On the putting green, amateur golfer Sam Bennett, 23, uses the words of his late father — ones so impactful that he tattooed them on his forearm — to help him find focus.
Bennett is currently a fifth-year student at Texas A&M University. He entered the 2022 U.S. Amateur Final as the third-ranked player in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, according to Golf Channel, and this week, he’s stepping up for the 2023 Masters Tournament at Augusta National. In the weeks to come, he’ll compete with his college teammates for an SEC ring. After that, he has graduation and an NCAA title to pursue.
All the while, he’ll be carrying his father’s important words of advice, “Don’t wait to do something,” with him.
Speaking to Golf Channel for a recent video profile, Bennett detailed how his father passed on this integral piece of advice in the late stages of his struggle with early-onset Alzheimer’s.
Before he died in June 2021, Bennett’s father approached him one day in a moment of clarity and gave him the advice to never wait to act.
Inspired, Bennett asked his mother to help his father — who had by then struggled to remember how to write— put the words down on paper.
“(It) took him 15 minutes because he had to we had to show him how to write out every letter,” he recalled. It would be the last thing his dad would write.
Eventually, Bennett took the message to a tattoo parlor to get his father’s words, in his shaky handwriting, inked into his forearm.
“That’s something he said that’ll stick with me forever,” he explained. “For the longest, I lived my life scared just seeing what he went through. That just means don’t be scared of anything you do.”
Brian Kortan, Bennett’s coach from Texas A&M, shared that he's seen how his father’s words have helped propel him forward.
“The maturation process really came down to him understanding that he could do this without his dad,” Kortan explained. “That he still had more to give, more that he wanted to do for himself. The message on his forearm talks about get to doing it and to chase something that’s right in front of you. It relates perfectly to being intentional and not shying away from what you’re really trying to do.”
