ahu, he took on the Banzai Pipeline, which he called "one of the most deadly waves in the world." He thought the wave was "going to be great and then I don't remember anything else."
He was rescued by Andre Botha, a bodyboarder who happened to be in the area. Botha helped get Geiselman to the surface, and with assistance from friends and several lifeguards, Geiselman regained consciousness.
"I had a guardian angel," he said. "I got very lucky."
He was left with a laceration to the head. And a new perspective on life.
"I fit as much as I can into every day," he said. "I surf, I golf, I fish. Fishing is another love. Those are my three loves."
Unfortunately, in his debut round, golf did not love him back.
Geiselman, who drove the ball well but was erratic with his short game, finished with 22 points, tied for 59th among the 81 players after the first round at Fallen Oak on Tuesday. On hole No. 9, his final hole of the day, he missed a 12-inch putt … for bogey.
"That was one of the worst rounds I've played in a really long time," he said afterward.
Still, as Scarlett O'Hara once said, tomorrow is another day.