For feel player Norman Xiong, less is more

Last spring, Norman Xiong called his college coach Casey Martin with an uncommon question.

Would it be OK, he wondered, to not practice?

It had been five years since Xiong left the University of Oregon, where he was college player of the year as a sophomore, and he was still striving to unlock his potential. Xiong’s natural talent led to phenom status, but an early career slump led to burnout. His game was coming back, but he wasn’t far removed from considering a career as a chef – such was his level of frustration. Enter Martin, a Korn Ferry Tour winner who played on the PGA TOUR.

Martin thought back to Xiong’s time in Eugene, Oregon, when he would get the occasional reprieve from range sessions because, well, the full swing needed no improvement. He thought back to Xiong’s recruitment at age 15, when the oft-smiling “big teddy bear” was already playing an advanced driver-wedge game. He thought of past TOUR pros like Fred Couples and Bruce Lietzke who thrived without constant swing maintenance.

The coach couldn’t rubber-stamp a zero-practice regimen, but he knew Xiong had to be himself.

“You don’t need to go hit a thousand balls to please people,” Martin told Xiong. “You’ve just got to make sure that your game’s good enough. You don’t want to just use that as an excuse … I didn’t try to tell him, ‘Never practice,’ because I don’t feel comfortable saying that, but I just tried to give him permission, to encourage him, like, ‘Dude, dig deep to find out who you are and what works, and don’t feel like you’ve got to conform just because.’

“It’s kind of weird to think about it, but he’s geared differently.”

Seven months after that conversation, Xiong earned his first PGA TOUR card through the 2023 Korn Ferry Tour’s season-long standings. He finished runner-up at the Visit Knoxville Open in May and won the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship in September, both times finding his elusive “flow state,” as Martin describes it.

“When he was in college, he was the best driver I’ve ever seen,” said Martin, a college teammate of Tiger Woods. “Like, never seen a better driver of the ball.”

That gift remains. “He’s a long-ball hitter, but he hits it straight,” said Chandler Phillips, Xiong’s final-round playing partner at the Nationwide. “That’s hard to find.”

It once seemed obvious that Xiong would reach this point. The Guam native, who moved to San Diego at age 6 with his mom and uncle, turned pro after his award-winning sophomore season, and that fall co-led the TOUR’s Sanderson Farms Championship after 36 holes. He faded to a T26 finish, but he took second at Final Stage of Q-School to earn strong Korn Ferry Tour status. He had yet to turn 21; stardom was inevitable.

Until it wasn’t.

“He’s the can’t-miss,” said Xiong’s putting coach Derek Uyeda, “that missed for a second.”

Nearly six years after leaving Oregon, Xiong, 25, returns home to San Diego for this week’s Farmers Insurance Open, his second start at Torrey Pines but first as a PGA TOUR member. This is where everyone thought he would be, even if no one predicted his curious journey.

The list of players who have gotten worse by trying to get better is so long it’s almost a cliché.

Xiong is a feel player, and that feel was cultivated early. His first instructor (and his only swing coach to this day) was his uncle James, the brother of his mom Jing. They started in Guam at the driving range and progressed to the Admiral Nimitz Golf Course, an executive track on a military base. Xiong was a fast learner and traveled to San Diego for the 2004 Junior World Golf Championships, finishing second to Sahith Theegala in the 6-and-under division. That’s when the wheels were set in motion for Xiong to move to San Diego with his uncle and his mom, who worked two waitress jobs after they settled to support her son’s golf dreams.

Young Norman would hone his game at Colina Park, an 18-hole par-3 course with holes measuring from 54 to 109 yards, through Pro Kids, First Tee – San Diego. Uyeda recalls seeing Xiong at Colina Park as a 6-year-old; he didn’t teach him at the time, but the natural ability resonated – “just a chubby little kid that had some of the best hands you’ve ever seen,” he said.

Xiong played every day, and when it was time to return to school, he would “get really, really sad” because it meant the end of that summer’s junior tournaments. As a middle schooler, he remembers attending a high school field day and partaking in football drills like sled-tackling. As he tells it, one coach called him a surefire college prospect, but he stuck to golf.

His progression was textbook all the way through his first two years of college, but when he turned pro, he succumbed to the all-to-common impression that he wasn’t good enough and had to become some ill-defined, upgraded version of himself. He also changed equipment.

In his first Korn Ferry Tour season in 2019, feeling unmoored, he made just five cuts in 21 starts, then missed by 20 strokes at Second Stage of Q-School that fall.

“It got to the point where I was so confused and it felt so weird that the game could be like this,” Xiong said. “… I felt like golf and life were irrational and didn’t make logical sense.”

In a way, he admitted, he’d done it to himself.

“I only knew how to play golf one way, my way, and obviously it worked, but we all grow curious,” Xiong said. “We saw it with some of the best, they just grow curious, and I think it’s an itch that we have to scratch, and it’s a feeling of making sure every stone is turned.

One problem was that he’d never really struggled; when he did, he was quickly on his back foot. While he was losing his TOUR-sanctioned status and going through what he described as “psychological warfare,” he considered quitting to open a restaurant or become a chef.

“I wanted almost a normal life and a day-to-day job,” he said.

Incredibly, Xiong, the sure thing, was in danger of burning out by age 21.

The road back would require a series of smaller steps, and patience.

In early 2020, his host from the 2017 U.S. Amateur at Riviera Country Club connected him with mental coach Alex Weber, whose messages include, “Do, then believe.” Translation: Rather than fretting over the big picture, Xiong needed to embrace a mentality of tiny victories – “just trying to win the day every single day; not think ahead,” he said. “Every day is a battle.”

Xiong knew thinking was part of the problem; he had become too mechanical. Having trusted his instincts to thrive in junior and amateur golf, why not see where that could get him as a pro?

“I had to unlearn a lot of things,” he said. “I shed what I thought was right and let things go. It’s (now) more like a flow and dance, rather than a meticulous thing. When I try to hit positions or put the club in certain positions, my body gets very unsmooth … it’s (now) more so feel and what I feel, more so my input and what I see.

“I started to do things that didn’t make sense,” he added, “but they worked.”

If that sounds confusing, consider that Xiong sometimes won’t hit balls on the range before a competitive round. This began around the time of his breakthrough 2022 Korn Ferry Tour victory in Wichita. The intent is to make sure he feels good and warm, rather than numbed out and awash in swing thoughts. Unconventional, but it works for him.

“You don’t have to do everything right to make things work,” he said. “It just has to feel right.”

Xiong entered the 2023 Korn Ferry Tour season with the goal of finishing inside the top 75 and retaining his full card. He was on his way to meeting it, and not long before the penultimate event on the schedule, the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship, he signed up for Q-School for another chance at a TOUR card if he didn’t finish inside the top 30.

Then it all came together in Columbus, Ohio, where he won by four. He was #TOURBound.

“He’s always been one of the most talented players, I feel like, and he’s gone through a lot in his career,” said Korn Ferry Tour pro Frankie Capan, who first met Xiong at the Junior World Golf Championships when they were in elementary school. “I think it’s really cool to see where he’s at now and persevering through a lot of things. I’m extremely proud of him.”

Xiong still has no formal swing coach but has worked with putting coach Uyeda, whose methods align with his feel-driven approach, since 2021. Xiong says it’s provided much-needed direction. He’s still the same guy with limitless potential. He just got a little lost.

“I really hope he makes it, he excels and reaches his potential,” Martin said, “because he’ll be the poster child for every sport psychologist out there of how to play golf. Don’t take too much time, don’t try too hard, be creative, be yourself, have fun.

“When he’s that way,” Martin added, “he’s just unbeatable.”