Tough love elevates Justin Suh in golf ascent

Justin Suh’s friends aren’t afraid to roast him.

Think of it as tough love.

“My buddies couldn’t care less if I shot 80 or 65,” Suh said with a laugh. “If I play bad, they’ll just make fun of me.”

The same holds true if he plays well. There hasn’t been much bad golf lately for Suh, who has made seven consecutive cuts as a first-year PGA TOUR member after earning his TOUR card as the 2022 Korn Ferry Tour Player of the Year.

Suh, a native of San Jose, California, returns to the Bay Area for this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on the nearby Monterey Peninsula. He lives in Las Vegas now, but for him all roads lead back to his hometown. Sometimes it just takes a while to get there.

Staying positive in tough times

It’s a sunny, crisp fall day at Red Rock Canyon outside Las Vegas. Suh is hiking with college buddies Jake DeVine and Kyle Suppa, who now share a house with Suh in Las Vegas. Both friends have gravitated toward Suh through his work ethic, positive influence, and loyalty. Suppa, a USC golf teammate, is a mini-tour pro aspiring to follow Suh’s rise through the ranks; they test each other in frequent short-game competitions around Vegas. DeVine, who played tennis at USC, recently started his own business – an online search tool to help investors direct capital gains into new investments – and regards Suh as a beneficial “thought partner.”

The scene calls for a trip down memory lane, and DeVine concurs that he has no trouble giving Suh a hard time, despite Suh’s success as former No. 1 amateur and Korn Ferry Tour Player of the Year. To DeVine, Suh is just a friend who enjoys dinners on the Vegas Strip and competitive video game sessions back at the house.

And one whose street smarts might have lagged slightly behind.

It was Thanksgiving break during their sophomore year at USC, calling for a six-hour trip home from Los Angeles to the Bay Area. Suh and DeVine loaded up into Suh’s car, along with two other golfers and another tennis player. The drive went smoothly for the first few hours, until the smell of burning rubber began to foul the air. Suh pulled over at a gas station to survey the situation, then broke the bad news to his passengers.

“We’re sitting in this little hatchback, completely packed to the brim, the car’s loaded down,” DeVine said, “and about 150 miles from home, Justin’s like, ‘The tire pressure signal’s been going off the whole car ride.’ We put some air in the tire, you can almost hear it leaking air, and it’s like, ‘Justin, you should’ve checked this before we got in the car and drove 400 miles together.’

“We get on the road and about 20 miles later, the car is tilted to one side, the tire completely busted. We called Triple A, they said it would be about three hours … thankfully one of the guys who was with us had changed a tire before; we figured it out, got the flat off, put the spare on. Then we got back in the car and realized Justin had left the lights on while we were changing the tire. We get back in the car, it’s freezing, it’s November, and the car won’t turn on.”

Time to coax the battery.

“We’re sitting in the freezing cold,” DeVine continued, “listening to music, talking crap, and we get back in the car, 30 minutes later, saying our prayers. Justin puts in his key, turns the ignition, and the car turns on. We’re relieved. As we’re all celebrating, he turns the car back off, and we’re like, ‘What the hell are you doing, Justin?’ He’s like, ‘I want to save the battery,’ and we’re like, ‘That’s not how this works, bro. Give it some juice.’

“I told Justin, ‘If this car doesn’t turn back on again, I’m never driving with you ever again.’ Thankfully the car turned back on, and we got home with the spare. It all worked out.”

Years later, Suh can smile and laugh. It all worked out in the end.

The anecdote is uniquely akin to Suh’s career trajectory. After reaching No. 1 on the World Amateur Golf Ranking and turning pro in summer 2019, he made his professional debut with much fanfare at the Travelers Championship – joining Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland and Matthew Wolff for a pre-tournament press conference.

Fast forward and the latter three earned PGA TOUR memberships within three months; Suh missed at First Stage of Korn Ferry Tour Q-School that fall, derailed in part by injuries. A season of uncertainty – mini-tours, Monday qualifiers, the odd sponsor exemption – was further complicated and drawn out when the COVID-19 pandemic delayed Q-School by a year.

Suh’s friends, never lacking in tough love, also offered support.

“When I saw him struggling at first when he turned pro, I figured it was hard on him,” said Suppa.

“I remember it sucked,” confirmed Suh. “Missing at First Stage really sucked.”

“There was never any doubt in my mind that he’d get there,” added Suppa, “it was just a matter of when. I don’t know if anything changed (in 2022) … I think that game was always in him. He got comfortable again and found it, and once he gets going, he doesn’t stop.”

Suh earned his Korn Ferry Tour card via 2021 Q-School and, to Suppa’s point, kept building. He notched 16 top-25 finishes in 24 Korn Ferry Tour starts last season, highlighted by a victory at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship presented by United Leasing & Finance. That made him fully exempt on the PGA TOUR while guaranteeing him spots in THE PLAYERS Championship and U.S. Open at Los Angeles CC, just down the street from his alma mater, for the 2023 season.

‘He’s always got good vibes’

When Suh clinched his TOUR card with a runner-up finish at the Utah Championship presented by Zions Bank in early August, the Korn Ferry Tour social content team asked who he’d like to call first. He immediately tried his older sister Hannah.

It was an obvious choice. Suh emulated Hannah as a kid; she was also an accomplished junior golfer, and his first golf goal was flying to compete in a tournament like Hannah did. She’d take lessons, then teach Justin what she had learned. He describes her as a “vibrant soul and a magnet to people.” They remain close, taking regular trips like a recent hike at Yosemite.

“An older sibling doesn’t usually want a younger sibling to be with them, but she invited me to everything,” Suh said. “I got to experience life with her, saw how she treated people, how people treated her back. It was enlightening to me, to see how far kindness goes.”

In that moment of delivering the #TOURBound message, though, Suh couldn’t reach Hannah. He tried calling once, twice, a third time. No luck.

“During that phone call, she was camping somewhere,” Suh said. “And I gave her a hard time, because I was like, ‘Hey, you made me look bad, because you didn’t answer the phone call when I got my PGA TOUR card.’ She was just laughing.

“She couldn’t care less about me playing golf.”

Suh’s circle keeps him humble, but he knows it’s rooted in love.

Prior to Suh receiving 2022 Korn Ferry Tour Player of the Year in a vote of his peers, Hannah wrote a letter that she read aloud, recorded on video for part of the POY surprise. Hannah described her younger brother as simply “a legend.”

“I've seen firsthand your determination, drive and motivation our whole lives,” Hannah read. “You never cease to amaze me, and you inspire me to work hard and follow my own passions.”

Suh’s roommates in Vegas concur.

“I was deciding between here and Florida, and Justin offered to let me live with him … an opportunity to come out here and experience what his life is like as a pro,” Suppa said. “How he goes about trying to improve his game, and (by) going out to compete against him while he’s here … it sharpens my game. He’s selfless that way.”

“His work ethic and mindset, but also his character,” DeVine said of Suh’s admirable traits.

“You will not see Justin talking badly about his friends or his competitors or even his detractors. He’s always got good vibes. He’s always relaxed, he’s always friendly, he’s always kind. I think those people often end up being happiest and end up going furthest in life.”

DeVine recalls friends from various athletic pursuits poking fun at Suh. His fun-loving nature – no qualms laughing at himself, then or now – made him easy to tease. They even ripped golf.

“Why do the golfers even have a locker in the athletic facility?” they would say. “Golf is not a sport; it’s a social activity.” DeVine shakes his head at the memory.

“Fast forward six or seven years later, and Justin’s on the PGA TOUR and most of us are no longer competitive athletes anymore,” he said. “He got the last laugh there.”