But, for being the self-proclaimed worst player in PGA history, he’s managed to play sixteen consecutive years on the tour, assemble millions of dollars in winnings, and outright win the Bay Hill Invitational in 1996 and the Sony Open in 2007. In 2008 he nearly won The Players Championship, before ultimately falling to Sergio Garcia on a playoff hole. He already has four Top 10 finishes this year, thirty-eight in his career, and he’s playing the best golf of his life — amid one of his most trying times.

The real Paul Goydos exists somewhere between this success and the self-deprecating facade he’s constructed. And this person is exactly who we — those who aren’t rich and famous — might imagine ourselves being if we, too, landed on the PGA Tour for sixteen years. Throughout hardship, accomplishment, and heartbreak, he’s remained true to his original self, an honest and unyielding man who has spent his entire life living in Long Beach.

Goydos was born in Long Beach, attended Woodrow Wilson High School, and then CSULB. He never had a plan to be on the PGA Tour; his drives were never the furthest; he never looked like a professional athlete. In fact, his approach has always been, in his words, “Let’s just see how good I can be.”

Such a path causes Goydos to behave as if he woke up one morning and discovered he’d accidentally become one of the best golfers in the world. It’s almost as if he thinks everything will vanish and he’ll be back to substitute teaching as soon as he finishes his next round. And yet, at certain points in his life, that hasn’t been too far from reality.

Wendy Medak met Paul Goydos at CSULB. They were married a year after he graduated, and then traveled together as he played on the Ben Hogan Tour. He struggled to begin a career as a professional golfer as Wendy grappled with her own challenges. Migraines plagued her throughout her life and medications offered only brief respite. Until one day when they too began to haunt rather than help.

They separated in 2001, after Goydos discovered what appeared to be an affair and pregnancy in which he was not the father. Paul and Wendy divorced shortly thereafter, and he received sole custody of their two teenage daughters. By 2004 Goydos found himself taking a year off the PGA Tour to be a single dad.

“When you have kids, that’s it. That’s what your priority becomes,” he says. “Having kids is not making a bowl of popcorn… This is the most important thing I’m ever going to do in my life.”

In 2005 he played in only fifteen events, again focusing on the girls over golf. He began a slow transition back to a full-time PGA schedule, until his quest once again became derailed. Tragedy returned this past January, when Wendy Goydos passed away after her long fight against migraines, pain killer addictions, and other demons beyond her control. It marked the culmination to her nearly lifelong battle, one in which Goydos considers her a heartbreaking victim.

The easiest and most natural response to this scenario would be blame and anger. But Goydos harbored no ill feelings or bad words, offering only sympathy for Wendy’s trials. This is another — and perhaps the best — example of Paul Goydos seeing how good he can be.

“The hardest thing I ever did was having to tell my daughters their mother died. I still lie awake at night and see the look in their faces.”

Again he took time off to be a father first, and a professional athlete second. And once more he acted as we all imagine ourselves doing, behaving the way any father should. Except, how many fathers actually follow through? How many professional athletes turn down the exorbitant money and lifestyle to raise two daughters?

So infrequently, that the story of Paul Goydos transforms itself into one about his strength rather than his tragedy.

Friends, family, other players, fans, and his hometown community bombarded him with support. Self-pity seemed as foreign to Goydos as giving up. Rather, he responded by embracing those around him, and methodically attempted to forge ahead. In effect, his life began to mirror his golf game.

Goydos accepted, learned from, and continued beyond what happened with each swing and each day. No matter how hard or how much it might hurt, he persevered. He stayed within himself, never trying to do too much, but always remaining that same, regular guy from Long Beach.

He wore a CSULB hat while battling Sergio Garcia in The Players Championship. He carried a Legends Sports Bar golf bag during the beginning of his professional career. He still goes to the Belmont Shore Legends for buffalo wings and a coke. And he still plays local Long Beach courses whenever he can.

He’s lived in Long Beach his entire life because he admires the city’s diversity, enviable sports history, and close community that takes pride in its own. Throughout his journey, there’s been a mutual support between Goydos and Long Beach, and it has never been more evident than during his recent tragedy. In his opinion, Long Beach’s golf crescendo will be arriving in ten or fifteen years as the younger players from the city begin to reach their prime; though in typical form, he purposefully ignores his achievements and sixteen years on the PGA Tour.

Perhaps that is the most remarkable aspect about Paul Goydos’s world though. He sees his decisions and responsibilities as obvious and non-negotiable. His values, rules, and pillars are exquisitely rare in professional athletics. He’s a father above all else, and only after that can he address the following endless list of responsibilities, including his job as a professional golfer.

“I haven’t come across a better job than the one I’ve got,” he says, conceding that he gets to play a game for a living. “I don’t really know how to do anything else. And I think golf is hard but it’s the same difficulty for everybody. There’s no more pressure over a three-foot putt than a guy trying to make a sale to keep a roof over his family’s head.”

His perspective is that sports and society put too much emphasis on the concept of success, losing track of what’s truly important. “Those who put the pressure on for success don’t even know what it is,” he says.

Goydos fears we’ve let success replace the golden rule his parents and the generations before us instilled into people like him — that it isn’t whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. “Just because you don’t achieve a goal doesn’t mean you failed,” he says. “Golf is a sport of losing. You can’t be results-oriented. You have to be process-oriented.”

Most of Goydos’s process is about persevering. As he says, “It’s a game of survival.”

And whether talking about golf or life in general, Paul Goydos remains someone we might hope to be like during our own successes, failures, and tragedies. He’s been the opposite of a superhero: a regular guy who plays the game the right way, and still manages to survive even the most difficult courses.