Golf is never too far from Kyle Hamilton.

The Ravens safety spent part of his offseason playing venerable Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill and Spanish Bay, along with the exclusive Cypress Point Club and architectural gem Pasatiempo, on an epic buddies trip with three high school friends. Then he attended the Masters for the first time and was in the crowd during the final round when Rory McIlroy completed the career Grand Slam with a wild and historic playoff victory over Justin Rose.

And last week, Hamilton watched on television as Justin Thomas set a course record with a 10-under 61 in the opening round of the RBC Heritage only to squander a one-shot lead with three holes remaining before a birdie on the first hole of sudden death finally ended a three-year winless drought.Unsurprisingly, there was a lesson to be extrapolated from it all for Baltimore’s dynamic fourth-year standout who has already been an All-Pro, selected to two Pro Bowls and is the centerpiece of the Ravens’ defense.

“It’s kind of synonymous with our sport,” Hamilton said Monday, the first day of the Ravens’ offseason workout program. “You don’t really want to compare yourself to others, but when you put yourself behind the 8-ball, and now you got to kind of see where everybody else is at and know what you have to do to get in the playoffs and ultimately win the Super Bowl.

“Justin Thomas came out and tied the course record and didn’t play amazing the final three days but ended up winning the tournament, so you kind of put yourself at an advantage if you start off hot. Those games count for the same amount of wins and losses at the end of the season.”

A hot start, of course, is not what the Ravens have gotten off to each of the past three seasons.

In 2022, they split their first six games before winning six of their next seven. Then quarterback Lamar Jackson suffered what ended up being a season-ending knee injury, and that was that, with any hopes of Jackson’s return and a deep postseason run dashed by a bumbling wild-card loss to the Cincinnati Bengals.

In 2023, the Ravens were a modest 3-2 over their first five games after a couple of mistake-filled losses before tearing through their remaining opponents to finish with the NFL’s best record (13-4) during the regular season. But again they fell flat when it mattered most with a clumsy 17-10 loss at home in the AFC championship game to the eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs.

Then last season, they dropped their first two games — including one to the hapless Las Vegas Raiders — and were just 8-5 and two games back of the AFC North-leading Pittsburgh Steelers with a month to go in the regular season. The Ravens won four in a row to win the division, but fell short of the Super Bowl again, losing on the road to the Buffalo Bills in the divisional round of the playoffs.

In their own ways, McIlroy and Thomas likewise starred while also faltering on their sport’s biggest stages.

After winning four majors in his first six years on tour — including three-fourths of the career Grand Slam — McIlroy inexplicably went 10 years without another, agonizingly finishing second four times to go with six more top-five finishes. Finally, he got the one that had gotten away all those tries and all it took was overcoming two confounding double bogeys in the final four holes of an otherwise terrific first round, bouncing back from losing a two-shot lead on the opening hole of the final round and recovering from having squandered a one-shot lead with a single hole to play in regulation.

Thomas’ plight was less dramatic, but significant. Once the top-ranked player in the world, the three years between victories was the longest stretch of a decorated career that includes two PGA Championship trophies and a slew of more than 20 other titles from around the world.

“It’s so hard to stay patient,” McIlroy told reporters after his long-awaited Masters triumph. “It’s so hard to keep coming back every year and trying your best and not being able to get it done.

“There was points on the back nine today I thought, ‘Have I let this slip again?’ But again, I responded with some clutch shots when I needed to.”

Entering what is just his fourth year in the NFL, Hamilton has no such scar tissue, but that doesn’t quench the thirst of expectation, particularly with Baltimore having faltered when the stakes are at their highest.

Not for a player whom the Ravens drafted 14th overall out of Notre Dame in 2022 and one who is likely to become the league’s highest-paid player at his position.

Not for someone who sees the parallels between golf and football and knows that the Ravens can’t afford a sluggish start — including in the secondary, as was the case last season — to get to where they haven’t yet been: a Super Bowl.

“Last year, didn’t get off to a great start … but we found our way at the end of the season,” he said. “Who knows if we started off well, we would’ve had a chance at the [No.] 1 seed and stuff like that.

“So, it’s important for us this year to … I think it’s important that we’ve gone through that and understand how hard it is to climb out of that hole and how we can change that this year.”

Now the only question is if the Ravens will finally find the same success McIlroy and Thomas did.

Have a news tip? Contact Brian Wacker at bwacker@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/brianwacker1.