Imagine for a moment that your first hole of golf in your life — resulted in a hole-in-one. Sounds impossible?

It should be.

Especially as many golfers still chase their first hole-in-one after decades of laboring on the course. However, for professional golfer and instructor Maiya Tanaka-Puterbaugh, that is exactly what happened when she picked up a club to play her first par-3 at about 10-years-old.

Stepping up to the tee box for the first time, San Diego native Tanaka-Puterbaugh took a backswing, made contact, and watched as her tiny white ball rolled into the hole. Inspiring a slew of screams from surrounding golfers and especially her non-golfing father.

“My dad was like, ‘Oh my gosh, you just made a hole-in-one!’” Tanaka-Puterbaugh recalled more than 25 years later.

Her response was, “‘Isn’t that what you told me to do? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? What do you mean?’” Tanaka-Puterbaugh recalled in her childhood confusion. “That was my very first taste of golf.”

It would not be her last.

Tanaka-Puterbaugh, 37, landed herself a pro spot on the Symetra Tour, the Epson Tour predecessor designed for golfers to eventually reach the LPGA Tour. The Symetra Tour was an expensive endeavor, and she wasn’t sure how she was going to fund her registration fees and other playing expenses.

Coming from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) as a golfer on their collegiate women’s team her junior and senior years, Tanaka-Puterbaugh decided to take a page out of the entertainment industry playbook.

“I actually got a commercial job that all I had to do was swing a golf club,” Tanaka-Puterbaugh laughed. “It was no words.” This 2009 Northwestern Mutual commercial is what paid for Tanaka-Puterbaugh to try out for the Symetra Tour and earn her status on the “LPGA’s mini tour,” as Tanaka-Puterbaugh called it.

“I was still waitressing and bartending part-time, things that I could do outside of golf hours,” Tanaka-Puterbaugh shared. “Babysitting, dog sitting, you name it I’ve done every part-time job I could think of to fund my golf career.”

Rushing between bussing tables and logging time on the links, Tanaka-Puterbaugh’s motivation didn’t falter.

“The LPGA is known to be the goal,” Tanaka-Puterbaugh highlighted. “It’s the best tour in the United States. I thought about the Japan Tour, the European Tour, but that was the gold and the goal. So, I decided to try and go that route to earn my status on the major tour.”

Tanaka-Puterbaugh ended up qualifying for one LPGA tournament during her years on the Symetra Tour. It was a Monday open qualifier in 2012 with the prize for the lowest scorer being a chance to play in the Canadian Open later that week. That coveted golden ticket ended up having Tanaka-Puterbaugh’s name on it at the end of the Monday qualifier.

While the course was memorable, one of the most iconic moments that she harkens back to was… the locker room.

A mythical space for football players in Friday Night Lights or early 2010 teens turned basketball fans thanks to the High School Musical franchise, the Canadian Open women’s locker room became a place where dreams really do come true.

“My locker was right next to these big names like Yani Tseng and Lexi Thompson,” Tanaka-Puterbaugh recalled. “I was just standing there like, ‘I’m not supposed to be here.’ It was such an out of body experience.”

It was also the only LPGA tournament Tanaka-Puterbaugh would ever play in.

When asked about her golf success looking back on her professional career, Tanaka-Puterbaugh said, “I was so close. I was so close.

“I do think I had that fear of actually pushing through and succeeding which lately I’ve been working on. There has been this kind of revolution in how I define that success to where I’m trying to eliminate that fear of it.”

Additionally, not having enough to finance her playing aspirations was a hurdle for Tanaka-Puterbaugh from the start. So, she kept waitressing and doing part-time jobs. Finally, she got her “Big Break” (quite literally) on the hit Golf Channel show as a competitor.

She was working at a sushi bar in 2009 when the first episode played on one of the restaurant TVs. “People were like, ‘Wait, is that you?’” Tanaka-Puterbaugh remembered. After confirming it was, she would add, “Spoiler alert, I didn’t win.” Tanaka-Puterbaugh once again brushed shoulders with some of the best before coming up just short of an all-out victory.

The show Big Break shifted her wallflower tendencies. Being on national television can sometimes do that to a person. “I’m very very shy,” Tanaka-Puterbaugh said. “I actually did not speak to any human that I did not know until I was at least 13 or 14. I just never talked in class, to my teachers, nothing. Being social, it’s learned. It took me a long time to actually break out of my shell. But with golf, I always had the most comfort. I always had the most confidence I will ever have when I’m on the golf course.”

“Outside of the golf course, I just go into my shell,” Tanaka-Puterbaugh admitted. “On the golf course and talking about golf, that’s where my jam was. After college I was like, ‘Okay, I need to decide if I’m good enough to be pro. So, I’m going to go on [Big Break]. I’m going to try and win. If I win, I’m going to turn pro.’ I went on the show. I’m a Pisces. I’m a dreamer, I don’t know that these things are so crazy in the world. I’m just like ‘Why not? Let me go on this show and do that.’ I was just reflecting on that the other day. It’s kind of good that I’m in La La Land sometimes.”

Coming from her UCLA days, where she was denied a scholarship or even a walk-on spot until her junior year when two UCLA players turned pro early, Tanaka-Puterbaugh categorized much of her early 20s as “La La Land” including Big Break. “I dreamt it… I made it happen, got on the show, and did not win. Had to return kind of empty-handed.”

The defeat from Big Break was so tough Tanaka-Puterbaugh quit golf for two years. One of the reasons her professional golf career was delayed.

After the Golf Channel show, “I just went right back to working and trying to support myself post-college in that La La Land of what am I doing with my life?”

She would try to answer that question by traveling the world. Something not uncommon for young people embarking on or finishing their college years. Though, Tanaka-Puterbaugh was perhaps more unique than most with her travel plans. She qualified and got on the long-running CBS show The Amazing Race in 2012.

“It was my get-rich-quick plan so I could go play on tour again,” Tanaka-Puterbaugh said, considering the final prize for the season winners is $1,000,000. At the time, “I ran out of money. I was like, ‘Okay, the prize is a million dollars,’ and I convinced my sister to go on with me.”

Tanaka-Puterbaugh’s pep talk was simple: “We can do this!”

However, “We didn’t.” Tanaka-Puterbaugh jokes now. “We didn’t win.”

Still, “Convincing my sister, actually getting on, and then racing around the world that month together was unforgettable,” Tanaka-Puterbaugh recalled from the month-long filming. “As depressing as it was from losing, I was like, ‘Wow! I really think I can do anything I set my mind to.’ I never thought I’d be on a show. I never thought I’d have this opportunity. But I saw it happening and then it happened.”

Though she didn’t come home with a million dollars, Tanaka-Puterbaugh still had a dream to get full status on the Symetra Tour. So rather than an oversized Amazing Race check heading to the bank, Tanaka-Puterbaugh bet on herself. “I put $12,000 on my credit card because I thought I could do anything,” Tanaka-Puterbaugh remembered. “Anything was possible. I’d be able to pay that off and get a sponsor if I get full status.”

She did earn her full status on the Symetra Tour but fell just short of earning her LPGA status after carding quadruple and triple bogeys on the last two holes of a qualifying round. Tanaka-Puterbaugh ended her Symetra Tour playing days right around 2014.

The year after, Tanaka-Puterbaugh accepted a job teaching golf in the Hamptons. “I got thrown into the deep end in a lot of those situations where this was like going from making zero money to rubbing elbows with the most elite people in New York, if not the United States.”

Before Tanaka-Puterbaugh ever stepped foot on New York’s summer playground though, and unbeknownst to her, she had already started her coaching lifestyle. As a teenager, she founded her San Diego high school girls golf team.

After playing on the boys team at Mira Mesa High School in the number one varsity spot, she wasn’t allowed to play in the season culminating California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Championship because of her gender. “I was not allowed to play [in CIF] because I was a girl,” Tanaka-Puterbaugh emphasized.

In response, Tanaka-Puterbaugh and her sister started their own girls team the very next year at Mira Mesa. Thanks to a healthy dose of camaraderie and recruiting their friends who already played softball and other sports, the Tanaka sisters instructed their peers so they could field a team.

“That was my first teaching golf experience,” Tanaka-Puterbaugh said.

The team is still active to this day and boasts about 30 girls according to Tanaka-Puterbaugh. Even two decades later, “If you ask me about the accomplishments I’ve had the past however many years, I actually think that’s one of the ones I’m most proud of. It’s just amazing how many people have gone through that program and had an opportunity to play golf because of that.”

After playing on the Symetra Tour and being an instructor in the Hamptons, Tanaka-Puterbaugh’s talent for teaching would bring her home to San Diego. Tanaka-Puterbaugh currently teaches at a driving range in Del Mar about five days a week, but thanks to social media with nearly 72,000 followers on Instagram, she’s also opened a dialogue surrounding fashion trends, golf instruction videos and motivational moments for athletes looking to strive to be the best. Or, to find peace if/when they come up short.

Like many athletes who train their entire lives to get a sliver of golden victory in the pros, Tanaka-Puterbaugh said that while her golf aspirations may not have reached the hole-in-one luck she had with her first swing on a tee box, her valiant effort is not for nothing. The striving and struggling is in large part what changes you as an athlete and a person.

“In golf, you lose a lot more than you actually win,” Tanaka-Puterbaugh emphasized. “So, my career, I don’t look at as being super successful.” But when it comes to founding a successful high school women’s team, competing on Big Break and the Amazing Race, or teaching anyone from scratch golfers to children picking up their club for the first time, “that’s actually pretty cool.”