American poker player Dusty Schmidt has decided to pursue one of his greatest passions and has planned to return to golf, a sport to which he dedicated himself years ago. Schmidt is the most recent in a slew of American players who have taken a step back from the game after the conflicts that arose in 2011.
Since Black Friday, now nine long months ago, American poker players have been at a loss, and matters have only become bleaker since then. When the US Department of Justice cracked down on online poker sites, forcing them all to bar American players so as to avoid the same fate as Absolute Poker, Full Tilt, and PokerStars, the opportunities available for American players dried up almost overnight. American players, who had largely dominated the poker world, were in trouble. Without places online to play poker, many players have tried to find ways to circumvent their troubles and stay in the game. Some of these players now play live games instead, while a great many have left the US for greener poker pastures, such as Canada or Costa Rica. Many have played it by ear, riding out the live poker tournament season with turnouts at the World Series of Poker and the European Poker Tour. As the big ticket tournaments are coming to a close for this year, however, more and more poker players have started asking themselves what they should do now.
For Schmidt, the answer was one that would take him back to his first love– the game of golf. Schmidt, who played golf in high school and at the university level, has broken a number of Tiger Woods’ amateur records, giving him a solid track record as a golfer and suggesting that he just might have a shot at achieving his lifelong goal of a spot on the PGA Tour. It was this dream that Schmidt was following seven years ago, when he had a heart attack which, coupled with a lack of funding, would cut his golf career short. Schmidt has decided to give it another go, as he posted on his blog at dustyschmidt.net:
“I have spent most of this year post black Friday figuring out what I want out of life… I came to the realization that I love golf infinitely more than I love playing poker. With that, I have decided to return to golf and use all of what poker has taught me to try and become the best I can be (whatever that is) at the game of golf.”
Although Schmidt seems to have a golf career ahead of him, don’t expect him to bow out of the poker world completely. He’ll be working with BlueFire Poker as a poker coach, helping less experienced players and recording videos for the site. You can also expect to see him at 20-25k hands per month on the site, as he plans to keep his poker skills honed. If Schmidt can take his consistency and determination and apply it towards golf, he should be absolutely unstoppable on the green.