Saturday, June 15, 2002
It's not supposed to be this hard
By JIM LITKE
AP Sports Writer
Woods reverses his hat on the 12th hole because he was distracted from the rain dripping from the visor.
(AP photo)
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FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — When you're on summer break and 16 years old, golf is not supposed to be this hard.
By mid-morning, Derek Tolan was tired and drenched and still the holes in front of him seemed to stretch on forever. Every time he swung the club back, he imagined losing his grip and watching it fly into the gallery. Making matters worse, his buddies back home were probably lounging in bed, doing nothing more complicated than rustling through the sheets for the remote control.
“Just about the time I was making the turn, I was like, 'This course is killing me. No way can I play out here.”' Tolan said. “You have to hit every shot perfect and your grips are soaking wet and there's nothing you can do about it. And that's when you ask yourself, 'What am I doing out here?”'
Some people asked that question much earlier in the week.
A 16-year-old taking the toughest test in golf alongside the best players in the world isn't new. A 14-year-old named Tyrell Garth played the U.S. Open in 1941 and prodigies roamed its fairways before and since. Even so, the story of how Tolan joined their ranks is a little better than most.
He was playing a qualifying round near the family's suburban Denver home and choking at the end of it. He bogeyed three of the last five holes to fall into a playoff against PGA Tour-tested Mike Reid and another pro named Mike Zaremba. Somehow, the veterans blinked; Reid and Zaremba both flew the green on the first extra hole. Tolan landed short and drained a 50-foot chip shot.
Yet watching him walk off Bethpage's soggy, brutal Black Course after shooting 88 in Friday's second round, you wondered whether the kid wasn't cursing his luck. He said no.
“I got to see what it was like out here, to see how tough it really is. I got to meet a lot of great people. I was on the driving range the other day and I look around, and on either side are all these great players. Old and new.
“It was,” Tolan said, looking wistfully off in the distance, “like something right out of a movie.”
If so, it had turned into a horror movie long before the end of the second round. He opened Thursday with a respectable 78, respectable enough, anyway, to tie defending British Open champion David Duval and one better than defending U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen.
But those two shot 73 and 75, respectively, on Friday, teaching the youngster an important lesson — assuming he was paying close attention.
“It's wonderful to get here at his age, the experience of a lifetime,” said Greg Norman, who has a son at home the same age as Tolan. “Imagine going home to your pals with the stories.
“But when you're 16 and amateur, it's easy to feel bulletproof. You think, 'This could go on forever.' But when it's your living that's at stake, you learn in a hurry — you're only allowed so many misses.”
Tolan had used his up long before the last few holes. The galleries still gave him plenty of love, but even that buoyed him only so much. Coming down the stretch, he remembers thinking that the course — at 7,214 yards already the longest in U.S. Open history — felt more like 7,800.
“I needed something to keep my head in the game,” Tolan said.
And so John Tolan, his father, caddy and the only teaching pro Derek has ever had, started making wagers with his son.
“Little ones,” Derek said. “It wasn't anything drastic.”
Upon hearing that, John Tolan smiled and the story behind that smile is this: Before the start of Open qualifying, he told his son he'd buy him a car if he played his way into the starting field.
Derek might not be the most enthusiastic student, but he rarely needed pushing where golf was concerned. He grew up a range rat, shagging balls all day so he'd have a few extra buckets put aside to hit before Dad turned the lights off.
Even now, at the practice facility John Tolan runs on the south side of the city, when the temperature dips to 20 degrees and the heat lamp is glowing above only one of the hitting stations, he knows where to find Derek.
But just to light him up that little bit extra, John Tolan put the car on the line. The running joke ever since they arrived here is whether — not when — he will pay off.
“I'll run away if he doesn't,” Derek said.
John smiled resignedly.
“You'll see Derek driving a different car,” he said at last.
And suddenly it dawned on a few people standing nearby that if the golf on this day seemed like work to a 16-year-old, at least he'd have something to show for it the next time he got together with his buddies back home.
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Jim Litke is the national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke@ap.org
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It's not supposed to be this hard
