Brad Iles: The Golf Prodigy Who Survived a Coma, Beat Rory McIlroy & Walked Away From It All

As a teenager, Brad Iles was a world schools golf champion, and Michael Campbell called him one of the best talents to come out of New Zealand in a long time.

At 20, he fell off the back of a golf cart in the US, suffered a life-threatening head injury and woke from a coma to be told he might never play again.

Within 18 months he was leading the Australian PGA alongside Cambo, with his dad on the bag. Seven years on tour followed, then he booked a flight home and never went back.

This is the story of starting again: a minimum-wage warehouse job in Queenstown, glassy to shareholder in a five-venue hospitality group, and the inflatable park that sparked the golf simulator business he runs today.

In this episode:

14 houses by age 14, and how having no friends made him a golferHis dad’s chart: scratch by 16Why Kiwis flush it on the range and Americans out-golf them on the courseHearing your handicap from the sound of the strikeLife on tour: 100 cheeseburgers, a shank through a hotel door, and why it gets lonelyThe putt for a quarter of a million dollarsSleep seizures 24 years on, losing his licence, and what the bus taught him about slowing downHis best parenting advice: let them be kids

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