Family support runs deep for Max Greyserman

When Max Greyserman’s parents first came to America from the worn-torn Soviet Union as refugees, they didn’t know what their future held. They didn’t know each other from home, but met in New Jersey and started to build a life together, working hard at multiple jobs and mostly speaking Russian.

They didn’t have golf there. In fact, they didn’t really know what it was.

But when Greyserman was little, they took a trip to Florida and saw some flyers for free golf lessons from a coach named Mike Adams – who splits time in both New Jersey and Florida and who Greyserman would go on to work with as his skillset in the sport blossomed – and they tried it. Their son Max watched. They gave him some clubs. He picked up the sport that day and has been playing ever since.

He says now he owes it all – Greyserman graduated from Duke University in 2017 and currently sits 51st on the season-long Web.com Tour points race, a few good finishes away from earning a PGA TOUR card for next year – to his parents.

“It’s inspiring to see where they came from,” he says, “and what they got to do."

Greyserman’s parents came to America when they were teenagers, fleeing what is now Kiev, Ukraine. Russian, he says, was his first language. He took Russian in college for a year-and-a-half to try to learn how to write and read it – he says he could always understand it – and admits with a laugh his parents’ Russian accents are now gone having spent so much time in the U.S.

He went back over once, while in middle school, to visit Kiev. His mom showed him an apartment where she grew up. That memory stands out with how far away he was from home.

“It’s a lot different over there. They didn’t have much when they came over,” he says. “They were looking for a better life and freedom. They were escaping.”

Greyserman says he’s like to go back at some point, but for now, he’s got his eyes on growing in the pro game.

He played a season on the Mackenzie Tour-PGA TOUR Canada after college was done and he says that helped him deal with the Monday-Sunday schedule of professional golf. He calls his journey to this point “gradual progress” and he admits it’s been nice this year to see friends he made while at college and playing tournaments while he was starring at Duke.

Coming out of high school in New Jersey Greyserman says he was looking at a lot of different schools before deciding on Duke. He sat down with his parents, who are big into academics, and talked about what would be the best fit for his future.

His parents Alex and Elaine, are a perfect combination of academics and athletics – his father is a math professor at the Ivy League’s Columbia University in New York, while his mother played NCAA tennis at Rutgers in New Jersey – and that’s what they were looking for for Greyserman. Duke was it.

“Being from the East Coast, I wasn’t too far from home. And it was a great program,” he says.

While Greyserman continues to improve on the golf course – he’s had two top-10 finishes this year and says he’s hoping to build off his good results for the rest of the season – he can rest easy knowing he’ll always have a strong support system in his corner.

His parents came from almost nothing, he says, and now he’s happy to have a chance work hard and show them what he can do.

“It’s definitely really inspiring knowing what they came from and how much time and energy they spent trying to give me a good life,” he says. “It helps motivate me to do as best I can in whatever I do, in school or golf, and to follow in their footsteps.”