Matthieu Pavon prepared for his title defense at the Farmers Insurance Open by taking a working vacation with his wife Melissa and son Aaron in La Jolla, California. He loves the area, and yet when it comes to America, Pavon, who is from Toulouse, France, and lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, loves more than just Torrey Pines.

A lot more.

“This year I discovered NHL,” he told PGATOUR.com. “I went to see a (Florida) Panthers game. It was playoff games against the (New York) Rangers, so pretty, pretty dope game and I really liked it – like, their most feared intensity.

“I was really shocked, in a good way,” he added. “I loved it.”

In a time when it’s become fashionable to bash America, there is something charming about Pavon’s passion for this country. His story has traces of Horatio Alger Jr., but also the sweeping, big box-office mythmaking of “Rocky” and “Rudy.” He is the American dream, writ large.

Overlooked and undervalued, Pavon has succeeded anyway. He used to be terrible at chipping but went to a cross-handed grip and fixed that deficiency. Relegated to the Alps Tour, Challenge Tour and any others that would have him, he played his way up the ladder. Even after finally getting his DP World Tour card he was ranked outside the top 200 in the world as recently as the fall of 2023. He remained all but anonymous at 30 years of age.

Then he won the Spanish Open in his 185th DP World Tour start, an emotional breakthrough in the home of his grandfather who lived there before he fled the regime of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco and wound up in France. Pavon’s win touched off a mid-career awakening; soon he was making four straight birdies to finish T5 at the 2023 DP World Tour Championship, securing his PGA TOUR card via a new pathway, the top 10 on the DP World Tour Eligibility Ranking.

He won the Farmers in just his third TOUR start last year.

“The golf is more familiar to what we have in Europe,” he said of the West Coast Swing, where he also finished third at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. “The grass is the same, not that much rough. It was easy to adjust. East Coast was different; everything plays faster and firmer.”

Nonetheless, he kept playing well. He finished T12 in his first Masters, contended into the weekend at the U.S. Open (solo fifth), and was 30th in the world at year’s end.

What happened?

Well, a lot. But the catalyst for it all was not only the America of today but, even more so, the America of 2010. The rise of Pavon goes back to a spindly, 16-year-old kid coming here for the very first time to partake of the best the game could offer and reimagine what was possible.

Pavon’s mom, Beatrice, was a teaching pro. On a 2009 trip to watch the Masters, she buried a €1 coin at Augusta National on the wish that her son would play there someday.

Pavon’s dad, Michel, was a footballer (professional soccer player) who once scored a goal against Manchester United. The shot, a left-footed howitzer, knuckled and went through the gloved hands of the Man United keeper. When people ribbed Michel Pavon, he shrugged and paraphrased Wayne Gretzky, who famously said, "You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take."

His parents cast long shadows and imparted the right lessons, but most crucially orchestrated the trip of a lifetime, and that’s not just travel-brochure hyperbole.

France can be toughest on its own sportsmen, and Pavon had been razzed for not measuring up to his father on the soccer pitch. By 16, he had left “futbol” for golf exclusively, but still, no one was hailing him as the next big thing. He did not attend a sports- or golf-specific academy, like his luckier peers, and played only once or twice a week.

Beatrice, steeped in the game, called on her connections.

With the help of Dan Pesant, a French-Canadian managing partner at Village Golf Club in Royal Palm Beach, Florida, the family hatched a plan whereby Matthieu would alight for South Florida for an extended stay. The best courses. The best instruction. The best weather.

For a surrogate family, Pavon would spend much of his time with Thomas and Caroline Levet, the latter of whom knew Beatrice from amateur golf circles back in France.

Pavon dropped into South Florida wide-eyed and hopeful; he knew this was his best chance of making it, and doing so would mean reinventing himself.

“In France, I was not one of the best amateurs, so everybody put me to the side,” he said. “In America, they said, like, ‘This kid wants to succeed, he’s a hard worker, let’s give him a chance.’ They did everything they could to make me feel like I was already a superstar.”

For instruction, Pesant connected him to Ken Martin, a PGA teaching pro who had aspired to reach the PGA TOUR before getting bogged down in swing theory and taking first a coaching position then a caddie job with Sandy Lyle.

Pavon, Martin noted, was a flusher, creating the compression one hears on TOUR driving ranges.

“I knew he just needed experience playing and scoring,” said Martin, who teaches in a golf management program at the College of Golf at Keiser University. “Everything I planned for him was based on gamifying the instruction. Ball-flight challenges, scoring challenges – it was always about getting the ball in the hole faster, in different ways.”

Pavon would tee it up with not only Martin but also Levet, a six-time DP World Tour winner who briefly played on the PGA TOUR and made the 2004 European Ryder Cup team.

“His technical ability was much better than his ranking,” Levet said.

Just as important if not more so, he added, was that Pavon was a tireless worker.

Swing-oriented in France, Pavon became target-oriented in America. Visa constraints meant he would go for three or four months at a time, go back home, then return.

“I spent almost a year there total,” Pavon said. “It was about performance training. When I used to train in Europe it was more technical with the swing. With Ken, it was a lot of playing. I had to do draws and fades, play from the red tees and try to shoot under 60. I had to play the entire golf course with the driver off the deck on every tee shot.”

Pavon eventually went back to France, but his lessons did not immediately pay dividends. When he was on the verge of potentially turning pro at 20, he was the 890th-ranked amateur in the world and having second thoughts about whether he should even bother.

Levet set him straight.

“Thomas is such a legend,” Pavon said. “My big question was like, ‘I’m like 30th in the French ranking as an amateur, which meant I was like 800th in the world. A lot of people in front of me. Should I really turn pro? Would I even have a chance?’

“Thomas said, very kindly, ‘There are a lot of guys in the top 100 of the DP World Tour who aren’t beating me every day, or not even like once a year, and you’re beating me 50% of the time, so it all depends on how much you want it and how much you’re willing to work.’”

Willing to do whatever it took, Pavon tattooed his hands and chest with affirming messages to that effect. He wrote positive messages to himself in his yardage book. Everything seemed to pay off at once with his final-round, 7-under 64 to win in Spain. And when he finished the season in the top 10 on the DP World Tour Eligibility Ranking not long after, he told himself he was playing with house money.

“I had almost no pressure coming, playing in America,” Pavon said after the Farmers, where he found the thick rough at the par-5 18th but stiffed his third shot and jarred an 8-foot birdie for a one-stroke victory over Nicolai Højgaard. “It's like it's just an opportunity.

“If I fail,” he added, “I could just go back to Europe and I start again. So it was just like trying to do your best every day, enjoy every moment.”

Pavon was the first Frenchman to win on the PGA TOUR since Arnaud Massy at The Open Championship 1907. Levet posted a video of himself cheering wildly in front of the TV. He, Martin, Beatrice and a select few others had been right: Pavon had TOUR-quality stuff, even if not many people saw it in the rush to promote flashier talents back in France.

Upon crossing back over the Atlantic to compete in Europe last year, Pavon was taken aback by the fans’ reaction. No longer a nobody, he was the conquering hero, instead.

“They were cheering for me,” he said. “That was the first time. I wasn’t expecting as much love, so that was really nice, very emotional. Everything I dreamed about became reality.”

What’s his ceiling? Levet thinks a major is not out of the question.

“His way of thinking, his way of improving, is very much what people do here in the U.S.,” Levet said. “You want to be good at something? You put everything you have into this, and structure this the best way possible to perform. He was willing to work hard for it.

“If you look at his career, he went through all the progressions, from a medium amateur to a good amateur, and then at every level did the same as a pro. He knows what it is to struggle.”

Pavon has not rested on his laurels, announcing after last season that he was making a coaching change from Jamie Gough, with whom he had worked for six years, to Mark Blackburn.

Ever appreciative, Pavon thanked Gough profusely.

Ever industrious, he refused to sit still.

Last May, Pavon reconnected with Martin, player and coach talking old times and marveling at what their arranged meeting some 15 years ago has led to.

“He was very focused for his age,” Martin said. “I was serious, too. We worked well together.”

Pavon is thankful for Martin and Pesant, and appreciative of his parents for giving him the skills and opportunities while modeling the requisite work ethic. Always, though, he thanks America.

“This country is so well-made for sport,” he said. “It’s the perfect place for me.”