Scott Langley retires from professional golf with decade of memories, appreciation

If it’s late on a Sunday these days, Scott Langley is watching a scoreboard with keen, if not worried, eyes.

But after announcing his retirement from professional golf, the 32-year-old doesn’t mind what’s unfolding on the biggest stages in the sport – Sunday means soccer for his eldest daughter, Kennedy.

He takes her now, to practice on Friday and games on Sunday. He puts Edith, his 15-month-old, to bed almost every night. His clubs are still within view in his Scottsdale home. He’ll have a nice game every once in a while – they’re not collecting dust, yet.

But life’s different for Langley, who made his final TOUR-sanctioned start at last summer’s Pinnacle Bank Championship presented by Aetna, after a decade-long professional career.

He’s totally fine with that. He lived his dream.

“Mid-summer last year, I started to feel the pull for life to be different for me and the family,” said Langley. “I just realized that I had thought about looking into my crystal ball, 10 years into the future, and with my oldest daughter going to college then. I just felt very strongly that if I wasn’t home for that formative time, being with her and my other daughter, I probably would regret it.

“That was the tipping point for me. I just wanted life to look different for my family.”

Langley, in a finely penned letter on social media posted November 16, 2021, said he was finished. “The end of the matter,” he wrote, citing Ecclesiastes 7:8, “is better than its beginning.”

He did almost everything there was to do both on the course and off. He was the first former participant of the First Tee program to earn a PGA TOUR card. He was low amateur at the 2010 U.S. Open, when he finished tied for 16th – plus a three-time All American at the University of Illinois and the 2010 NCAA Division I national champion. He earned nearly $4 million across both the PGA TOUR and Korn Ferry Tour. Life was great.

Respected by his peers, Langley served on the Player Advisory Council for both the PGA TOUR and Korn Ferry Tour. He ended his career serving a two-year term as Korn Ferry Tour PAC Chairman.

There was one win: The Panama Championship in 2018. Langley talks about it fondly. How could he not?

“It was definitely one of the pinnacles of my career,” said Langley.

“I really had no idea where I was in the tournament (on Sunday), but I looked up after starting the day six or seven back and I was four strokes ahead with three holes to go … and I was a little shocked, to be honest.”

Midway through his professional career, Langley had a conversation with Jay Haas about the art of winning. Langley had been in contention a few times to that point but had never taken a tournament across the finish line.

The times he did win, Haas never thought about actually winning until very late. The times he had a chance to win, but didn’t, came when he thought about winning too early.

Luckily for Langley, he began the final round in Panama well back of the lead. But something happened that Sunday and he caught fire, to the tune of 7-under through his first 15 holes. He’d go on to win by two shots.

Club de Golf de Panama, Langley recalled, can be unpredictably difficult. It was playing especially hard that day – windy, firm, fast – and a good score would mean a good jump up the leaderboard. That’s what Langley did. He made the leap.

“It was,” he said, “one of the greatest rounds I’ve ever played.”

Langley regained his TOUR card for the following season but ended up 153rd on the FedExCup standings. He finished sixth at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in 2019, his final top-10 result at a TOUR-sanctioned event.

He returned to the Korn Ferry Tour for 2020-21 (the Tour’s first-ever wraparound season due to the COVID-19 pandemic) and started out solid enough. He returned to Panama and finished tied for 15th. He had three top-25 results in his first seven tournaments.

By summer 2021, though, he knew it was time to put a bow on things, but he never gave up. The results didn’t show it, but Langley vowed to conclude his professional career with no regrets. He worked as hard as ever.

“You don’t want to think you didn’t try your hardest or you didn’t run through the finish line,” said Langley. “I feel like I did that my entire career.

“I had a lot of peace at the end of the season that this was the right move.”

It should come as no surprise that Langley, given his authoritative voice and experience as a leader, has already landed on his feet – although he’s been “drinking from a firehose” to try to absorb lots of new information at a new career.

After his golf career finished, he looked at the things he had an interest in but maybe wasn’t an expert. He wanted to learn. So he joined Camden Capital, an investments and wealth management firm with headquarters in Los Angeles, as a director.

“I probably wouldn’t trust myself to be a financial advisor for now,” he said with a laugh. “But over the course of time with learning from the right people and my own studies. I’ll get there. I’m part of a team now that collectively has all the capabilities a client would need.”

Langley studied for a month for his Series 65 exam, designed for professionals who are looking to become licensed investment advisor representatives. He passed.

“It was a bit of a bold move, looking back,” he reflected.

Now he’s working through the CFA (Charted Financial Analyst) program. It’s a three-year, 900-hour study program that has one big exam per year. He aspires to have clients of his own one day.

For now, he’ll sit in an introductory meeting or on a Zoom call and listen to everyone talk about their backgrounds. There are Ivy League business grads or folks who have a decade of experience on Wall Street.

Langley will smile, lean in, and tell everyone that he spent 10 years as a professional golfer. He lived his dream.