Two-time Players champ Davis Love III has built legacy of service from Golden Isles to First Coast

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Two-time Players champ Davis Love III has built legacy of service from Golden Isles to First Coast

Garry Smits, Florida Times-Union · The Florida Times-Union

Sat, Mar 5, 2022 ·

19 min read

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The measure of the golfer establishes Davis Love III as one of the biggest stars of the pre-Tiger Woods era and beyond: more than three dozen worldwide victories, winner of two Players Championships, the 1997 PGA Championship, a participant on 13 U.S. international match-play teams, winning Ryder Cup captain and member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.

The measure of the man goes far beyond earnings, trophies and titles. It's seen in a PGA Tour event he hosts in his adopted hometown that has raised more than $25 million in charity, numerous other charitable efforts both seen and unseen, being honored with the PGA Tour's Payne Stewart Award that counts character more than birdies, signing every autograph and posing for every picture or merely throwing a chain saw in the back of his truck and cutting fallen tree limbs down so his neighbors can get out after a hurricane.

It also can be found in 35 years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren and quite simply being beloved for being himself, from the Golden Isles to the First Coast.

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Two-time major champion Zach Johnson spoke for the two dozen or so professionals who have set up home bases on St. Simons Island, Ga., partly due to the influence of the man they call, with humor and affection, "Uncle Davis."

"The more I can be around him, the better off I'll be," Johnson said about Davis Love III, golfer, businessman, architect, philanthropist, husband, father, grandfather, mentor and friend.

Synonymous with The Players

There have been five men to win The Players Championship twice at the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass: Love, Fred Couples, Steve Elkington, Hal Sutton and Tiger Woods. Love won his titles nine years apart, the longest time between victories, and came from behind in both with final rounds of 67 in 1992 and a record closing round for a winner of 64 in 20003.

This year is the 30th anniversary of Love's first Players victory, which was the fourth of his 21 PGA Tour titles and his first victory in a huge event with an elite field. He had to catch and pass Nick Faldo in the final round, no small feat.

In a way, it was his coming-out party but Love already had won twice at Hilton Head and had been tabbed as one of the rising Tour stars since he was a three-time All-American and Walker Cup player at North Carolina.

Davis Love III waves to fans as he walks to the pin after chipping his ball from the gallery behind the eighth green into the hole for birdie and the lead during the final round of the 1992 Players Championship. He went on to win by four shots. [Bob Self/Florida Times-Union]

Love is tied with Jay Haas for the most career starts on The Players with 29, is tied for second with Sergio Garcia for the most top-10s with seven and has made the fourth-most cuts with 19.

Love even went to The Players before turning pro: the first date with his wife outside of the beach or a fast-food meal on St. Simons Island was to take her for a day at the 1982 Players Championship.

"She came out in flip-flops and I showed her around the course and said, 'this is what I'm going to do for a living,'" Love said. "She told me, 'yeah, right.'"

Now settled into a life where his most serious competitive desires will be found on the PGA Tour Champions (and if he finally breaks free of a series of injuries), the only role this week at The Players for the 57-year-old Love will be ceremonial: he's the World Golf Hall of Fame member who will present former PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem at the March 9 induction ceremony at the PGA Tour Global Home.

Davis Love III has made his biggest impact in golf by winning The Players Championship twice and guiding the U.S. to victory in the 2016 Ryder Cup.

Love's 36-year association with the Tour's gold standard event, his two titles and the dashing and daring manner in which he won them has often led to some confusion: as iconic a figure as he is on the Golden Isles of Georgia, some fans mistakenly think he lives in Jacksonville or Ponte Vedra Beach.

"It's always felt like a home game," Love said of The Players. "It's so close to St. Simons. Plus, I've been on the [PGA Tour Policy] board so many times [five] that I'm here a lot. And Dad brought us down here to play all the time when Mark [his brother and former caddie] and I were kids. It was a nice little trip for us. We'd go play the Sawgrass Country Club, then the new course."

Love's comfort zone

The "new course" being the Stadium, and Love quickly became enamored with the challenges of the Pete Dye design — the asymmetrical lines off fairways, the forced carries over water, pot bunkers, undulating fairways and greens — a version of Dye's Harbour Town Golf Links on Hilton Head Island, S.C., where Love has won five times.

"I loved Pete Dye courses, loved the challenge, loved the grasses," Love said.

Davis Love III is greeted by his wife Robin and their 9-year-old son Dru after he won his second Players Championship in 2003.

Love tied for 14th in The Players in his first attempt, in 1986. He then had some stumbles, with two missed cuts and a disqualification in 1988 for signing an incorrect scorecard but when he passed Faldo with a series of clutch putts and short-game shots in 1992, Love cemented his status as one of the Tour's biggest stars. He won three times that year and finished second to Fred Couples on the money list.

"Davis' game fit that course as well as anyone I ever saw," Couples said.

Fred Funk, another past Players champion, said the way to conquer the Stadium Course and win The Players is to not back down from Dye's design.

"Pete designs courses that are visually intimidating ... he wants you to be intimidated," Funk said. "Davis never got intimidated by anything. He was successful on that course early and success kept breeding success."

Love didn't want to get into the debate about whether The Players should be considered a major championship but he said when it comes time to tee it up and play 72 holes on a championship course, the tournament doesn't take a back seat to any challenge.

"The biggest thing to most players, even back then, is how strong the field is," he said. "You can go back and forth on that between The Players and the PGA but winning The Players twice gave me the confidence to believe no matter what tournament I played in, I could win, and by a lot. It takes you to another level, for sure. And it's easy to say that if I had not won two Players, I might not be in the Hall of Fame."

Love won in four decades

With his two Players Championships as bookends, Love won 13 of his 21 Tour titles during that span, including his 1997 PGA at Winged Foot, the long-awaited major. He and Couples also won the World Cup four consecutive years.

Love displayed longevity, winning three times after the age of 44, including his third victory at Greensboro in 2015 at the age of 51.

In the 13 years between 1993 and 2005, there wasn't a single Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup roster that didn't include Love, and he made all 12 teams on points, never relying on a captain's pick that most assuredly would have come had he not earned his way onto the team through his play. He has a career match-play record of 25-20-9.

Love has since served as the Ryder Cup captain twice, winning in 2016 and this summer he will be the Presidents Cup captain for the first time. He has been a vice-captain three times in each event, which means, counting this year's Presidents Cup, Love has been a player, captain or vice-captain on 21 U.S. international match-play teams.

Counting his five terms on the PGA Tour Policy Board, Love has contributed much more than his golf game and earned much more than money: respect and admiration for serving causes bigger than himself.

"Over the years he has represented the game so beautifully," Finchem said. "The way he handles and presents himself. To my knowledge, he has never said no ... never even suggested he might say no. He's always been available to do whatever it took to better the PGA Tour and the game."

A father's guidance

Davis Love III and his brother Mark may have been born to play golf but their father, legendary teacher and one-time Tour pro Davis Love Jr., always left it up to his sons how far they wanted to take it.

If either of them wanted to try to play on a professional basis, he was there for them and would structure any coaching program around that.

If they had other pursuits and were happy to play golf on a recreation basis, well, he was fine with that, too.

Davis Love III helped the Southern Soul restaurant after a 2010 fire and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Before high school, we were fairly close in ability," Mark Love said of his brother, older by two years. "But once we hit high school age, he just went to a different level. Certainly, length was a factor. He was a little taller, shot up sooner and more than I did. He also worked harder at it. I had other things I wanted to do, like hanging out at the beach."

Davis and Mark Love led Glynn Academy to a state golf championship when Davis was a senior and Mark a sophomore. Davis then went to UNC, where he won six titles, including the 1984 ACC championship. Later that summer he won the North and South and the Mid-Atlantic Amateur and in 1985 went 2-0-1 in the Walker Cup.

Success came quickly on the PGA Tour. Love got his card on his first attempt at the national qualifier in 1985 and won his first tournament, at Hilton Head, in 1987.

Losing a coach, father, friend

But tragedy followed. Love and his wife flew to Hawaii for the Kapalua International in January of 1988, which at the time was an unofficial event, but usually with a loaded field. When they landed, he called home to his mother, Penta Love, who was sitting for their six-month-old daughter Lexi.

His mother had bad news: the small plane carrying his father and fellow Sea Island club pros Jimmy Hodges and John Popa had fallen off the radar short of the Jacksonville International Airport, after they had planned on a quick turnaround before catching a flight to Tampa to attend a Golf Digest Academy instructional staff meeting at the Innisbrook Resort.

Davis and Robin caught a six-hour flight back to San Francisco, knowing only that the plane was lost. When they landed, they found out there were no survivors.

Although Love remained competitive, he didn't win another Tour event until 1990 at Castle Rock, Colo. Another followed in 1991 with his second victory at Hilton Head.

Once he won The Players in 1992, Love was among the biggest names in golf and he played a busy schedule. But if he carried one thing with him that he learned from his father, it was not to let golf become the most important thing in his life.

"After Dad passed, I didn't want to be idle," he said. "Being idle made me sad or worried. But golf can't be the most important thing in your life."

And Love still had his mother, who was good enough to win women's club championships at Sea Island and grounded enough to reinforce the most important life lessons his father had taught him and his brother.

"We were loved but discipline was a real thing in our house," Mark Love said. "We respected family and we respected the game. Dad was a role model for us just by watching how he was with people, in business, on the golf course. It never occurred to us to do it any other way."

Family first, fun, then golf

The running family joke is had attention deficit disorder been a thing in the early 1970s when Love was in elementary school, Davis Love Jr., and Penta Love would have heard about if from their son's teachers.

"Either that or OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder]," Love said with a quick smile. "I would have been diagnosed with either one. The teachers did tell us once that [his son] Dru had ADD and we told them that wasn't the case: he'll chip and putt for hours ... it's just school he doesn't like."

The blizzard of activities Love has engaged in over the years is staggering: business interests such as golf-course design, running the RSM Classic, a paddleboard shop and investing in two area restaurants, Southern Soul and Frosty's; Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups; his passions of hunting, fishing, surfing and barbecuing; and family ... always family.

"My mother complained one time to Mark, 'if he would just focus on his golf ... he spends so much time hunting and fishing and running around with the kids,'" Love said. "I said, 'yeah, Mom ... just like Jack Nicklaus.'"

Sam Snead once joked that the only reason he played golf was so he'd have enough money to go hunting and fishing whenever he wanted. Love quickly discovered that he was good enough at golf that it would give him the means to engage in his passions but also spend time with his family.

"I play golf," Love said. "I also live my life."

Dru Love remembers one of the more infamous days his father had at The Players that showed his passion for family and pursuits other than golf. In 2006 Love fired a 65 to share the first-round lead with Jim Furyk. The next day, he posted his worst round ever at the Stadium Course with an 83.

Dru, 12 at the time, walked every hole of that dismal round. He then got a surprise if he thought his father was going to be upset.

"He teed off in the second round with the lead in The Players, and then missed the cut," Dru Love said. "He walked off the course and told me, 'Guess what we get to do? We get to go hunting this weekend.' He's missed the cut and he's got this big smile because he could take me hunting Saturday. It's who he is down to his core. Golf does not determine his worth. What matters is your family and responsibilities off the golf course."

Love and his wife have also raised their children with the kind of firmness Love and his brother experienced — and to have a strong perspective about money and material objects.

"Robin and I both came from relatively humble means," Love said. "Teaching pros aren't rich."

During a career that has generated nearly $45 million in career earnings on the course and millions more in off-course earnings, the Love children probably could have been gifted luxury cars on their 16th birthday. But there was one rule: get a job and prove you could buy a car on your own.

As a result, his daughter, Lexie Whatley, worked in a clothing store and as a hostess at two area restaurants. Dru worked at the golf course.

"He doesn't believe in spoiling us or his grandchildren with money," Whatley said. "What he does spoil us with is his time. He traveled a lot but when he was home, it was 100 percent about us."

Love showed what family meant to him at his Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2017 in New York: he gave his entire six-minute speech holding his grandaughter Eloise after she clung to him off stage when he tried to go out.

Davis Love III gave his entire induction speech when he enter the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2017 while holding his oldest grandaughter Eloise.

When Love is traveling, Robin Love, the most private member of the family who declined interview requests for this story, has been the glue.

"Mom keeps it all together," Whatley said. "She's the bookkeeper, the scheduler ... when Dad would come home, she would say he was messing her routine up because when he was home it was playtime for us. But she keeps all of us grounded. Both of them keep us grounded. We always had chores. We had to get jobs when we were 15. And it was always remembering where we're from and how we should act."

It continues to this day. Whatley, who is the events and merchandise manager for the RSM Classic, was talking while taking a quick break running the register as the RSM Classic merchandise tent. Dru Love stopped by after stripping 200 golf carts of the placards for the RSM pro-am — which he had put up the night before the event.

"Nothing's below anyone's pay grade around here," Whatley said. "Even Dad. He was in here last night vacuuming and helping me count the register."

The Love Legacy

So what's the Davis Love III Legacy? What will be remembered of a vibrant and diverse golf career that may just be entering the beginning of a second phase that will include business, running the RSM Classic, charity and perhaps more involvement on the PGA Tour and PGA of America?

Or will Love settle more into retirement, content with three grandchildren and a slow-pace life that living on St. Simons Island almost dictates?

Love isn't sure he can help himself in one regard.

"I remember President [George H.W.] Bush telling me when he was in his 80s, after all he had done, after the sky-diving, that he might think about slowing down," Love said. "There is so much going on. I can't sit still."

"There's always something he wants to do," Mark Love said of his brother. "It's endless energy."

The RSM Classic is one thing that can keep him busy. The tournament has become a PGA Tour late-fall staple after 12 years, settling into a comfortable date the week before Thanksgiving and serving as an entry to the holidays on the Golden Isles — although rumored changes on the PGA Tour calendar could always interrupt that.

And the charity money stays home: the bulk of it has gone to charities such as Special Olympics and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Southeast Georgia.

Then there are the acts of kindness no one really knows about until well after the fact.

Love has helped the Southern Soul restaurant twice in times of need after a fire gutted the place in 2010 and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the Island lost power during one of the tropical storms that swept the area, Love helped Southern Soul co-owner Harrison Sapp empty the restaurant's freezer before the food spoiled, cooked it as his elaborate home barbecue pit, and gave the food away to area residents.

After the pandemic closed restaurants, Love and his wife booked parties to be catered by area establishments as long as 18 months ahead of time, and pre-paid so they'd have cash on hand to tide them over until restrictions were lifted.

"He's legit," Sapp told golfweek.com. "I'd kill somebody for him."

It's no wonder that the community came together for Love and his wife after their home burned to the ground in March of 2020. Sapp and his wife cooked breakfast for Love, his wife and first responders and gifts of food, clothing and other items poured in.

"We were very blessed," Love said.

It's all about returning the favor.

"Everything starts with Davis and his values are so aligned with ours in terms of stewardship and giving back," said RSM chief marketing officer Andy Bosman. "It's a true partnership. We're not just the title sponsors, bring clients here, party and go home. We talk to Davis and Mark year-round about the tournament, how we can continue to give back."

Bosman said the first time he met Love was on the range at Sea Island early during tournament week in 2013. Love was working a barbecue smoker, making lunch for the Tour players, caddies and volunteers.

"He was in a camo hat, t-shirt ... and all we talked about was fishing, boating and hunting," Bosman said. "He loves talking about anything, not just golf. And all he thinks about is finding ways to help people, whether it's this tournament or putting his chain saw in his truck and going out to help his neighbors clear their road. That's the Davis Love III I don't think everyone fully knows about. Everything he does, and everything the Davis Love Foundation does, is based on this: what's the right thing to do?"

Love's legacy also may be the nearly 20 PGA Tour and Korn Ferry Tour players who have followed his lead and moved to St. Simons Island. While it's true the practice and instructional facilities at Sea Island are unparalleled and the climate and beach town vibe attractive to players with families, Georgia still has state tax and it's a hike to get to the nearest international airport in Jacksonville.

Zach Johnson (left), the incoming U.S. Ryder Cup captain, said Davis Love III's influence convinced him to live on St. Simons Island.

"I moved here and it's because of Davis," Zach Johnson said. "If I had not, with the facilities here and with his help, I'm not sure I would have improved the way I wanted to."

Brian Harman said the PGA Tour life can grind some pros down. He said that's never been the case with Love.

"It a wonderful example he sets for everyone," said the three-time Tour winner. "It can be hard to do. You spend a bunch of years on the Tour and it can turn you into a curmudgeon. If you're around for a long time, people will have opinions about you. Not all of them will be good. But everyone likes Davis."

When pressed, Love said his most memorable moment to this point might not have been a victory but what happened after a loss. When Europe stormed back from a five-point deficit to win the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah and then routed the Americans in 2014 at Gleneagles, the PGA of America formed a Ryder Cup task force to address what was going wrong.

When it came time to select the 2016 captain, the committee turned to Love.

"For them to come out and say I should be the captain is something I'll never forget," he said.

What no one should forget is how Love uses his talent, not just for winning tournaments but for the by-prouduct of success.

"He understands the big picture, that no one is above the game but that you can use the game to support your family and also to help other people," Johnson said. "He likes to serve. He likes to help people. And that's everything."

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Davis Love III's golf career forever linked to Players Championship

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