With a stick and a puck, as he once dreamed of playing in the NHL, just like his cousin Juuso, until his native Finland selected him instead of the national golf team.
With a rifle, which was part of his mandatory six-month national military service seven years ago.
And of course with his golf clubs. Those are his real breadwinners, as he proved on Sunday at the RSM Classic, where the 27-year-old defeated Max McGreevy by a shot to become Finland’s first PGA Tour winner.
“I just wanted to show people that it’s possible from there,” said Valimaki, who skipped this event last year, the last of the FedExCup Fall, after the birth of his son Max a few weeks earlier.
At the time, Valimaki was fighting to keep his card, which he earned last season through the DP World Tour.
“I was in the bubble with a newborn baby, so I had new things in my life,” Valimaki said. “Of course I wanted to keep my card, but that just wasn’t possible [play]. … I had to wait.”
Valimaki eventually finished in the top 125 with a few places to spare, then parlayed his new loan into nine top-25s in 26 starts this season, including Sunday’s victory and a second-place finish at the World Wide Technology Championship earlier this fall. He finished No. 51 in the FedExCup and topped the Aon Next 10, securing a start in each of next season’s first two signature events. Valimaki has recorded just two such starts in his first two years on the PGA Tour.
He also jumped to a career-best 40th in the Official World Golf Ranking, securing a spot in his first Masters once he finished in the top 50 at the end of the year.
Valimaki’s first major start came at the 2020 US Open at Winged Foot, less than two years after turning pro. Valimaki, who stands at a hefty 6-foot-1, thinks he would have been a successful center on the ice, but as an elite golfer he led Finland to the 2018 European Amateur Team Championship. That year he began his national service, which included “shooting heads,” as he called it when speaking to reporters at last summer’s Olympics, and a two-week stint in which he braved subzero temperatures in the middle of a forest while wearing nothing but a tent stayed.
“It was minus 20, 25 degrees, of course in Celsius,” Valimaki said. “… I feel like it was a tough time there.”
However, as a designated athlete, Valimaki was given days – and sometimes a full week – during which he could practice and even play in tournaments. He competed in the Nordic Golf League while still in training, and turned professional before being officially fired.
After winning his pro debut on the Pro Golf Tour in Morocco in early 2019, Valimaki captured three more titles on the development tour before skipping the Challenge Tour and earning his DP World Tour card through Q-School. In just his fifth start at DPWT, he triumphed in Oman, the penultimate tournament before the pandemic halted the season. Valimaki’s second DPWT win, at the 2023 Qatar Masters, cemented his twelftheplace in the Race to Dubai and his promotion to the PGA Tour.
“I mean, my goal was really just to become a DP World Tour player and win there,” Valimaki said. “I did it in my fifth tournament there, and after that I felt like that was it, that was like riding me. And then the opportunity came in ’23, and that gave me a new motivation… to get the win here.”
Valimaki’s first confrontation with the PGA Tour came last year at the Mexico Open, where Valimaki’s ride at 72i.e The hole hit a boundary fence and forced him to take an unplayable play. He finished two shots behind winner Jake Knapp.
“I feel like I had control over that, but then it slipped away,” Valimaki said.
On Sunday at Sea Island, Valimaki started the second round without Patrick Rodgers and Michael Thorbjornsen. Neither Stanford product was a factor, with Valimaki posting a 4-under 66 with just one bogey. When he dropped the shot on the par-4 fifth, Valimaki shared the lead with Ricky Castillo, who went out at 7-under 28 before carding 63 to finish third. McGreevy holed a 30-foot birdie at the last spot to give Valimaki something to think about as he headed down the stretch as the wind picked up. But the big Finn made birdie on the easy par-5 15th after hitting 3-wood on the green with his second shot and parred for the title.
After holed his final putt, Valimaki kissed his putter’s face before hugging three friends who had flown in from Helsinki and were wearing Sami-inspired, green-and-orange polos.
“To be honest, it’s not the worst time of year to escape from Northern Europe,” said one of Valimaki’s friends. “So, enjoying the sun and incredibly lucky to have seen this. … He’ll be on cloud nine today, enjoy it with the boys, go to the Crabdaddy’s.”
“Crabdaddy’s,” another partner added, confirming the popular St. Simons Island seafood restaurant as the location for the afterparty. “And maybe some pool action.”
Imagine Valimaki is also pretty good at pool shooting.
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