Yoenis Cespedes: Baseball’s Most Improbable Golf Prodigy – Wall Street Journal

When Yoenis Cespedes shows up for work, New York Mets hitting coach Kevin Long greets him with an odd question. Long is not so meddlesome as to ask him how he slept or what he ate for breakfast. But there is one thing Long wants to know about how Cespedes spent his morning: Did he play golf?

“If he played golf,” Long said, “most of the time he hits a home run.”

In three months with the Mets, Cespedes has emerged as many things: a fan favorite, a marquee attraction and above all, a catalyst for one of the most dramatic in-season turnarounds in baseball history. He has also become the game’s most improbable golf junkie.

Cespedes, 30, spent the first 25 years of his life in Cuba, an island with only two golf courses. He had virtually no exposure to the sport until early last year, when he tried it at a charity event in Florida. Now, he plays often before night games, smashing monster drives and posting scores that range from the low 70s to the low 80s.

“I’ve witnessed it. I’ve played with him at least three times. His power as far as driving the ball, hitting the ball up, is incredible,” said Mets pitching coach Dan Warthen. “400-yard drives, 250-yard 5-irons, just pure.”

The habit first drew widespread attention last week, when Cespedes was spotted playing a morning round at Medinah Country Club before Game 4 of the National League Championship Series in Chicago. But for Cespedes, the outing was only in keeping with routine.

Along with pitcher Jon Niese, he has played several of the top courses within a short drive of New York City, including Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point and Liberty National. When the Mets went on the road, Cespedes would take his blue-and-orange golf bag with him and play a course near whichever city the team was in.

“For me, golf is sort of like when I go fishing,” Cespedes said through an interpreter. “I just forget any problem that I have, anything that’s troubling me, and I just worry about what’s at hand and enjoy it.”

Unlike starting pitchers, who typically have four days off between starts, everyday players are usually too worn down by the grind of a 162-game season to spend much time playing golf. But the Mets don’t merely tolerate Cespedes’s hobby. They encourage it.

“I want him to play golf as much as possible,” Long said. “It tires him out a little bit. Instead of having so much energy, it seems like when he’s just a little bit less amped up and fresh, the better he plays.”

In stints with the Mets and the Detroit Tigers this year, Cespedes has produced at a level that makes his habits hard to assail. He hit 35 home runs, drove in 105 runs and posted a .542 slugging percentage, all career highs. The extent to which his golf game helped him at the plate is debatable. But the skills he honed playing baseball have undoubtedly made him more of a natural on the course.

Niese recalled Cespedes’s second shot on the par-5 18th hole at Ferry Point. With his ball 286 yards from the pin, Cespedes turned to Niese and said, “Watch this.” He then pulled a 3-iron out of his bag and hit the ball to within a few feet of the hole.

“He’s self-taught, which is the most incredible thing,” Niese said. “If he got lessons on his drive, he could be on the PGA Tour.” Niese added that Cespedes’s biggest issue was accuracy off the tee, and that he fares better on open, treeless courses.

Butch Harmon, the renowned golf instructor best known for having coached Tiger Woods, said that among elite athletes in other sports, baseball and hockey players tend to make for the best golfers. In hockey, it’s the slapshot motion that translates well. For baseball players, Harmon said it’s the hand-eye coordination and rotation of a baseball swing. “I just think baseball players make good golfers,” he said.

It is still rare, though, for an elite hitter with such limited experience even watching golf to shoot as low as Cespedes has in such a short time. David Leadbetter, a prominent instructor who is helping Derek Jeter take up golf in retirement, said a powerful baseball swing may help a hitter drive a golf ball a long way. But it does nothing for the kinds of finesse shots a golfer needs to shoot in the 70s.

Jeter made a career of slapping singles to right field, but as he learned earlier this year, in golf that translates to a tee shot in the right rough. “He was the biggest slicer in the world,” Leadbetter said. “He’d slice everything.”

Like many hitters, Jeter eschewed golf during his playing days because he thought it would be detrimental to his baseball swing. But Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz, a scratch golfer, said a player’s golf habit shouldn’t cause as much worry as it often does.

Smoltz, now an MLB Network analyst, said the mental benefits of playing golf helped him extend his baseball career. “The peacefulness of getting away from the game that consumes you and doing something that isn’t harming you, it is exactly what worked with my personality,” he said.

By all accounts, Cespedes is a social golfer. His playing partners since August have included Niese and reliever Tyler Clippard, among others. But once he’s on the course, Cespedes can get lost in his own monologue.

“He talks to himself in the third person,” Niese said. “So he’s like, ‘Oh, that was a great shot, Cespy.’ Or he goes, ‘Come on, Cespy, be great one time.’”

When the World Series is over, Cespedes will return to his offseason home in Florida. With free agency approaching, he is expected to land a lucrative megadeal. In the meantime, expect him to continue the winter routine he described to Warthen: wake up, work out and then hit the links.

Long will be nowhere in sight, but for anyone who asks, the answer will be the same: Yes, I played golf today.