A SHOT OF VICTORY

SUNDAY WAS a day of international sporting events, and luckily for the Newsday employees who had to work that day, there was a TV set up especially for the sports lovers. As the day progressed, people would jump back and forth from their desks to the TV to try to catch a glimpse of the action. When I heard someone say Roger Federer won Wimbledon, I shrugged – I am not a tennis fan. Even when football underdogs Greece whipped Portugal’s tail, I did not jump out my seat. But when I heard someone say “Stephen Ames won! He won the PGA!” – now that peaked my interest, and I felt a great sense of pride and happiness that a local golfer, who has been playing on the professional golf tour for so long, had finally won himself the prestigious first place at the PGA Tour.

I come from a golfing family of three generations, so you could say golf has always been in my blood. When my sister and I were barely pre-teens, we began tagging along with our dad on the golf course, toting a club, trying to get a feel for the swing. This was a long time ago, when Junior golfers were in small numbers, but as more and more kids began playing, Friday afternoons up at St Andrews Golf Course became designated especially for the Juniors. A number of local professionals and instructors would try to fine-tune our swings, and sometimes Stephen Ames and his younger brother Robert would spend a few hours with us on the driving range or putting green, giving us pointers and guidance. 

Soon the Junior golfers were right on par with the seasoned players, and much to the dismay of the “old fogies” many Juniors were winning the Club tournaments. In the early 1990s, for the first time ever, Trinidad and Tobago was able to send an almost complete team in all the various age groups to compete in the annual Caribbean Junior Golf Championships. Because at that time you could count the number of female Juniors on one hand, the same girls represented TT almost every year, and luckily that included me and my sister as well.  The first year that I made the team, the Championships were held at Casa De Campo in the Dominican Republic. Everyone felt so proud in their red jackets as part of the National Trinidad and Tobago Junior Golf Team. The courses we played were world-class and the competition was fierce. One team in particular, Puerto Rico, had golfers who attended professional golf schools in America, but even with their “superior” training we still placed high up there, often taking second place overall.

On the course, the pressure was daunting. We’d spend many hours practicing and trying to get a feel for the course before the competition. Golf is a mentally challenging game and not one where you want to lose your concentration, or patience, or wits, or temper. And golf can be exhausting – people usually have this idea that golfers zip around on golf carts leisurely sipping on cold drinks and occasionally getting up to hit a ball. Nothing could be further from the truth. Juniors had to carry their own heavy bag and walk the course, which can take over four hours, rain or shine. It certainly kept a kid fit, and often sun burnt. And of course, a lot of the fun was in meeting the other kids from all the other islands and making friends. Usually there would be one day when the organisers of the Championship would put all the kids on a bus and take them around, either to a beach or a local attraction, just to take a break from the competition and have a little fun.  But the focus always remained on performance.

The competition could be nerve-wracking, because you don’t want to let anyone down by playing badly. You don’t want to disappoint your coach, your teammates, your family, your country, or yourself. I suppose that is why they say competitive sport “builds character,” because when everyone has worked so hard to get sponsorship to make sure the team has everything it needs, the last thing you want to do is mess up. Golf is not a sport you master easily, or that you can be careless in. It may sound like fun and games to go stay in a nice hotel and play golf, but representing TT was not something any of us ever took lightly. Yet even with our local golfers winning tournaments both regionally and internationally, and even with Stephen Ames rubbing shoulders with the likes of Tiger Woods, golf still remains quite unappreciated by local sport lovers. I suppose since golf has always been considered an elitist “white man’s” sport (not that my or Stephen’s picture shows otherwise), it is easier to relate to sporting heroes like Brian Lara, Ato Boldon or Dwight Yorke.

I will admit golf is not a cheap game and requires a lot of specialised equipment and club fees that are not always affordable. On top of that, people simply think golf is a boring sport! Well that I cannot make excuses for – I guess when it comes to golf, either you love it or you hate it. In either case, I still think it is commendable that Stephen Ames finally made it after playing so long on the circuit and consistently finishing at the top of the leader board. In a world where golf has picked up in popularity and international competition is ferocious, on Sunday I felt so happy that the same guy who once showed my sister and I how to hold a club over a decade ago, is out there teeing off next to Vijay Singh, Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson and so many of golf’s greats. This is why I was so proud that a Trini – no matter what his passport may say – is this year’s PGA winner. It is an amazing achievement that was years in the making.