Johnny Golf: Golf Digest Puts QB on Cover

Johnny Football strikes a Heisman pose on the cover of Golf Digest. Does the Cleveland Browns backup quarterback really love golf, or does Golf Digest really love selling magazines?

This spring, LPGA commissioner Michael Whan criticized Golf Digest for picturing a sports-bra-clad Paulina Gretzky on the cover of its May issue. Whan and other golf aficionados complained of the inappropriateness of devoting the prime, print real estate to a sex symbol merely dating a golfer when many deserving LPGA golfers could have adorned the cover instead.

Turnabout may be fair play for the men on the PGA tour. Johnny Football jumps off the newsstand faster than Joe Golf–or Hunter Mahan or Webb Simpson for that matter. As his famous finger gesture informs, Johnny Manziel means money.  

The Heisman Trophy-winner expresses his enthusiasm about the game–the one played with a dimpled, round ball rather than a prolate spheroid–in the upcoming issue.

“I was only 4 or 5 years old, maybe younger than that,” he recalls, “and I remember hitting plastic golf balls over the fence with these little starter clubs…. I hit that thing everywhere I could–from the flowers, the bushes, even out of the pool. The more I think about it, doing that taught me how to hit shots off all kinds of surfaces and lies.”