Fourteen months ago, former LSU star Smylie Kaufman had recently returned from Panama City, Panama, after competing in Web.com Tour’s annual Panama Claro Championship, only to hop on a plane headed toward Los Angeles.
The City of Angels embodied hope for Kaufman, as did many other qualifying tournaments to seal himself a spot on the PGA Tour.
Kaufman, unblinded by the professional tour’s bright spotlight, opened at 2-under par at the Farmers Insurance Open as he continued looking for more upcoming PGA Tour-credentialed tournaments.
“I know that I just have to keep getting better, developing my game and the results will keep coming,” Kaufman told The Daily Reveille on Feb. 11, 2015.
Sunday night, Kaufman found himself playing alongside 2015 Masters Champion Jordan Spieth in golf’s most prestigious 18 holes at Augusta National Golf Club.
“I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing,” Kaufman said after round 3 on Saturday afternoon. “Today was a good day.”
After a 3-under par, 69, show-stealing round on 54 holes, Kaufman was one stroke behind Spieth, but slipped on Sunday — 9-over par through 18 holes — in one of the more amicably-received stumbles Baton Rouge-bred golf has ever seen.
Given his age and experience, the slip from the top wasn’t career-threatening for the 24-year-old Masters rookie.
“My dream was just to play here,” Kaufman said after the third round. “Now that I’ve won Vegas and got in, now it’s the real thing. Let’s see what happens.”
What happened was Kaufman, a Vestavia Hills, Alabama, native, finished 7-over par for the tournament to finish tied for 29th — a $71,000 payday.
He told the Baton Rouge Advocate he had his “worst putting day ever.”
The 29th-place finish, though, marks Kaufman’s best finish in a major championship after missing the cut in the 2014 U.S. Open following his senior season at LSU.
Kaufman, to many Tiger fans’ delight, repped his specialty purple polo to remind the Louisiana folks of his college days, along with swinging his Cleveland clubs with a purple and gold “#7 for Heisman” stamped on the club’s face.
“Get that jacket,” LSU running back Leonard Fournette tweeted to Kaufman on Saturday night.
“And now my day is officially made,” Kaufman replied.
Although Kaufman jokes that LSU football can be the “toughest thing in the world to watch,” he told the The Daily Reveille last fall that he gives LSU immense credit for his success to his experiences as a Tiger.
“I learned things from LSU that I would not’ve learned anywhere else,” Kaufman said.
Kaufman said the uplifting challenges posed at LSU, against and beside his teammates, positioned him for his recent success and a competitive showing at Augusta.
“That’s something we all took pride in,” Kaufman said before Sunday’s round. “We wanted to have the best golf team that we could in college. The guys that I was surrounded by in college made me tougher and want to be better.”

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David J. Phillip

Smylie Kaufman looks for his ball with his caddie Aaron Alpern after teeing off on the eighth hole during the final round of the Masters golf tournament Sunday, April 10, 2016, in Augusta, Ga. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)