When an athlete like basketball’s Steph Curry or football’s Tony Romo or baseball’s Mark Mulder makes a start in a PGA Tour-sanctioned event, Grant Fuhr smiles and nods his head.

Named one of the top 100 players in National Hockey League history in 2017, Fuhr considered competitive golf as a way to satisfy the competitiveness that spurred him as a hockey star. But Fuhr knows what the other athletes will likely learn about golf.

“I know where they are going, and I know what they are trying to do,” said Fuhr, the hockey Hall of Famer and five-time Stanley Cup winner as goalie for the Edmonton Oilers. “It’s just it’s a biggest step than people think.”

Now 56, Fuhr is 18 years removed from his playing days in the NHL and years removed from playing in PGA Tour-sanctioned events. In his own way, Fuhr made a name for himself in the golf world, playing in and winning celebrity golf events and making starts on the Canadian Tour (now the Mackenzie Tour) and the Web.com Tour.

“You don’t lose your competitiveness. That’s the great thing about golf. You can be competitive with it,” said Fuhr, a long-time Palm Desert resident and the director of golf – at least by title – at Desert Dunes Golf Club in Desert Hot Springs. “You just don’t realize the work and the effort that goes into it.”

More:Former Raiders head coach Tom Flores a finalist for Pro Football Hall of Fame

More:No time like the present to look ahead to the 2020 Desert Classic

Golf was a natural fit for Fuhr during his time with Edmonton and five other teams. And it’s a fit for hockey players in general, he said.

“I’ve always liked golf. I’ve always had friends who played professional golf,” Fuhr said. “So it’s something that you can do in the off-season, and hockey is geared for it. You’re in the winter, you are in Canada, it’s cold, it’s snowy, you can’t play golf. And then it gets nice out and hockey season is over, so we always played a lot of golf.”

For Fuhr, the need to fill his competitive void came in September of 2000, when he announced his retirement after 20 seasons in the National Hockey League. The first 10 of those years were with the Edmonton Oilers when Wayne Gretzky was not only the team’s star, but the player who elevated hockey to new levels of popularity.

With Fuhr in goal, the Oilers won Stanley Cups in 1984 1985, 1987, 1988 and then again in 1990 after Gretzky had been traded to the Los Angeles Kings. Known as both an iron man for starting so many games and as a money goalie for his performances in the playoffs, Fuhr also was a goalie for Canada’s Canada Cup gold medal teams in 1984 and 1987, playing the bulk of the minutes in the 1987 Cup.

Being raised in Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada, Fuhr’s hockey life was not uncommon for the hockey-crazy country. A junior hockey star, Fuhr was 17 when he joined the Victoria Cougars of the World Hockey League. By 1981, he was drafted eighth overall by the Oilers, beginning a stellar NHL career.

More:From mini-tours to the Desert Classic title, golfer Adam Long always believed in his game

More:From undocumented laborer to pride of Mexico, this PGA Tour rookie has unlikely story

But that typical Canadian path to stardom included the kind of pressure no non-Canadian can understand about a country where, Fuhr said, hockey comes before religion.

“That’s why people have a hard time playing in Canada. They don’t understand you don’t have a private life,” Fuhr said. “Everywhere you go, every time you go out, you are under a microscope. And it’s worse now than when I played, because everyone has a cell phone with a camera.”

Fuhr said Oilers coach Glen Sather did a great job of helping the players control the pressure by telling them it is better to be seen than it is to hide.

“Our guys, we would go out as a team, but it was always in plain sight,” Fuhr said. “You were part of the community, and they gave us a little leeway and a lot more respect that way.”

The Edmonton years even gave Fuhr a chance to learn about the Coachella Valley.

“We used to come down here in the early 1980s. Peter Pocklington, our owner, was good friends with President Ford,” Fuhr said. “(Pocklington) used to bring us down here to meet with President Ford, and we would stay here three or four days before we played L.A., then we would bus up to L.A. Then you’d come back for a couple of days if you beat L.A. A good perk for a bunch of guys. We’d come down here and play golf for a couple of days.”

After being traded from Edmonton to Toronto for the 1991-92 season, Fuhr spent nine more years in the NHL with Toronto, Buffalo, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Calgary. When he stopped playing, Fuhr heard the call of golf.

“After you have done your career, when you first retire, you are looking for things to do,” Fuhr said. “So (golf) fits really well. Now you have something to occupy yourself so your wife doesn’t shoot you. Because if you are home, you are going to get shot.”

Fuhr was fortunate that teams still wanted him around as a goalie coach, including seven years in Phoenix and three years in Calgary. But golf was never far from Fuhr’s mind. Even in his playing days, Fuhr would hang around professional golfers, getting the idea that he might be able to compete in the game.

“On a given day, you can compete with them. Mind over matter. I mean, as a professional athlete, we still think pretty well. Whether or not your body allows you to do it is another story,” said Fuhr, who has had both knees and one shoulder replaced since retiring. “But your mind still works.”

What Fuhr discovered, and what he thinks players like Curry, Romo and Mulder among others are discovering, is that recreational golf is a long way from competitive golf.

“It takes a lot more work than people realize. I know when I tried to compete, you’re at the golf course from 7 in the morning until dark, whereas regularly you could go out and hit balls at 7, go out and play nine holes at 7:30, 8 o’clock, come in and have lunch and maybe go back, practice for a couple of hours, then go out and play another nine. But to compete, you’ve got to be at the course and working all the time.”

Fuhr did compete, playing in and winning some celebrity events, playing in Canadian Tour events and playing in two Web.com Tour events played in Canada and hosted by his old teammate Gretzky, or Gretz, as Fuhr calls him. One of those events was the highlight of Fuhr’s career, he said.

“The first year of Gretz’s Nationwide (now Web.com) event, I think I missed the cut by two shots,” Fuhr said. “I wasn’t a good putter at the time. If I had putted any good, I could have made the cut.”

That alone shows what Fuhr understands, that working hard just to make a cut in a Web.com Tour event is a long way from competing on the PGA Tour, much less winning on the tour. Many former pro athletes who think about golf aren’t willing to put the work in or play in anything short of a PGA Tour-sanctioned event, Fuhr added.

“Something a lot of guys don’t want to do is play mini-tour stuff. They want to just jump right in. and it’s different,” Fuhr said. “You can go play for a few dollars, I can still do that, but that’s what you’ve got to do. Those (mini-tour) guys aren’t good enough to play regularly, but they are a lot better than you think they are. You’ve got to put the time in to play those events.”

Fuhr now lives in the desert with his wife Lisa, a long-time desert resident. When a Canadian group bought Desert Dunes Golf Club in Desert Hot Springs, they named Fuhr director of golf. That’s a nice title, but Fuhr laughs that he really fills the role of course mascot.

Fuhr still plays in smaller events, like U.S. Open local qualifying, and some celebrity events and events put on by the Oilers in Edmonton.

But in the last few years Fuhr has been focused on a documentary on his life, called “Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story.” Fuhr was born to an African-Canadian father and a Caucasian mother, but was raised by adoptive parents as he worked his way through the junior hockey world toward the NHL.

Fuhr admits he was surprised when producers approached him about the idea of the film.

“I was quite happy living in the shadows. No one really likes to have their life on the big screen. It really wasn’t that bad on the cellphone, but on the big screen, it is a little different,” Fuhr said. “But it was fun to do. And you don’t get a chance to live your life a second time very often. So I really enjoyed doing that, and it was good for my kids to see.”

The movie doesn’t gloss over some of the problems Fuhr had as a player, from an early retirement announcement during contract negotiations to a 59-game suspension for substance abuse and a failed drug test in 1990.

The film has already been shown by the Rodgers Sports Network in Canada after it finished up a theater run in the country. It was submitted to the Palm Springs international Film Festival for consideration, and Fuhr said there will be a premier in either Los Angeles or perhaps the Coachella Valley and then later in St. Louis. Then it will be available on Netflix, video on demand and perhaps iTunes.

But even with his movie and his hockey duties and his time in Canada, and just two months removed from his second knee replacement, Fuhr finds time to pursue his love of golf.

“It gives me something to push myself. It’s easy to let life slide,” Fuhr said. “Where you set yourself a goal. I’d like to do things, I know the chances are you might not be able to do it. But you want to push yourself to do it. Gives you some motivation, something to strive for. I still like to be competitive.”