Like any competitive athlete, Canadian golfer Stuart Macdonald is keenly aware of where he stands in the rankings. Take the Korn Ferry Tour, for example. While it may sound like a pioneering nü-metal band easing into semi-retirement as the house band on a cruise ship, it is more akin to the minor leagues for the PGA. Young, hungry golfers duke it out all year on tour, vying to finish the year among the top 25 players granted PGA memberships for following year. Macdonald is on the outside looking in, but steadily getting closer to the velvet rope. Listed at #125 when the year began, he now stands at #62 after a string of top-10 finishes. How does he explain his sudden improvement? "I think my swing has gotten a little bit better," explains Macdonald. A polymath athlete (polymathlete?), Macdonald honed his cerebellum with a wide array of sports as a youth before settling on golf. "I played baseball, soccer, tennis, hockey and all the racket sports," reminisces Macdonald. "I’d say when I was 12 or 13, I started taking it seriously, and I quit all the other sports and started focusing on golf." While his career path is clear, Macdonald has not lost touch with his ball-striking roots. As a student at Purdue University, he earned a spot on the golf team as a walk-on. One of his teammates, fellow PGA pro Adam Schenk, shared his affinity for striking a hollow celluloid ball. "We played a lot of ping-pong in college," reminisced Macdonald. "I played a lot of ping-pong with Adam Schenk. I played with Adam for two years at Purdue, and he’s really good at ping pong and we’d play for hours every day." There is an established history of table tennis rivalries on the PGA tour. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson were often seen on opposite ends of a nine-foot rectangular green. How do Macdonald's ping-pong skills stack up on the Korn Ferry Tour? "I would venture to say I’m top-five because I know there are some really good players I haven’t played," Macdonald reasoned. Asked which contemporary golfer he would most like to play with, Macdonald chose the enigmatic and controversial Bryson DeChambeau. "It’d be really interesting to play with Bryson, I think, and just hear him talk about all of the elements of hitting a golf shot and hearing what his thought process is and playing golf" Surely Macdonald is aware that DeChambeau, a physicist by education, is also an avid table tennis player? While best known for a juvenile spat with Brooks Koepka, DeChambeau could reinvent his image with a much more interesting rivalry if he accepts Macdonald's implicit challenge.

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