Coming back to win after getting injured in a car accident?
Damn this guy is taking the Hogan playbook WAY to seriously 
I remember when this came out in Golf World and at the time not having any idea who this kid was on the adjacent page. It’s almost comical really in hindsight. Apparently he was the first player to win Junior World overall as a 15 year old in the 15-17 age division…. having to beat kids two years older than him. Really makes a huge difference at that age. I played Junior World many times staring in the age 11-12 bracket at Mission Bay Golf Course… then 13-14 bracket at Balboa, then 15-17 at Torrey Pines. I never played well down there for some reason. My old touring buddy Vic Wilk won Junior World 3 times. The best thing to come out of it for me was meeting Louis Brown there when I was 17. We roomed together there and have become lifelong friends. We laughed that we were both going to be Bulldogs… Fresno State and Georgia. I would go back east and play the major amateur circuits in the summer and stay with Louis in Newnan Georgia, and we would travel around the East Coast playing all those great events. We would later play both the Canadian Tour and Australian Tours as pros.
Great stuff. I wasn’t at all in golf yet heard of tiger probably the next year. I never thought he would do what he did in the pros. I heard this interview where he said he peaked at age 11.
- The Perfect Record: He went 36-0 in tournaments that summer.
- Academic Success: He said he was a straight-A student and received high marks for effort and participation.
- The Trophy Problem: He had won so many trophies (around 113) that his mother made him donate them all by the time he turned 12 to make space in the house.
- Personal Life: He jokingly noted that he “had the cutest girlfriend in all of sixth grade” and never got into trouble during recess .
I met friends of Chris Riley when I was caddying at shadow creek. They had stories of Tiger with his dad hitting balls in 100+ heat after winning a tournament in Henderson.
The best article on Tiger by a friend of mine from Boston who was super intelligent and perceptive is this one. He dig deeper under the Nike facade of which we learned about later.
I remember this being unusual in that a golfer was being talked about before baseball and basketball players. I think these guys went on the some major or big league play. John Hoover played for the Baltimore Orioles and Bernhard Thompson spent some time in the NBA. I think Eric Fox went to the show as well.
I remember being down at the FSU athletic press room for an interview after I came back from the US Amateur. It was quite a journey from qualifying in Hawaii at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu taking the 1 spot there away from the islanders. I won in sudden death playoff against Wendel Tom a Hawaiian native. I qualified in Chicago to get into the match play for the US Am… won my first match against Doug Doxie from Seattle, then beat Nathaniel Crosby who has won the US Am at Olympic Club in dramatic fashion. Then beat Billy Andrade before nearly winning against Chris Perry in the quarter finals. I was 1 up going into 18 after draining a 20 foot birdie on 17. Long par 4 and hit a 3 iron onto the green.. and make par. Perry is 25 feet above the hole, huge left to right putt coming straight down the hill and having to aim sideways. Just taps the ball and it’s rolling super slow. If it misses I win the match at get a ticket to play in the 1984 Masters. Regardless of the outcome, it was a big story back home about this 19 year old kid who almost pulled it off.
I remembered walking down the 18th fairway and Perry said to me… “Erickson, I don’t remember you putting so good in the NCAA Championships…. what’s going on?” Then on the first tee of the playoff, I said “great putt Chris” and he said “You know it was”. So I’m like.. ok.. I’m not having this.. and I drove it 30 yards by him off the #1 tee. He hit a 7 iron onto the front edge of the green…about 40 feet. I drilled a wedge in there that landed 3 feet short of the pin, but took a hard bounce and went over the back edge into some think rough about 20 feet past the hole. Chris was away and putted up to a foot. I gave him the putt. I hit a great chip shot from the rough, landed on the fringe and rolled about 5 feet by. I couldn’t have done much better. Very fast greens at US Am. I hit the putt and it spun out off the right lip. I feel like it should have at least gone another hole, but golf is golf!
Playing in the Canadian PGA Championship, apparently the journalist was looking for an outside story about tour wives, girlfriends etc. Didn’t play that well this week in Winnipeg, but this is one way to draw media attention when the putter isn’t working!
