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Griffin, who once stepped away from the sport due to financial struggles, is now reflecting on his journey back to the top. He explained: “Yeah, I think most people have kind of coined the term already for me, but breakthrough is just the easiest word to use. “I’ve had a lot of buildup going into this year of some good moments but hadn’t quite broken through and won, and so this year was able to not only do that but win multiple times, and then make the Ryder Cup team and then win again here. It’s been a lot of hard work and a lot of belief.” He continued: “And yeah, the other question, going back to 2020 when COVID hit it was a tough time for professional golf if you weren’t on the Korn Ferry Tour. “I was sitting in credit card debt for probably eight months. When I quit golf, I was $17,000 in debt, was relying heavily on my parents for rent and other things, and it was just a point in my life where I knew I needed to get out of golf and go into business… you write for the Economist… so go try to use my economics degree that I have from North Carolina and go into the real world. I did that for a short stint. “Fortunately, I had some incredible people in my corner, one of which is in here right now, Jesse Ahearn from Missouri. He helped kind of jump-start my career back with some funding as well as Doug Sieg with Lord Abbett, Mike Swan, there are several other members at Highland Springs Country Club in Missouri that helped me out just through random connections. “Kind of got out of the loan officer job that I had and got back to golf. Man, did that give me a lot of self-belief just having all the support in my corner to kind of come back to professional golf and keep my head down and just try to work hard and see how far I could get. “That basically started in 2022 when I was on the Korn Ferry Tour and worked my way on the PGA Tour pretty fast. “And yeah, it’s been a very steady climb since then. Just trying to work really hard, trying to do the right things both on and off the course and enjoy and savor the good moments. “It’s been an incredible ride, and I’m just trying to not get super comfortable and just continue to see how far I can really go in this game because it’s been an incredible story. And I’m just so grateful, I can’t believe all this is happening. “But I’m not going to sit here and just try to admire it, I’m going to keep using each event as fuel for the next one and continue to work really hard. “That’s what Tiger Woods always did, what Scottie Scheffler’s doing. I’ve got to continue doing all the right things to be great.” Ben Griffin’s PGA Tour wins after World Wide Technology Championship success Griffin’s journey to this point has been far from straightforward. A few years ago, financial pressures led him to step away from golf entirely, taking a job as a mortgage loan officer just to make ends meet.
