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Tremendous 24: Jonathan Schickler

Writer's picture: Donald HamiltonDonald Hamilton

Tremendous 24: Jonathan Schickler

Golf, a sport that may not resonate with everyone, holds a unique place in the lives of some. It serves as a therapeutic escape, a chance to play 18 holes with friends on a beautiful day while engaging in deep conversations about life. Compared to other sports, golf demands extreme patience, precision, and intense mental focus, making it more of a mental challenge than a physical one. 


In this episode of the Tremendous 24 series, we delve into the most emotional story of the first 24 people I've interviewed: Jonathan Schickler, whose journey with golf is a testament to its healing power.

It was December 2021. I’m home for my senior year of winter break from New Paltz and haven’t worked since I was working on campus during school. It has been a little over a year since I started the podcast, so I was very comfortable interviewing at this point. I always wanted to have a golfer on the show, and there was no one better than my friend Jonathan, who lives and breathes golf and has been a part of some professional tournaments.


It’s a cold winter day. I was freezing in my car, so I warmed it up before I started the phone interview with Schickler, where we immediately got into it. The energy from the jump was genuine despite Schickler dealing with the flu. Then we got into it.


Jonathan Schickler's journey began in Jacksonville, Florida, where he and his brother were adopted at birth. Despite the challenges of being raised in Ridgefield, Connecticut, by parents struggling with drug addiction, Schickler's story is a testament to the importance of second chances. He faced difficulties navigating the high-pressure environment of Connecticut, a path that he later realized had led him astray. His story is a beacon of hope, showing that it's never too late to turn things around.


“Growing up in Ridgefield itself, it’s going to sound like first-world problems came with a much different set of sort of issues…Everybody had to play four sports. Everyone had to make every honors class…It was competitive mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. All those kind of things built up to kind of my decision I would make, I would say, later on in life, that set me down the wrong path."

Ridgefield, Connecticut

Schickler and his brother never knew they were adopted until they were 11 years old due to looking like their parents and never really thought of it. Many people didn’t believe him, including one of his friends who bet $500 that he wasn’t adopted, losing the bet in the process.


“I remember in high school my soccer teammates didn’t know, and I told them…They made this pool, like betting pool, and were taking money for whether they thought I was adopted or not actually adopted… I think one kid lost $500 (laughs).”


Schickler’s biological parents, such as his father, sadly passed away from a heroin overdose a week before he was born. To make matters worse, his biological mother committed suicide after giving birth to his half-brother. Despite how emotional it was, Schickler expressed not being as affected by it due to not really getting to know them or even knowing he was adopted until he was 11.


“I try not to think about it really because… I certainly think about the addiction apart…As far as the other stuff, death, and all that, I don’t really think about that too much because I didn’t really know them. I know that sounds messed up, but it never really affected me. For the first 11 years of my life, I didn’t even know that the parents I live with now weren’t my birth parents. So, for me, it never really affected what I did or the way I lived, or kind of how it shaped me, I guess, is the way I could put it.”

Schickler with his stepdad Rich.
Schickler with his stepdad Rich.

After the part with his parents, we got into sports, and Schickler played pretty much everything: football, soccer, basketball, golf, etc. As a skinny kid at Immaculate High School in Danbury, Connecticut, he played kick returner for football but didn’t like the physical demands of the sport. In basketball, he described himself as a JJ Redick, not the most athletic guy on the court but a sharpshooter. In baseball, he was among the top pitchers in his state, his favorite sport before golf. 


Schickler was also a two-time conference keeper of the year in soccer. He moved to soccer because it allowed him to use his feet. He mentioned that his arm was getting messed up from baseball, leading to his departure. Schickler enjoyed playing soccer, but the team struggled to recruit athletic players due to unfortunate injuries that sapped nine of the 11 starters. 


One athlete who inspired Schickler was the late great Kobe Bryant himself. He described when he witnessed Bryant’s greatness, scoring 81 points with his father as a kid. That’s what made him want to become an athlete.


“I was probably six years old…I would run to my dad’s room, and you know we’d watch TV together…It was the first time I ever watched an NBA game. My dad goes, “You got to watch this. This is going to define your generation”…I remember watching, and I just remember Kobe carving up the court, and then my dad goes, “You see that guy?” And I go, “Yeah, who is that?” He goes, “That’s who you should want to be like.”... Since then, dude, that was it. That was what I saw, and I wanted to be like him. I want to dominate at something one day like that.”

We then got into Schickler’s coke addiction in high school, where he was selling, and his life with family and friends fell apart. He even got arrested. Schickler was candid about his love for getting high at the time, first starting with weed. Matters only got worse when he first tried coke at a party as a 16-year-old when he asked two guys what they were doing, and they said, “Coke.” At that moment, he felt on top of the world.


“I go in the back room with my buddies, and one of them pulls out this rock, and I go, what is that? He goes, “This is coke.”... I was like, oh, okay…I didn’t really think anything of it. I just knew it was going to get me high… I did that one line, and I felt like I was king of the world. I felt like I could do anything… By the end of the night, I had done 15 lines of coke.”


Schickler’s dark path dwelled deeper when he started to sell weed to gain money to buy coke. During this time, Schickler wasn’t close with his brother, wasn’t talking to his family, and was very irritable. He wasn’t himself. 

One weekend, his parents were away, and he threw a party where his dad found coke in the house and threatened to call the cops to get it tested. Schickler went to his room to snort the coke to get rid of it. Once he came downstairs, he ended up beating his father up on his front lawn, leaving him with bruises; where cops came to give his drug test results initially but ended up arresting him.


Schickler had to rely on his ex-girlfriend, who bailed him out as he was charged with a Class A misdemeanor and criminal mischief. When Schickler returned, he argued with his mother for the first time. He had two choices to make: Jail or rehab. He chose the latter.


“I got in trouble again, and they said, you got two choices. This is what happened when I went to court. You can either go to jail or you can go to rehab. I didn’t want to go to jail, so I chose rehab.”

Schickler spent 29 days in rehab. He mentioned how, during detox and intake, he dealt with thoughts of suicide, cold sweating, etc. While in rehab, he made new friends who were going through the same troubles he went through. He would also see obscene things happen while in rehab, including doing behavioral therapy. During that time, Schickler learned much about himself as he became healthier.


Once he got out of rehab, it took time to repair the damage done to his family, but luckily, they were able to heal their past wounds. Schickler described rehab as a process that can’t be rushed and takes time to get back to yourself.


“People don’t realize just because you stop doesn’t mean your inceptors, you know, instantly turn back on. It takes a while. It took me, probably even after rehab it took me like six months before I started to feel quote-on-quote “normal again.”

From there, we got into his golf journey, where Schickler first played with his grandfather when he was eight. At first, Schickler didn’t love the sport, but once his grandfather passed away when he was young, he grew to love the game. His love for golf was a tribute to his grandfather, describing him as his best friend and how his passing attributed to his coke addiction later on.


“He loved it so much. He retired into a golf community in New Jersey…He passed away due to, I think it was complications from lung cancer that he had…For him, golf was always his thing. I always attributed my love for golf from him. My grandfather was like my best friend. I loved my grandfather.”


Schickler grew up watching the golf channel with his grandfather, where he watched greats such as Tiger Woods and learned the fundamentals of the game. Schickler started getting into golf and washing golf carts in Massachusetts. Being around the game more encouraged him to want to learn how to play.

Schickler golfing on the golf course.
Schickler golfing on the golf course.

Once Schickler returned to South Carolina, he dedicated himself to the game. His mother’s best friend, Amy, introduced him to her husband and his first golf coach, Bruce Wilkins, a PGA Tour teaching coach. Schickler would spend 18-hour days working rigorously on his golfing game. He started to take his diet more seriously and was meal-prepped to improve his diet, along with doing yoga to improve his flexibility and hit the ball better.


Schickler described golf as the most challenging sport because there’s no one way to teach it. Everyone has their unique technique to be successful at the sport. He also expressed how golf has helped save him, using it to escape from life when needed.


“Having golf is great because it takes me out of the house. I’m getting fresh air. I’m walking or riding, depending on the day…It’s got my mind so focused that I can’t think about anything else. I think that’s what saved me is the fact I found something that could steer my thoughts away from all the bad s**t that might be happening in my life, all the stuff I don’t want to deal with or I don’t want to hear…Now, in some semblance, I’m like, “Great,” I feel like I’m good again.”

Schickler then spoke about some tours he’s participated in, such as the Gator Golf Tour. In that tour, he competes against opponents who’ve played in the PGA Tour, those trying to make it, and those who are just doing it to do it. Before each tournament, Schickler would have a notebook to take notes on the course and study the angles for each hole and how he wanted to hit the ball.


For some tournaments, Schickler would drive a day and a half to attend the event and warm up an hour and a half before each match. He’d do his yoga in the morning before heading to the course to warm up and stretch a little again. Some tournaments lasted two to three days.


After tournaments, Schickler and his team would go to the bars for a good time. One night, they even went golfing in the dark with headlights on, where they lost their money but gained it back on a bet with $3,000 added on. They even sang karaoke that night drunk with Schickler, describing it as one of the best times of his life after a long, grueling week of golf.

Outside of golf, Schickler enjoys fishing, even catching a mullet snapper at one point, which he got to eat. When it comes to music, he enjoys listening to Kanye West, Bruce Springsteen, Juice Wrld, Frank Sinatra, and Eminem, to name a few. He then named some of his top golfers: Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, and Arnold Palmer, who were his Mount Rushmore. he still golfs today, more so for fun than professionally, as he tries to build his card business in Palmetto Pulls.


Near the end, after speaking some hoops, Schickler named Kobe his GOAT and discussed what he wanted people to learn from his story.


“It’s ok to mess up. You don’t have to be perfect. You know everyone does get a second chance, whether you realize it or not…I’ve gotten like twenty chances, so I know that that’s the truth… And just be happy, and if you’re not happy, take five minutes out of your day, two minutes, take twenty seconds, and go make somebody else happy. The best thing you can do each and every day is go make somebody else smile… Making other people happy will make you happier as a person. Whatever you're doing, do it to the fullest degree.”


Schickler's story is one of utter resilience and is genuinely authentic for those who've gone through addiction. Someone who went down the wrong path in life before ultimately finding the courage to go to rehab and a sport that changed his life: Golf. It taught him discipline, made his diet healthier, and overall improved his well-being.


We can all learn something from Schickler’s story, which is why he embodies Greatness Within.

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