Ben Garner : The Legend

We’ve known Ben Garner since the fall of 1994, when he arrived in Seattle from Southern California to play golf at the University of Washington.

We knew immediately that Ben was different.

He was an extraordinary golfer, naturally charismatic, fiercely competitive and somehow capable of making a friend almost anywhere he went. Nearly three decades later, not much has changed—except that life has given him the kind of perspective that can only be earned with time.

To us, he’s BGarnes. Gentle Ben. Our kids know him simply as Uncle Ben.

He’s our first call when we’re in Hawaii, one of our favorite people to share a round with, and quite possibly the only plus-handicap golfer we know who plays right-handed and putts left-handed.

But long before any of that, Ben was one of the most accomplished junior golfers in Southern California.

Growing up in the same era and competitive circles as Tiger Woods, Ben competed against Tiger more than 75 times—and beat him on more than a few occasions. He was part of an extraordinary generation of junior golf in Southern California, a player whose talent and potential suggested a future at the highest levels of the game.

As it often does, life had other plans.

Ben’s story took turns no one could have predicted. His path through golf, friendship, adversity and reinvention eventually brought him to the Big Island of Hawaii, where he built a life far removed from what everyone once assumed his future would look like.

And perhaps that’s what makes his story so compelling.

Golf has a tendency to measure people by scores, wins, rankings and what happens next. But a life in the game is rarely that simple.

Sometimes the most interesting stories belong to the players whose lives didn’t follow the expected path.

Ben has remained remarkably close to the game. He still plays at an exceptional level. He has quietly influenced Tour players and professional athletes, caddied inside the ropes at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am for his longtime friend Kelly Slater, and shared countless rounds with people from every corner of golf.

Through all of it, he has remained unmistakably Ben.

Generous. Curious. Competitive. Occasionally impossible to locate. Completely at home with a golf club in his hands or a surfboard under his arm.

Most importantly, he is still one of the most genuine and down-to-earth people we know.

Writer Charlie Warzel captured Ben’s remarkable story beautifully in The Golfer’s Journal, Issue No. 17. It’s a story about enormous talent and expectation, about what happens when the path you imagined suddenly changes, and about finding another way forward without losing the things—and the people—you love along the way.

To us, however, Ben’s story is simpler.

He was there at the beginning.

A teammate. A competitor. A lifelong friend. A founding member of Team RADMOR.

And our original Citizen of the Game.

— Scott & Bob
Co-Founders, RADMOR

Read Ben Garner’s full story, “Hiding in Plain Sight,” by Charlie Warzel in The Golfer’s Journal, Issue No. 17.