Story by Harry Crowther
On the first day of September, William Bryant arrives in the Carolina Golf Club parking lot at 8:40 a.m. He’s playing in a game with the club’s other top players as he did all summer. The drive to the course in Charlotte was slow because I-277 inner is closed. When he goes to retrieve his golf clubs from the trunk of his car, Bryant finds a dead frog.
The late-summer air is still and thick. Bryant walks up the hill to the clubhouse. Low sunlight reflects off the pond in front of the 18th green. Charlotte’s skyline glimmers in the distance.
Besides the detour and the amphibian, it’s just another day of golf for Bryant.
In another life, this day would be different. The frog would be alive. Bryant would be a college baseball player, throwing mid-90s fastballs on the mound for N.C. State. He would be an MLB Draft prospect.
That’s the life he should have. But now, he believes he is chasing something greater.
Life is funny that way. It doesn’t lack detours.
***
Bryant didn’t like Legos when he was in preschool. After daycare or on weekends, rather than build Hogwarts or the Millennium Falcon, he asked his mom to time how fast he could run.
“He would keep doing it to see if he could get faster and faster,” Angie Bryant said. “All he really liked and enjoyed was sports.”
At preschool graduation, he was named Most Likely to be a Professional Athlete.
From ages 10-12, Bryant played Little League baseball for the Carolina Pad team at Myers Park Trinity Little League. He made the all-star team each year. In the state championship game when he was 11, Bryant hit a towering three-run home run into the trees beyond the Keith Field fence at Myers Park Trinity to put the game out of reach.
“He was the best 11-year-old Little League player in the state,” his coach, Mark Crowther, said.
In the fall of 2019, now playing travel baseball for Charlotte’s Showcase Baseball Academy, Bryant blossomed as a pitcher. His arm strength and velocity exploded. At 16 years old, he increased his fastball speed by eight mph. He threw a ball 90 mph for the first time on April 16, 2020.
The human body is not meant to throw that hard at that age. The average 16-year-old pitcher’s fastball is 73-78 mph. Fewer than one percent of people can throw a ball 90 mph. Bryant was an outlier. And with the increase in velocity comes more stress on the arm and a greater risk of injury.
On Aug. 3, 2020, Bryant pitched well in the PBR Future Games with a fastball up to 91 mph. His recruiting consultant texted his dad that N.C. State pitching coach Clint Chrysler wanted to talk. Bryant called Chrysler on the drive home, and Chrysler made him an offer to pitch for the Wolfpack.
“We were stuck in traffic on I-85 coming up from Atlanta to Charlotte, and were very excited,” said his dad, Brian Bryant. “It was a good call.”
Bryant committed the next day.
“He had every opportunity to get to the big leagues,” Bryant’s pitching coach, Jake Robbins, said. “He was going to continue to work and get better.”
On Nov. 9, 2020, Brian Bryant got a call at home.
“We have to go,” Brian told his wife. “William hurt his arm. I think it’s bad.”
Bryant was at SBA’s facility for a recovery session. He wasn’t supposed to throw that day. A few of the other pitchers were doing ‘pull down’ drills — run as fast as they could and then throw as hard as they could.
“Coach, let me do it,” he said to Robbins.
Run. Gun. 94.
Run. Gun. 96.
97.
98.
“All right, you’re done,” Robbins said.
“Let me do one more.”
Run. Gun. Snap.
“You hear it more than you feel it,” Bryant said. “I hear it, don’t think anything of it, and then look down. My arm is essentially backwards.”
There’s video. It’s gruesome. He has watched it only once. A former MLB pitcher, Robbins said it was the first time in his 15-year coaching career he’d seen a humerus snap during a throw.
The break was significant, but doctors believed it would heal without surgery. His parents were heartbroken but say their son took the adversity in stride.
“I could see myself at that age being like, ‘My life’s over,’” his dad said. “There was none of that. I’m incredibly proud of how he handled himself.”
Bryant only became frustrated during the rehab process when doctors urged him to begin throwing sooner than he felt comfortable. Angie Bryant wanted to do testing on his bones, but the doctors told them the break was a fluke.
But flukes shouldn’t happen twice.
Bryant was up to 75 mph in a rehab bullpen on Aug. 6, 2021.
“I had a feeling something wasn’t right,” he said. “Started babying throws. Then there it goes. Again.”
His dad was there this time. They drove to OrthoCarolina urgent care in Matthews to find it was closed. Bryant sat in the car with his dad.
“I don’t know how I’m going to come back from this.”
They drove to the emergency room.
In the fall of 2022, Bryant and his mother were in the kitchen.
“’I should just play golf,’” he told her.
That summer, Bryant went to N.C. State to take summer classes and rehab with the baseball team. He didn’t miss a practice. But Bryant, his coaches, and the trainers all knew he likely would never throw another pitch.
Bryant always enjoyed golf. He had a natural talent and feel for the game. With a strong 6-foot-3 frame, he hits the ball a long way. Bryant’s average club head speed is 122 mph. The PGA Tour average is 116 mph. His average ball speed is 182 mph. Tour average is 174.
“To see somebody that is a great athlete, has great hand-eye coordination, but had never delved full-time into golf, it was kind of mind blowing,” his golf instructor, Nick Wilhelm, said. “He could just do things with the golf club that somebody who had played golf their whole life and that’s the only thing they had ever done wasn’t capable of doing.”
Bryant drew two members of the N.C. State golf team as roommates and played a few times with them. He reconnected with the sport he first played with his father when he was 2 years old at Carolina Golf Club. He emailed the golf coach, Press McPhaul.
McPhaul would give Bryant a chance, but first he had to meet with the baseball coaches. The time had come. Chrysler, the pitching coach who recruited him, shed a few tears in the meeting.
The tryout was two nine-hole rounds, and Bryant played well. After the second day, McPhaul called him into his office, and Bryant walked out with an N.C. State golf bag.
“I felt like I could be part of a team,” Bryant said. “You can’t do anything with the broken arm in baseball. I felt like a manager. I was just standing on the sidelines.”
The feeling of belonging didn’t last.
He redshirted his freshman year. On Aug. 6, 2023 — yes that date again — days before the start of his sophomore year, McPhaul told Bryant over the phone his spot was gone after two transfers had committed. He agreed to meet with Bryant in Raleigh but didn’t change his mind.
“I could tell he was upset,” his dad said. “It didn’t go well. He had tears in his eyes.”
Bryant decided to enter the transfer portal with hopes of finding a new team for his junior year. Coastal Carolina coaches saw him play in a tournament and were interested in making an offer. They were interested until another player committed to fill the last spot on the team. The only other school that gave him any kind of look was UNC-Wilmington.
Bryant is now enrolled at UNCW. He was in contact with the golf coach but hasn’t heard from him since the season started in early September.
College golf is hard enough. The scores required are so low and the spots available are so few. But transitioning from college baseball to college golf after a twice-broken arm less than nine months apart with almost no tournament resume? That shouldn’t be possible. Bryant did it anyway and continues to try. He lived at home all summer, competing whenever and wherever he could.
“He went all in,” his mom said. “He was practicing eight hours a day. He was signing up for tournaments. He had a little spark back.”
Bryant just loves golf.
“Simple as that,” he said.
Bryant does think about what could have been. How could he not? But he doesn’t miss baseball because he has golf.
“At this point it wouldn’t kill me if I wasn’t on a golf team,” he said. “But it would kill me if I wasn’t playing golf.
“I’m very grateful it happened.”
After his round at Carolina Golf Club, Bryant is exhausted. He shot 76. Nothing went his way. He eats a burger and watches Scottie Scheffler win the Tour Championship on a TV in the clubhouse dining room. Scheffler is the best golfer in the world. Yet on this Sunday, he hit a shank..
“I just think it’s cool that these PGA Tour guys play the same game as an 80-year-old dude,” Bryant said. “Everybody can hit high-quality shots, and everybody can hit really bad shots.
“You’re chasing perfect. But you’ll never get there.”
Bryant will be back tomorrow. On Labor Day Monday at Carolina Golf Club, another game. The biggest of the year. Bryant finishes his burger and rises from the table.
“Better get a good night’s sleep.”
