Chef Thomas Keller, current holder of seven Michelin stars and the only American chef to have been awarded simultaneous three-star ratings for two different restaurants, knows how to brunoise. He also knows how to putt, and he knows about baseball. 

Once upon a time he dreamed of being a Baltimore Oriole, but his future wasn’t on the field. Rather, Keller created beauty in the kitchen, long after he stopped having to think about brunoise and other fundamentals, long after he liberated himself from the “how” of life and was able to focus on the “what” and “where.” That led him to open such celebrated restaurants as The French Laundry and Per Se (3 Michelin stars each); The Surf Club Restaurant (1 star), Bouchon, and others, and it’s led to the Thomas Keller Golf Classic, a tournament that helps to fund scholarships at the Culinary Institute of America. Whatever Keller does, in the end you can bet it likely involves a lot of work and that it’s part of a bigger story, one about nurturing others—including those who dine at hisn restaurants.

Keller remembers playing golf as a kid with his older brother, Joseph (also a noted chef), but says his first regular exposure to the game came during rounds with Eric Ziebold, whom Keller mentored at The French Laundry, Keller’s legendary Napa restaurant. (Ziebold is now a Michelin-starred chef as well.)

“Eric and I would go out and play the nine-hole at Chimney Rock Winery,” Keller remembers. “Eventually they replaced the course with more grapes, which made sense. I started with Eric, and then I’d get invited to play golf.”

One invitation came from the 2010 BMW Championship. Keller had a partnership with BMW, and as one of the most decorated American chefs in history he was most welcome in the pro-am.

“They thought I knew how to golf—I really didn’t know how to golf,” he remembers. “Quite hilarious. I embarrassed myself thoroughly, but I redeemed myself because at some point during the round I pulled out a hat. I didn’t put a cap on to begin the day, I put my cap on probably around the fourth or fifth hole, and it was a French Laundry hat. I was playing with Charley Hoffman, and Charley’s swing coach was Sean Foley at the time; he was with him and he saw The French Laundry cap and he was like, ‘Wow! Who do you know at The French Laundry? That’s pretty cool. Charley and I go to his restaurant in Las Vegas all the time.’

“Of course they never really listen to who they’re playing with at the pro-am when they first meet somebody, and I understand. It’s ‘this is Jim, Billy and Steven,’ right? But once they found out I was Thomas Keller, that was my redeeming moment where, as poorly as I played, it was OK.”

The experience encouraged Keller’s interest in the game, he says, and so he began working with a coach and playing at various clubs, building a network of golf friends along the way. There’s been an affiliation with TaylorMade, last year he worked with Scotty Cameron to create a series of putters “inspired by The French Laundry,” and more recently he began a collaboration with Peter Millar to benefit charity. His progress in the game, he says, comes from a similar place as his success in the kitchen—just don’t call it passion.

“I would never use the word ‘passion,’” Keller says. “Desire is much more important than passion. Passion ebbs and flows, when you’re sick and tired of something it comes and goes, but desire… That’s different.”

Desire, Keller says, sets the table for repetition, and repetition is how one ultimately finds liberation. With a nod to author Malcom Gladwell, he explains:

Mastery demands repetition, but it also requires input and inspiration. For Keller, that came in the vibrant American culinary scene of the 1960s and early ’70s, which the chef credits in part to the election of President John F. Kennedy.

“It was a significant moment because his wife loved France,” he explains. “She brought to the White House its first French chef. What woman in this country did not want to be Jaqueline? Jackie was ‘it’—the pillbox hat, everything.” 

Keller says Jackie Kennedy’s affection for France changed the way Americans looked at French culture, and that included food. The shift was bolstered by the emergence of Julia Child, who popularized French cooking; by Williams-Sonoma founder Chuck Williams, who introduced Americans to French culinary and dining tools; and by Robert Mondavi, who created and strongly promoted Napa Valley wines.

“Those three as a trilogy,” Keller says, “One food, one equipment, and one the beverage that goes best with food; they’re a significant part of the beginning of the resurrection of the culinary world in America.”

Julia Child made TIME’s cover in 1966; French Chef Paul Bocuse fronted The New York Times Magazine in 1972; and Chef Jean-Louis Palladin came along a few years later, liberating French cuisine in America and, one could argue, laying the foundation for the modern “farm-to-table” scene. 

The Rolling Stones were sharing the radio with Fleetwood Mac, Grease was on Broadway and Keller was in the kitchen, part of the first generation of American chefs to emerge in a French-flavored world that culturally sat somewhere between Jules et Jim and Star Wars.