Charles

Howell III

Howell attended Oklahoma State University where he majored in Business Management but had already competed in his first PGA Tour event, the 1996 Buick Challenge, at the age of 17.

While at OSU in 2000 he was an individual winner at the NCAA Division 1 Golf Championship and was the recipient of the Haskins Award, which honors the country’s most outstanding collegiate golfer.

ESPN announcer Charlie Rymer is credited with creating Howell’s nickname that has stayed with him all these years, after referring to him as ‘Chucky Three Sticks’.

Howell’s debut as a professional saw him register a T32 finish at the Greater Hartford Open in July 2000.

Largely thanks to a third-place finish at the John Dere Classic just three weeks later, his earnings from PGA Tour events by year end were $263,533.

Howell booked his permanent place on the PGA Tour for the 2002 season and landed his first win in October’s Michelob Championship at Kingsmill.

His two-stroke victory over Scott Hoch and Brandt Jobe earned him the $666,000 winner’s purse.

From here Howell began to build his reputation as Mr Consistent. Having made 27 cuts from 32 events in 2002 he made 29 from 31 tournaments the following year, as well as achieving his career best finish in a Major with T10 at the 2003 PGA Championship.

His next win came at the 2007 Nissan Open where it took a third extra playoff hole to see off Phil Mickelson’s challenge at the Riviera Country Club, California.

Win number three took a little longer to arrive but came with an added bonus.

In November 2018 Howell took the honors at the RSM Classic where he beat Patrick Rodgers on a second extra hole after both players were tied at 19-under for the tournament.

That win booked him an automatic place at the 2019 Masters in his hometown, ensuring his first participation since 2012.

By the time he was ready to leave the PGA Tour for LIV Golf, he had crafted a hugely impressive career record.

In 609 PGA Tour events he had picked up three tournament wins and collected earnings of $42,025,458, while reaching a high of 15th in the official world golf ranking.

Howell signed up for the inaugural LIV Golf Invitational Series in 2022 in time to feature in the third event at Bedminster.

He explained on Fairway To Heaven why he felt the time had been right to try something new.

“I’d played the PGA Tour for 22 years and it was awesome,” he said.

“It was a childhood dream of mine; I remember I told my parents when I was 10 years old, I wanted to play golf on the PGA Tour and they probably thought I was crazy.

“I had fulfilled that dream and was at the point where I had been to a lot of the venues and a lot of events 22 times.

“When LIV came about I was very excited about it, but I didn’t know if I’d get an opportunity to play.

“When I originally heard of LIV it sounded like it would be the top 48 players in the world ranking and that was it.

“So when I got the opportunity through Bryson [DeChambeau] and through Crushers I jumped at it because it’s sort of reinvigorated myself, it’s reinvigorated my love for competitive golf.

“My son Chase absolutely loves it, so there’s all kinds of elements to this, and I get to travel the world.

“I get to travel to a lot of places I’ve never been to in my life and now I can also call myself – when this is all said and done – a global golfer as well, and I think that’s really cool.”

Charles Howell III could not have got off to a better start in 2023 as he grabbed the fourth professional win of his career at LIV Golf Mayakoba in some style.

A bogey-free 8-under-par 63 in the final round saw him end the tournament four strokes ahead of runner-up Peter Uhlein, the biggest winning margin of his pro era.

It also helped Crushers take their first ever team title.

“I’ve played in a lot of golf tournaments in my life, and I haven’t won a lot of them, and you have the doubts and the feelings, will you ever win again?” Howell said after celebrating the double podium.

“To do it against this competition with these guys standing up here is more than I could ever dream of.”

That team victory set Crushers on a winning trajectory and having finished the regular season in second place behind 4Aces, the foursome of Howell, captain Bryson DeChambeau, Paul Casey and Anirban Lahiri lifted the overall Team Championship at the end of season finale in Miami.

Howell’s solid game throughout the year saw him clinch 10th place in the player standings.

Howell began the 2024 season with three top-8 finishes in the first four LIV Golf events, but in Singapore in May he was troubled by pain in his lower left leg.

The diagnosis was a stress fracture of the left tibia and Howell was sidelined for three months.

Crushers captain DeChambeau turned to LIV reserve John Catlin as a replacement and the California native competed in four events in Howell’s absence, with a best finish of T7 in Nashville.

At the time of his injury Howell was 19th in the individual standings and although he returned to action in September for LIV Golf Greenbrier, he ended the year 32nd.

Crushers finished top of the table in the regular season but slumped to T7 at the LIV Golf Team Championship in Dallas.

Although the season had its disappointments, Howell has been quick to praise the efforts of captain DeChambeau, who is the youngest player in the group.

“Bryson happens to be the captain but we’re all beholden to try to shoot the lowest score possible so that’s number one,” Howell said on Fairway To Heaven.

“Number two, Bryson is always entertaining. If there’s ever a dull moment or a moment that you get bored or you need a good laugh or a good story, just go to dinner with Bryson or go hang out with Bryson.

“One thing I’ve learned about him that I didn’t know before is he has a massive heart.

“He really does care, and he wants LIV to succeed and there’s a lot of work done behind the scenes by Bryson because he is one of the more influential guys who came to LIV so his voice should be heard.”

Charles Howell III’s father is Dr Charles Howell, a renowned pediatrician who performed an estimated 16,000 surgeries and procedures during a 40-year career.

Along with mother Debbie and younger brother Ben, the Howell family would embark on monthly seven-hour drives from Augusta to Orlando so that 12-year-old Charles could receive instruction from legendary swing coach David Leadbetter.

Golf pro Howell went on to marry his Oklahoma State University sweetheart Heather Myers and they live in a beautiful Windermere home in Orlando, Florida with their two children.

In April 2019 daughter Ansley and son Chase caddied for Howell at the family-oriented Par-3 Contest at Augusta. Chase, then aged nine, almost reached the green at the 9th hole after taking his dad’s tee shot.

There is no better person to talk about Charles Howell III’s swing than legendary coach David Leadbetter, especially as he has worked with Howell since he was a promising youngster.

“Pound for pound, Charles was probably the longest hitter on the PGA Tour,” Leadbetter told Golf Digest in 2021.

“He has an excellent set-up with a little bit of knee flex and great bend from the hips.

“He works the club away in a nice one-piece motion – hands, arm, shoulders all moving away.

“He has a huge wind up with large upper body rotation, well past the 100-degree mark with a lot of resistance from the lower body so it produces tremendous torque.

“At the top of the backswing his left wrist is a little bit bowed and the club face a bit closed and you’ll see how high his left shoulder is.

“One of the problems I’ve always seen with Charles’s swing is how his shoulder plane tends to flatten out on the backswing.

“As he starts down, he comes in really angled towards the ball but then there’s good extension through the shoulders.

“For me Charles’s issue is that he has so much lag in the downswing that he can’t get that whip, but he’s a tremendous striker of the ball and great at iron play.”

When it comes to trying out new golf equipment, technology and suggested techniques, Howell admits he is ‘100% a nerd’.

That thorough approach means he is right on top of every little development that could help enhance his game, even if that means trying out every new club with all its permutations.

“One thing I’ve learned to do with the adjustable drivers is try them in every possible setting, even ones I know I’ll never end up using,” he told Golf Digest.

“I want to see what it does. I purposely run through the whole gamut because you might find a setting that can be useful at some point.

“I’ve learned in my career that the range is not golf. It’s practice or mechanics building, but it’s not the game of golf.

“So I start there, and then I try them on the course.

“I do that to understand and trust what the head is doing at impact and during the swing, especially when the target is 30 yards wide, not 300.”

Howell powered to a bogey-free final round 63 when winning the 2023 season opener at LIV Golf Mayakoba, with a selection of Ping and PXG clubs in his armory.

New to the scene, the driver was a Ping G430 (15-degrees) and that was backed up by a pair of big guns, with both the 3-wood (15-degrees) and 7-wood (21-degrees) coming from the PXG 0311 range.

His iron set was PXG 0317 ST (4 to pitching wedge) while it was over to Ping Glide 4.0 for the wedge set (52, 56 and 60-degrees).

Precision putting was trusted to a L.A.B Golf LINK 1 while his ball of choice was the Titleist Pro V1.