THIS PAST WINTER, MacKenzie went back to Montana to snowboard for the first time since 1998. He can still feel the rotator cuff he injured once while kayaking and, courtesy of the Alaskan cave, still has limited feeling in two toes on his left foot. Which is why he now limits his non-golf pursuits mostly to surfing and taking his fishing boat out in the waters around his new home in Jupiter, Florida. "Look at Chris Sharma," he says, pointing to the climber as an example of single-minded athletic excellence. "I'm sure he could kill it on a mountain bike if he wanted, but he's not trying to. He's pulling rock 24/7. That's how I have to be with golf. It was either go back to guiding for the rest of my life and try not to drown the customers or really put everything into this."

MacKenzie accepts that, until his game trumps his backstory, he will always be covered the same way: Tiger Woods shoots a 70; Phil Mickelson shoots a 70; Will MacKenzie—a free spirit who quit the game and lived in a van and slept in an ice cave for a month without showering—shoots a 70. "I don't care," he says. "In my mind, that's all something I did, and I'm happy I did it. But now I just want to be a great golfer. I understand it, though. They've got to have a story." And they do.