Here’s how this ex-NBA star has used golf to fill the void

When Chandler Parsons‘ NBA career came to a sudden halt, he wasn’t really sure what to do with himself all of a sudden.

Even now, four years into retirement from a nine-year NBA career that saw him play for four teams, he still misses the league.

“I miss the game, I miss hooping, I miss being healthy,” Parsons told GOLF Subpar co-hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz. “Like I miss my knee not f****** me up and me going out and having 25 and feeling great. And like I miss that feeling of winning and competing and, you know, it was awesome. My dream as a kid was to make the NBA.”

Parsons sustained career-ending injuries, including a traumatic brain injury, a disc herniation, and a torn labrum, in a January 2020 car crash where a drunk driver hit him. He announced his retirement just a few days after that and then his life started changing rapidly, he said.

The COVID-19 Pandemic quickly set in and had he stayed with his team at the time, the Atlanta Hawks, he wouldn’t have even made the NBA bubble.

He called it a “weird” way to end his career.

Less than a year after his accident, he was engaged to his now-wife Haylee Harrison and another year after that, the couple their first child in November 2021.

“So, like, it all kind of happened so fast,” Parsons said. “And I started getting into TV and doing different stuff. So like, I always was so scared to retire because basketball was all I had… Like I never had a job growing up. [TV] was my first job. So like, I was scared like, “F***, what am I going to do without, like, a schedule on a regiment?”

Then, like so many former athletes, Parsons found golf. He realized quickly it could fill the void left behind from his playing days.

“The country club and that kind of hang of the gambling, the s*** talk like the locker room, that’s the closest thing an ex-athlete has to that,” Parsons said. “Like from the locker room to like the locker room attendant who picks up after you and has all the products there and the showers. It’s the same feel as an NBA locker room.

“And then you go out there and you still have that drive. Like, I’m an athlete. I was really good at basketball. I’m not that good at golf, but like, I still have that edge. I want to gamble and you can always handicap it with odds since you can always make it even and fair and fun. So as a guy that loves the competition, golf really made my retirement so smooth.”

For more from Parsons, including an embarrassing story from an LPGA Pro-Am, watch to the full episode below.

Jack Hirsh

Golf.com Editor

Jack Hirsh is an assistant editor at GOLF. A Pennsylvania native, Jack is a 2020 graduate of Penn State University, earning degrees in broadcast journalism and political science. He was captain of his high school golf team and recently returned to the program to serve as head coach. Jack also still *tries* to remain competitive in local amateurs. Before joining GOLF, Jack spent two years working at a TV station in Bend, Oregon, primarily as a Multimedia Journalist/reporter, but also producing, anchoring and even presenting the weather. He can be reached at jack.hirsh@golf.com.