Kyle Hamilton Has Perfect Masters Tournament Analogy for Ravens

Count Baltimore Ravens All-Pro safety Kyle Hamilton as part of the growing contingent of active NFL players who have developed an affinity for watching, and even taken up, playing golf. However, even when he's on the grassy knolls swinging a club, the football field is still toward the forefront of his mind.

Hamilton attended this year's Masters Tournament and one of his favorite parts of the offseason was going on a golf trip with some of his friends from high school. They played on some iconic courses such as Pebble Beach, Spyglass, Spanish Bay, Cyprus and Pasatiempo. While he was looking out across the fairways, he had a lot of time to reflect on the 2024 season and how his unit's rough start to the year hurt the team in the long run.

Through the first 10 weeks of the season, the Ravens ranked dead last in pass defense, giving up nearly 300 passing yards per game and allowing 20-plus yard plays at an alarming rate. Even though they were able to right the ship and stabilize their secondary down the stretch by making some personnel and schematic changes, the damage was done and their hopes of competing for the No. 1 seed in AFC playoffs for the second year in a row were dashed before they even reached their bye week.

When asked at the podium during the press conference on the first day of the Ravens' offseason workout program, Hamilton was asked about the secondary's slow start to last season and if they're motivated to come out firing on all cylinders soon in 2025, he made an insightful analogy involving golf.

.@kyledhamilton_'s golf analogy to starting the season hot 🤔 pic.twitter.com/vwRTQ1WGa6
— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) April 21, 2025

"Rory [McIlroy] didn't have a great finish on Thursday, the first day of the tournament, and then had a really good Friday [and] Saturday [to] put himself in the lead and kind of set the pace for Sunday," Hamilton said. For him, obviously, he's one of the best players ever, but I feel like it's kind of synonymous with our sport. You don't really want to compare yourself to others, but when you put yourself behind the 8-ball, and now you got to kind of see where everybody else is at and know what you have to do to get in the playoffs and ultimately win the Super Bowl."

"This past tournament, Justin Thomas came out and tied the course record and didn't play amazing the final three days, but [he] ended up winning the tournament, so you kind of put yourself in an advantage if you start off hot. Those games count for the same amount of wins and losses at the end of the season. Last year, [we] didn't get off to a great start. [We were] kind of behind the 8-ball, but we found our way at the end of the season. Who knows if we started off well [if] we would've had a chance at the [No.] 1 seed and stuff like that, so it's important for us this year to ... I think it's important that we've gone through that and understand how hard it is to climb out of that hole and how we can change that this year."

In football and especially in life, the hardest and most painful lessons often present the greatest learning opportunities. Teams and individuals can learn from past mistakes and missteps to ensure those same forms of adversity don't happen again or at least they'll be better prepared if they do.

There's no denying that the Ravens still have one of the most talented defensive backfields in the league as currently constructed. In addition to Hamilton, they have four-time Pro Bowl cornerback Marlon Humphrey fresh off his second First Team All Pro season, 2024 first-rounder Nate Wiggins, recently tendered and re-signed safety Ar'Darius Washington and veteran free agent acquisition Chidobe Awuzie.

With the 2025 NFL Draft taking place this week and a league-high 11 picks at their disposal, general manager Eric DeCosta already went on record all but guaranteeing that they'd be adding another safety and corner during the annual three-day event. Whoever they end up adding will be joining an already stacked unit and won't be forced into action by necessity as was the case last year due to injuries and underperformance by players who are no longer on the team.

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