This is The Undercover Newsletter, where we grant anonymity to people in golf who’ve got something to say. Here a current PGA Tour player is interviewed by Senior Writer Joel Beall. You can sign up via Golf Digest+ to make sure you receive this newsletter regularly.

There is a lot of dead time in golf. PGA Tour rounds are always over five hours, plus there’s warm-up, cool-down, practice, meals, hanging in the locker room. It’s a day. We love golf, but it is our job, and I am sure you don’t just talk about work at your place of work. We need a distraction, and the No. 1 distraction out here is football.

If you made a heat map of where pro golfers were born, the American south would be on fire. Even more tour players went to school in this region, where college football is religion. I grew up out west and stayed there for college. Although it was Division I, we were far from a pigskin powerhouse. I had a lot of friends from my AJGA days that came from southern backgrounds or migrated to SEC towns, but football was...