Friday, May 16, 2008
Last man in glad to be part of the Robertson
Aaron McFarling
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Reactions told the story.
As Jonathan Hammond stood near the clubhouse at Roanoke Country Club on Wednesday afternoon, watching the other hopefuls putt out the finishing hole, his own score kept getting better in his mind.
Anguish. That's what Hammond saw on so many faces. Frustration as another chip skidded past the hole, mock celebration as a meaningless putt on No. 18 finally dropped to reverse a daylong trend. These were all great players -- three had traveled all the way from Florida for this one-day, last-chance trial -- but maybe, just maybe, Hammond's 1-over par 73 would be enough.
"A lot of times, you can see the kids' faces when they hole out, how hard they're trying to line up that last 5-footer," Hammond said. "You can a lot of times tell by their demeanor how they're playing."
With Hammond's nerves gnawing at him, the last group came through with nary a fist pump.
That's when it hit him: He'd done it.
Hammond was in the Scott Robertson Memorial.
Let's be honest: The junior golf circuit is not exactly a fertile place for the underdog to sprout. This is largely an arena for the privileged, where money buys the best coaches who can produce the best swings that generate the best scores.
Travel costs alone could bankrupt a middle-class family, so a lot of middle-class families don't bother.
Above all else, rags-to-riches tales need the rags.
Hammond has them -- at least on a relative scale. You could tell it in his excitement for just becoming a part of this tournament.
You could tell less than an hour after he became the second and final qualifier for the Robertson's international field of prodigies on Wednesday. Asked when he'd tee off for Thursday's practice round, the 17-year-old shook his head.
His mother explained.
"Oh, no," Laura Hammond said. "He's got school tomorrow."
School -- and home -- are in Raleigh, N.C. So that meant Hammond, who'd left home that day at 6:15 a.m., would be returning for a series of classes, then head back to Roanoke on Thursday night. With him would be Spencer Lawson, Hammond's teammate at Westfield High School. Lawson nabbed the Robertson's other qualifying spot with a 69, tops in the 25-player field.
"You can only miss a certain amount" of school days, Lawson said. "And I've already hit that limit."
But today, they'll both test that policy. Neither would dream of missing a chance to play in the Robertson, one of the nation's premier junior golf events.
"This is the biggest tournament I've gotten into so far in all my junior golf," Hammond said. "All these kids in the field are nationally recognized and have played well in really big tournaments, so it's going to be a good experience for me to see how they play."
Hammond sent his resume to tournament officials in each of the past three years, but never was it good enough to earn him an exempt spot. There's certainly no shame in that -- Courtney McKim, another Westfield golfer who won the North Carolina Group AAAA girls' championship in October, also had to qualify in person -- but it wasn't until this year that Hammond decided to try his luck in the last-chance qualifier.
"I pretty much knew I was going to have to qualify when I turned in my application," he said. "But I was prepared for that."
He wasn't prepared to shoot 3-over in the first four holes Wednesday, but that's what he did. He rallied to get to even, then bogeyed No. 18 after hitting his first shot out of bounds.
"I would have been disappointed if that was the difference," he said.
It wasn't. The next closest pursuers were Mateusz Jedrzejcyk of West Palm Beach, Fla., Brandon Jobe of Fayetteville, N.C., and Brian Langley of Blacksburg, each of whom carded a 75. But Lawson's score came in shortly after Hammond's, so Hammond knew he was on the bubble as the last half-dozen groups came through.
Lawson, a 16-year-old who was exempt last season but missed the cut, had no such worries. He felt confident his 69 would get him in the three-round main event.
"Now I'm gonna go win it," he said with a smile. "Three 69s maybe will do it."
Hammond, standing nearby, laughed.
"I guess I'm going for second then," he said.
A few minutes later, they hopped in Laura Hammond's Suzuki Forenza sedan -- "not very spacious," both boys noted -- and headed home for a day. They left without knowing what time they'd tee off today.
"At least we have a tee time," Lawson said.
"Yeah," his buddy said, peeling off the last of his rags. "At least we have a tee time."
