By D.A. Weibring
Last week I finished the Champions Tour west coast swing, playing at the Wal-Mart First Tee Open at Pebble Beach on the Monterey Peninsula. It's truly one of the unique tournaments on any professional tour. Seventy-eight Champions Tour professionals are matched up with 78 juniors from First Tee Programs all across the country, where they qualify through golf competition, written essays, grades and other activities designed to develop personal character.
The First Tee Program has nine core values that are the foundation of the program - honesty, integrity, sportsmanship, respect, confidence, responsibility, perseverance, courtesy and judgment. These are really values that derive from the game of golf as well as life's lessons, that most of us that play golf understand and try to pass along.
On Wednesday, when the pairing comes out, you meet your junior partner for the first time. On Thursday you and your partner attend a terrific event where this year, Peter Uberoth, one of the co-chairs, emceed. Everyone from the chairman of Wal-Mart, to the Commissioner of the PGA to LPGA great Julie Inkster was there with encouraging words.
That laid the foundation for a great week of competition that began on Friday. It is a Pro/Junior team format that for our team began at the Del Monte Golf Club, which is the oldest golf club west of the Mississippi. Juniors have to make a cut to play with their professional on Sunday, so the pressure was on.
I played with a young man from the St. Louis area, where he goes to Belleville East just out of St. Louis proper. He was a very talented young player and a true product of the Fist Tee environment and we really enjoyed playing together. He was real hard on himself here and there, but I was able to support him and encourage him. He made some birdies and we had a great time.
I got off to a great start shooting 64 on opening day at Del Monte. I made a bogey, an eagle and six birdies and played a good solid round of golf. I followed that up with a little bit of an up and down 71 at Pebble Beach. I made a double bogey on a flyer with a pitching wedge that almost went out of bounds. I turned it around with three birdies to finish the round and still played well.
In the final round I had an unfortunate hole on the front side; I parred the first 5 holes, and then on the par-5 sixth hole things changed.
It's a beautiful hole on the edge of the cliffs overlooking the Pacific. You have to drive down into a valley and then play up a huge hill that's probably 30 or 40 feet above your head, and then you're hitting a fairway wood from a downhill, side-hill lie.
I had a perfect drive and then hit my five wood a little thin and caught the bank and went into a bush. I had to take an unplayable lie. Bad went to worse when my next shot ended up in the backside of the bunker. I really didn't have a shot and I ended up in the front of the bunker where I got it into the face and couldn't hit it. I actually made a good 4 footer for an 8! At the time I was one shot in the lead and as you can imagine that ordeal really put a major dent in my opportunity to win the golf tournament.
I had to rally myself but also I tried to show my junior partner that those things happen. They happen in golf, they happen in life and I needed to forget about that and move on. I had to concentrate on what I had to do to play the next hole and try to regain some momentum. I'm pleased to say that I made two birdies and the rest pars and shot 73. I had a great chance to birdie the last 3 holes and just couldn't get a putt to drop. I shot a 73 and ended up tied for seventh.
I think my First Tee partner learned a few things; I know I did.
