Martin Trainer

Trainer was born in Marseille, France. His mother Isabelle was French-born while his father Paul was California-born. Martin has dual American and French citizenship. When Martin was 5 his family moved from France to Palo Alto, California. He grew up playing Palo Alto Muni and Shoreline Golf Links in Mountain View; his mom dropped him off on many summer days and returned hours later to pick him up. He graduated from Henry M. Gunn High School in Palo Alto in 2009 and went to USC where he graduated with a degree in Business Administration.
Trainer mostly played local junior tournaments and didn't envision himself reaching the PGA Tour, until he won the San Francisco City Championship at 16, during his junior year at Gunn High. He beat acclaimed amateur Randy Haag, then 49, at Harding Park in March 2008.
He played golf at USC, then bounced around various mini-tours including three years on the Latin American Tour. At that time things started getting frustrated, and he started to wonder about his future. Trainer had drifted into the large pack of players simply trying to scrape out a living playing in Latin and South America.
In March of 2018, his life seriously changed. Trainer was on his way to participate in a fourth year on the Latin America Tour and was told by someone that on his way he should try to qualify for the El Bosque Mexico Championship on the Web.Com Tour. Trainer did and played well enough in a Monday qualifying, surviving a 3-for-1 playoff for the last spot into the El Bosque event. He shot rounds of 67-70-68-69 to win by two shots. So just like that his life totally changed, instead of playing on the Latin America tour he was had playing privileges for the year on the Web. Com Tour. After missing the cut in nine of his next 13 starts, he won again at the Price Cutter Charity to secure a spot on the PGA Tour in 2019.
2018 Web.com Summary: Tournaments Entered - 21; Rounds Played - 60; In Money - 9; Top-10 Finishes - 3; Scoring Average - 70.17 (Rank 47th); Regular Season Money - $267,000 (Rank 4th); Playoff money - $2,712 (Rank 112th) Priority Rank - 13; Won the Mexico Championship and Price Cutter Charity. His ranking of 4th on the money list secured his PGA Tour card for 2019.
Another notable element to Trainer's win: He's the rare PGA Tour pro who lives in the Bay Area. Most top golfers raised here leave for areas with better facilities and lower cost-of-living. Alameda native James Hahn moved to Arizona, for example, but Trainer works on his game at California Golf Club in South San Francisco.
2019 Notes: So he sets off on the PGA Tour and after a T-60th finish at the Safeway Open, he missed his next five cuts. But after making only three cuts in eight events he found himself 2 shots back of the lead going into the final round of the Puerto Rico Open. Trainer shots a final round 67 and won by 3 shots over Daniel Berger, Aaron Baddeley, Roger Sloan and Johnson Wagner. With the win, his life now goes through a drastic change as he now can play in whatever event he wants to and has a tour card for at least two years. The victory help get him into the PGA Championship and the Sentry T of C.