You may never have heard the name Aaron Wise before, but the 21-year-old pro golfer has just won his first ever PGA Tour event, which brings with it a cool R17,4 million payday.

If he really wanted to become famous he should have gone with the ‘My Bok Boks’ angle, like SA golfer Jared Harvey, but you live and you learn.

According to his PGA Tour page, Wise was born in Cape Town, but emigrated to the United States at the age of three.

Suppose we can’t really claim him as one of our own, but we can relate to some of the struggles he faced this weekend.

Wise shot a superb 65 in the final round to pip experienced Australian Marc Leishman by three shots at the AT&T Byron Nelson tournament in Dallas, but CNN points out that his first hurdle was an overbearing mother:

The South African-born Wise tied for the lead after three rounds, and suffered a fitful night’s sleep as his mind wandered to “what ifs?”

His focus wasn’t helped when he received a text in the gym Sunday morning to say there would be a four-hour rain delay at Trinity Forest. As he tried to fill the time, his mother Karla further cluttered his thoughts with the benefits of a first PGA Tour win. Wise had to take action.

“I kind of made her leave the room,” Wise told reporters.

“She went and did her own thing for a little bit. I was able to kind of stop thinking about it, get back into the zone … it was kind of business for me after that.”

I suppose that R17 million-plus payday should make his mother realise he’s got a point.

Now it’s one thing to tell your parents to give you a little space, but it’s quite another to be friend-zoned on live TV.

That wasn’t really the case with young Wise, but this video was picked up by USA Today, who said he “got rejected going for a celebratory kiss”:

Is a check worth $1,386,000 enough to help Aaron Wise forget about getting friend zoned on TV? pic.twitter.com/njoLzXmNlv

— Tim Reilly (@LifeOfaReilly) May 21, 2018

That’s not really fair, because the woman in the video happens to be his girlfriend, Reagan Trussell.

As per his Instagram account:

Cool that he’s got his special person there to support him.

With his win, Wise became the second-youngest player to win the prestigious Byron Nelson. The only man ahead of him is one Tiger Woods, and that’s not bad company to keep.

He has also shot into the top 20 in FedEx Cup points, and climbed to 66th in the world rankings, following the win:

Oh, and his career earnings on the course already stand at $2 563 642 (R32,2 million).

[sources:pga&cnn&usatoday]