Golf: No longer the cause of inward strife
Former PGA Tour professional and Tetonia, ID resident Nate Smith at the 2023 Lamey Cup at Blue Lakes C.C.
There we were, sitting on the patio of The Sandpiper Steakhouse in Idaho Falls, Idaho, overlooking the Snake River, a prominent feature that winds itself through that Eastern Idaho metropolis. We had just finished playing at Pinecrest Golf Course, the site of the 2023 Idaho Men’s Mid-Amateur Championship. Nate Smith, a resident of nearby Tetonia, Idaho — a town at the base of the Teton Range — had agreed to spend an afternoon with me on the golf course and then dinner.
Nate was semi-new to the Idaho golf scene, so I’d only known him for about a year — seeing him at Idaho Golf Association championships, USGA Qualifiers and a Team Idaho event. I had watched Nate play a hole or two on those occasions, but as I watched him that afternoon plot his way around one of the oldest golf courses in Idaho; it was as if I had just spent a Sunday afternoon on my couch watching that week’s PGA Tour event.
As we chatted about life over our entrées, I learned more about Nate Smith the person during that meal than I had that entire last year. I knew he had a story to tell, but after spending the day with him, I realized this was a story unlike any other story I had ever covered during my time as a journalist or at the IGA — a story of a former PGA Tour member who left golf, found peace and purpose in life, and then returned to it.
Golf wasn’t always Nate’s first sports language. In high school, one would often find him running the bases or knocking down three-pointers. Though talented in both, Nate’s love for golf was his avenue in getting a scholarship to a school with high academic standards. And for this talented golfer, Duke University became his destination.
“I did not have any visions of playing professional golf believe it or not [when I was in high school],” Smith explained. “I saw this as an opportunity to get into a school that I may not otherwise be able to get into based on my academic criteria.”
During his time at Duke, Nate shined on the golf course — becoming a two-time All-American for the Blue Devils and helping lead his team to a Men’s Golf ACC Championship.
In 2004, his sophomore year of college, Nate qualified to play in the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club but had missed the cut by four — besting the likes of Adam Scott and Davis Love III but getting to say hi to Tiger Woods on the putting green.
“I got done with school, and I was like ‘well, I don’t really know what else I want to do, so I might as well give [golf] a shot,’” Smith said.
After finding success on various mini tours, Nate’s professional journey took him to the other side of the world in 2009 to play on both the European Challenge Tour and the now-called DP World Tour. But qualifying for the Nationwide Tour took Nate back to America in 2010 — giving him the best path to the PGA Tour — after missing out by two strokes.
“I gave it a shot and kept progressing to the point where I couldn’t stop because I was having success and was clearly heading toward the PGA Tour,” he said. “That was my dream and my goal at that point…for a long time, and that was all that I really cared about.”
In September of 2010, the WNB Golf Classic was being held at Midland Country Club in Midland, Texas — a week of golf Nate Smith would never forget.
There he was, on the 72nd hole, hybrid in hand, and a tree in his way. Smith had two choices: play a banana slice to the left or a 30-yard hook to the right. With a chance to win, Smith chose the latter and pulled off the shot of his life — leaving himself 35 feet or so for birdie and the win. Only needing to two-putt, Smith watched as the ball dropped in the hole — securing victory over the likes of Gary Woodland and local Idahoan Tyler Aldridge. (An experience Nate would lean on 14 years later when he buried a 35-foot putt on the 54th hole of the Idaho Men’s Amateur Championship to win.)
During our round that afternoon, Smith showed me that trusty ol’ Titleist hybrid. It had its wear marks, but man did that club hold a lot of power and good mojo.
Despite his win, Smith was knocked just outside the top 25 in the Nationwide Tour Championship — forcing him to go back to Q-school Finals, where he was able to finally secure his PGA Tour Card. With aspirations to take the tour by storm, little did he know that his life was about to change.
Things for Smith started the week of the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines Golf Course. Hoping to start his maiden voyage on the PGA Tour on the right foot, Smith ended up missing the cut and leaving with a partially torn meniscus — something that hampered Smith’s play the remainder of the season.
Following the season, Smith chose surgery. It was a choice that afforded him a lot of time. Time, that during the daily grind of honing one’s craft, isn’t necessarily afforded to you. And what did that time bring him? It brought him clarity — a realization that the life he had worked so hard to build wasn’t as fulfilling as he had once believed it would.
As we talked, he told me how he felt like he was a thousand-page novel everyone judged by its cover, when his real story lived in the chapters no one bothered to read. It was clear as day to me that this had really bothered him for years, and that it was a life-style he did not want anymore.
After a year of rehabbing and recovery, Smith finished second in his first start, playing in a mini-tour event near his home.
Looking at me, and with the hurt he had been feeling all this time, he said: “I feel like I didn’t have a lot of substance in my life. I was doing things for other people, and I think it was taking more of a toll on me than I realized…I had to work up the courage to walk away from something that had been such a big part of my life for so long, and that was tough to do.”
(Here we were, a place and direction I had not anticipated our conversation or day to go to, but I had been granted access into a part of Nate’s life that I’m sure not many people get to experience. I would never have imagined that this person, who I call a friend, had carried this monkey on his back for years, and though he was more than a decade removed from leaving the PGA Tour and that lifestyle, the heartache he had felt was evident on his face.)
Nate Smith was no longer a PGA Tour player. In fact, Nate Smith the golfer was no more. Driven by the emptiness he felt, Smith removed himself from the game of golf entirely. Spending the next eight years separated from the sport — not in defeat, but in pursuit of something that the game of golf never gave him.
With a clean slate and an endless number of paths to take, Nate decided to go back to school to get his MBA — a degree he would later use to help him become part-owner of a general contracting business in the Jackson Hole, Wyoming area. After finishing his second degree, Nate convinced his now wife, Amra, whom he had met during rehab in South Carolina, to join him in Idaho and his pursuit of a different life.
Now, fast forward back to the conversation Nate and I were having over dinner. He was no more than a year removed from picking up his sticks for the first time in eight years and regaining his amateur status.
As we talked, it was evident that his passion and love for the game was still there, despite the open wounds on his soul never fully healing. It wasn’t a love that he had poured down the drain, hoping to never see again. It was a love that had been stored, shelved and kept until he was ready to let it out again.
This was a tender subject. He knew he had to embrace his story, and this newly-found community he had become a part of that had accepted him for him, not some bygone title from yesteryear.
But there was a moment in our conversation that I noticed something. A positive light that seemed to shine through the mistiness that had collected from some deep soul-searching. It was as if Smith’s eight years of no golf had finally given him the peace he sought.
He had just spent the last hour or two telling me his story. One full of triumph and humor, but one filled with heartache and sadness. As we neared the end of our conversation that night, Nate shared with me something that has deeply affected me to this day. With tears in the corners of his eyes but a smile on his face, he told me his new titles: a husband, a dog father, a business owner/partner, and a son to his parents.
“I am much more proud of these accomplishments than I am of anything I did on the golf course,” he said.
I watched as if something had been lifted off his shoulders that day. He could go play in men’s league and be one of the guys. He could show up to any IGA Championship, play, and go home without the pressure.
For Nate Smith, golf was good again.
Now, fast forward again, but this time to the present day.
“I was hesitant initially to compete on the amateur level again because I was worried, possibly, there would be some people that would say, ‘you’ve already been a professional; how can you play amateur golf again.,” Nate said. “But, the reality is that so much time has passed, and I still loved the game. I wanted to compete and the opportunity for me to do [so was] on the amateur level. The USGA granted me my amateur status back in a matter of three days.”
So, what does Nate want to do now with his golf game? He wants exemptions into the top Mid-Amateur events around the country like The Snedeker Memorial, which he won this year. And how will he get those exemptions? He needs to reach a certain number within the World Amateur Golf Rankings, where he currently sits at No. 250!
Nate Smith’s first real emergence onto the amateur scene was his appearance at the annual Pacific Northwest Golf Association’s Lamey Cup in 2023. Despite being semi-new in the IGA golf scene, he was invited to help represent Team Idaho on home soil at Blue Lakes Country Club. Though Idaho did not win that week, it was clear to every single participant that Nate Smith was indeed a baller, not losing a single match he played in. As a matter of fact, Nate Smith has yet to lose a match as a member of Team Idaho in the PNGA’s Lamey Cup.
There I was, standing in Smith’s personal office, a.k.a. trophy room at home. As I looked around, I could see his hardware from his time as a professional golfer: staff bags, his tour cards, and his WNB Golf Classic Trophy. But I also noticed the ever-increasing trophy count and USGA Qualifying medals from him amateur events like the 2024 Idaho Men’s Amateur Championship or the 2005 Azalea Invitational. (I know for a fact his trophy collection is even bigger now than when I stood in the middle of it all.)
Nate Smith at back at home in the Teton Valley after winning the Scott Masingill Cup. | Teton Reserve Golf Course
If one were to go look at Nate Smith’s profile on WAGR.com, they’d see that Nate Smith does not back down from competition and relishes in the opportunity to compete against the greatest, even if they are half his age:
-2024 Azalea Invitational (41st)
-2024 Idaho State Amateur Championship (1st)
-2024 U.S. Amateur Championship (169th)
-2024 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship (33rd)
-2024 Stocker Cup Championship (3rd)
-2025 Gasparilla Invitational (22nd)
-2025 The Snedeker Memorial (1st)
-2025 Azalea Invitational (19th)
-2025 Huddleston Cup (4th)
-2025 Pacific Coast Amateur (13th)
-2025 Pacific Northwest Master-40 Amateur Championship (1st)
-2025 U.S. Amateur Championship (17th)
Golf is now a hobby for Nate. He’s active on social media, often sharing what he is up to with the public.
He plays locally, whether that is in IGA events — having earned multiple Players of the Year Awards in the last two seasons — or local USGA Qualifiers. Nate Smith is even a member of the Tampa Bay Swamp Dawgs, a golf team in the newly founded Grass League. He’s busy, but he is having fun and that is the way he wants it.
After he showed me his trophy room, I asked what he loved the most about golf now, and he was quick to say the networking and camaraderie that comes with it — something that was lacking during his time as a professional. He also added that he still gets the nerves, but because he is now grounded in the personal belief of who he is and the vast titles he now proudly goes by, golf is no longer causing a battle inside.
For Nate, not wearing the title of golfer is pure relief.