"IF YOU LIKE GOLF"
online golf column
by
Chris Dortch

August  10, 2006

Tiger Woods’ influence is in evidence at the Tennessee Amateur at Black Creek this week, just as it was in the Tennessee Open and Tennessee Match Play Championship earlier this season, and just as it is in every significant amateur tournament in Chattanooga.

All across Tennessee, the United States, and the world, young athletes are gravitating toward golf in numbers previously unimaginable. These young players aren’t just becoming rank and file 25 handicappers. Just like their idol Woods—a latter-day Pied Piper of golf just as Arnold Palmer was 45 years ago—they want to dominate.

Young players aren¹t yet winning everything in sight in Tennessee (not as long as such veteran mid-amateurs as Tim Jackson, Danny Green and Rob Long are still drawing a breath) but their numbers are in evidence on leaderboards. Most amateur tournaments these days resemble college invitationals. Players from Tennessee, Georgia, Middle Tennessee, Chattanooga, Charlotte, Furman, Samford, Missouri, Western Kentucky, Tennessee Tech, Tusculum and Berry are playing at Black Creek this week. Wes Roach, who has committed to Duke but is still in high school, led the tournament outright after the first day and was tied for the lead after 36 holes.

Where are they all coming from? Other sports.

“These kids are no longer playing, football, baseball or basketball,” said Chattanooga coach Mark Guhne. “Tiger Woods has shown them that golf is cool.”

“And these aren’t just little guys, they’re great big kids,” said Middle Tennessee coach Johnny Moore. You shake hands with them and they’ve all big forearms. These kids are bigger and stronger.”

Again, Tiger has shown the way. On the occasion of his 10^th anniversary on the PGA Tour this season, all the networks have been wearing out the clips of Woods in his pro debut at the Greater Milwaukee Open. That version of Tiger looks like Ichabod Crane compared to today’s version. This cat is ripped now, built more like the best strong safety in the NFL than a golfer. Who says golfers aren’t athletes?

Youngsters are now beating a path to the gym to pump iron. In the old days golf teachers might have thought weight training was detrimental to swing mechanics. Not anymore.

The result is that all these kids are hitting the ball nine miles off the tee. A couple of years ago I played in an American Junior Golf Association “junior-am” with a high school kid that was no more than 5-foot-8. I was willing to overlook the first 320-yard drive he blew past my tee shot. After four or five more of them, I was convinced he was taunting me. I hold a grudge to this day.

Not really. And neither do the mid-amateur players who are getting beaten by these youngsters. They all just sit back in awe and admiration.

“I can’t keep up with these kids [off the tee],” said Knoxville’s Jeff Golliher, the co-leader after 36 holes in the Tennessee Amateur. “I have to negotiate the course differently than they do. Whereas they just blow their drivers over trouble, I have to hit it around trouble.”

Moore doesn’t buy the theory that equipment is a major factor behind the younger players bombing huge drives. Sure, these kids have never heard of a persimmon driver (much less the old laminated woods we mid-amateurs grew up with). They’ve never had to hit a ball that was as hard as a brick, either. Nowadays, everything’s graphite, titanium, nickel, copper, ionomer—you’ve got to have a degree in chemistry to figure it all out.

But, as I’ve been told, it ain’t the wand, it’s the magician, and these kids are magicians. The level of play is getting better and better.

“It used to be you could shoot 76 and you were a Division I prospect,” Moore said. “I can remember going to the [Tennessee] state high school tournament and if a kid shot 78, 79, he’d be in the hunt. Now you’ve got to shoot under par if you want to have a chance.”

Jackson, a member of the Tennessee Golf Hall of Fame and one of the most successful amateurs in state history, has noticed scores dropping all around the country.

“I can remember going to the Northeast Amateur and a score of 284 [for the tournament] would get you a top 10,” Jackson said. “You shoot that now and you’re in the middle of the pack.”

In the middle of the pack behind a bunch of college kids, that is.

Earlier this season, the 47-year-old Jackson played in the Monroe Invitational. He was the oldest player in the field. Last month, Jackson and the 49-year-old Green were the two oldest players at the Southern Amateur.

There are other factors at work behind the proliferation of young golfers. The AJGA has been a huge benefit for those players who can afford it, providing a mini-PGA Tour proving ground so youngsters can learn how to compete.

State golf associations are also improving their junior golf programs. Vince Gill’s involvement in Tennessee has been a major lift as players across the state are able to play in summer tournaments, giving them opportunities they didn’t have previously.

Golf clubs are also playing an important role. Junior golf play used to be discouraged when I was growing up. Now it’s encouraged.

It would all be enough for the mid-amateurs and seniors to keep their distance from the young kids, at least in tournament play, if not for guys like Jackson and Green. Last month, Green showed up at the Pacific Northwest Amateur for the first time. It might as well have been the Pac-10 Championship, so loaded was the field with players from the likes of Washington, Arizona, UCLA. But Green qualified for match play, began picking off the limber backs one by one, and wound up winning the thing.

“It may be unrealistic,” Jackson said. “But I honestly believe I can still play better tomorrow. I think I’m a better player than I was 15 years ago, except that maybe I made a few more putts back then. You’re always trying to improve, no matter how old you are.”

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