A turkey dinner and a game of football would probably best describe most families celebrating Thanksgiving. But Caitlin Clark is not like most people, as she has repeatedly proven. Well into the WNBA offseason, the Indiana Fever guard has been making the most of her time away from basketball – attending Taylor Swift concerts, going back to her alma mater, and even taking part in an LPGA pro-am. And by the looks of it, she plans to continue the tradition and not play any more basketball before the next W season.

Rumored to be taking part in Unrivaled, the new 3×3 league co-founded by WNBA’s Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, Clark was offered a hefty amount and impressive deals to play in January 2025, including $1 million in salary and equity stakes. Just yesterday, Collier and her husband Alex Bazzell, aka President of Unrivaled, appeared on The Ringer WNBA Show, where Bazzell gave an update on the situation. Although he has said that a spot will always be open for CC, she won’t be joining the league in their debut season.

“I’ve been on record saying, Caitlin will always have a spot in our league and that is true, like we always want to be the home for the best of the best. Like she also made it to the first team of the WNBA. We went through our negotiations, inadvertently she needed her time in this off-season which we respect. We hope to see her next year. She won’t be playing this year,” Bazzell revealed.

after firm refusals to keep her focus away from basketball and take rest this offseason, it seems she’s made her decision. The Rookie of the Year’s latest Instagram story, a picture of sprawling golf greens proves it. “Maybe play some golf. That’s what I’m gonna do until it becomes too cold in Indiana. So I got that. I’ll become a professional golfer,” No. 22 had said after the Fever lost in the first round of the playoffs. And she’s holding true to it! Not only that, but she is also bringing her competitiveness out there and has impressed the who’s who of the sport.

And according to PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and 2023 Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson, there’s a reason to be impressed with what she has shown on the course. A November 20 article from Golfweek’s Tim Schmitt wrote, “Johnson, who has a dozen PGA Tour victories under his belt, played with Clark at the 2023 John Deere Classic and has noticed an improvement in the former University of Iowa star’s golf game.”

“She’s a competitor before she is anything else. I witnessed it a year-and-a-half ago when we played but I’ve also witnessed that she’s gotten better. She’s working on her game,” Johnson said in the article. It also quoted Monahan saying, “What really struck me was her love of the game. Clearly, her competitive spirit and fire come through. And her ability comes through loud and clear on some of those tee shots. You know, she’s been playing seriously for a year and a half. I’ve never seen someone in a year and a half strike the ball like that. And she’s gonna be playing this game for a long time.” But how good is Clark in the sport?

According to Golf Digest, Clark does not maintain a handicap. However, she told the outlet that she is capable of shooting “in the low 80s.” Based on that range for her scores, her handicap is likely somewhere between 10-20, meaning she has the potential to play a round of golf at 10-20 strokes over par.

Shooting in the low 80s for someone who is only doing it in their free time is remarkably strong. So there is little doubt about Clark’s golfing abilities. She won’t jump on the LPGA Tour anytime soon, but considering she is taking part in Pro-Am competitions, she must be good enough to hang with the best female golfers. She posted a video of her on the course in October where she came inches away from sinking a hole-in-one, an incredibly rare feat for any golfer, irrespective of skill level. Most importantly, Clark sank the short-range putt for a birdie. For her, the learnings of golf translate to basketball as well.

“Something I can always improve on is my mental toughness. You have one bad shot on the golf course or on the basketball court, you gotta move on to the next. Obviously, in basketball, I have four other girls on the court with me that I can lean on if I’m not having a good day or shooting well. If I’m on the golf course, it’s all on me. You have to accept that not every day is gonna be great for you. That’s helped me by translating that to basketball,” Clark had said in a 2023 interview with Golf Digest.

Clark spends her time golfing at courses in her home state of Iowa. She plays at places such as Brown Deer in Coralville, Finkbine in Iowa City, and The Harvester Club in Rhodes, which is just outside of her hometown of Des Moines. Notably, just like the massive attention she brought to the sport of basketball, golf also got a taste of that. In the middle of November, Pelican Golf Club was packed with spectators to watch Clark play nine holes with world No. 1 Nelly Korda and then Annika Sorenstam at The Annika pro-am golf tournament. The crowd was reportedly bigger than the tour often gets for its tournament rounds. Even Nelly Korda was mesmerized with that.

“To see the influence that she has on people, bringing people out here, and to see how amazing of an influence she is just for sports, was really cool to see firsthand today,” Korda had said. She had all praise for Clark’s golfing talent as well. “She’s definitely very talented. She was picking the ball really clean. She was losing a couple shots to the right, but I asked her how many times a week she plays and I think with the amount of obligations she has she probably gets to the golf course once a week,” Korda stated.

While golf seems to be the focus right now, it’s clear that Collier and her husband would have preferred to christen their new league with the most famous name in the sport. When negotiations were still ongoing, the Lynx star had also made a case for fair pay, which has long been an issue in the W.

Caitlin Clark’s $1 million payday compared to the $250,000 range in Unrivaled

The conversation about equal pay in women’s sports is moving along at a turtle’s pace, but it’s moving. Even so, Collier and Stewart decided to take matters into their own hands when they founded Unrivaled. It not only solved the problem of WNBA players having to go overseas to stay active in the offseason while being away from their families, but it will also solve the financial issue for at least the 34 players on their roster.

It had been reported that the average salary of most players would range around $250,000 for three months, but Caitlin Clark was offered close to $1 million. On the Podcast P with Paul George at the beginning of November, Collier confirmed,  “I can’t give numbers, obviously. But I mean, I can tell you substantially more than what she’s making in the WNBA. I do think she needs to be paid fairly, and we would be offering her a fair compensation for what she’s doing.”

In fact, popular podcaster Rachel DeMita had the same opinion about the money matters. “Caitlin Clark is the star of the Indiana Fever. That is their core piece. That is their gold. They need to protect her the best that they possibly can. However, the Indiana Fever cannot offer her that much money right now… The WNBA cannot offer her that much money right now. So, if Unrivaled is a league that is offering her millions of dollars to play for less than 3 months then that seems like you know a much better offer than even playing in the WNBA,” DeMita had said on her podcast. But does she really need that?

On top of her $76,000 salary from the WNBA, Clark has an eight-year, $28 million deal with Nike, which gives her $3.5 million a year from the shoe company alone. So, understandably, she can afford not to chose money over rest. It’s clear that CC would prefer not to pick up the orange ball to play competitively before April. After all, she had been playing non-stop since Nov 2023, her senior year at Iowa. She just had three weeks off between the NCAA Women’s Final Four and the start of the Fever’s training camp, and then another three and a half weeks off for the Paris Olympics break. As Alex Bazzell said, the rest is deserved!