Kragthorpe: Finau brothers survive adventurous first round
By Kurt Kragthorpe
Tribune Columnist
SANDY - The Titleist golf ball was on the
tee, the fairway was awaiting and the 3-wood
was waggling the usual way in Tony Finau's
hands Thursday afternoon as he prepared
to play in a pro tour event.
It's just that something else was happening, something he never
imagined could happen to him on a golf course. The State Amateur
champion was stunned.
"I'm looking down at the ball like, 'How come I'm shaking. What's going
on here?' " he said nearly five hours later, managing to smile about the
experience. "That's definitely the most nervous I've been - ever, doing
anything. I mean, it's a really big deal."
So it was that Finau's first swing of the Utah Championship counted for two strokes and left him standing
right there. He hooked his ball out of bounds, into the driving
range adjacent to the first
hole (No. 10 for Willow Creek Country Club members) and had
to re-tee.
So he grabbed a 3-iron, hit that into the left rough, caught
a tree limb with his next shot, then found the rough short
of the green, pitched on and three-putted.
That's a 9, if you're scoring with us, giving Finau plenty
of room for improvement the rest of the day and the rest of
his career, assuming he progresses to the Nationwide Tour level
or even beyond as a pro someday. He signed for a 7-over-par
79, matching the worst score in the field, but was not all
that discouraged, considering the way everything started.
The other players in his threesome "were looking at me
like, 'You rookie,' " Finau said, smiling again. "Actually,
they calmed me down."
He's 16 for another week, during the one-month annual period
when he and his brother, Gipper, are the same age. Gipper made
six birdies Thursday during an adventurous round of 73 that
gives him an outside chance of making today's cut, if he can
come back with something in the 60s.
If not, the Phenom Brothers, the West High golfers who undoubtedly
became the youngest brothers ever to play in a PGA Tour-brand
event, will still have the experience of a lifetime.
The brothers have regularly attended the tournament, staged
at Willow Creek since 1999, and marveled at the tour players. "Just
a few years later, now you look at them, they're still kids,
but all of a sudden, they dream and they're right there, hitting
range balls with those guys," said their father, Gary. "That's
the cool part."
There's also the consolation of knowing this is pretty much
how it all started for Tiger Woods.
Tiger was almost the exact same age as each of the Finau brothers
the first two times he played in his hometown Nissan Open in
Los Angeles on the PGA Tour in the early 1990s, shooting 72-75
and 74-78, missing both cuts.
As a more realistic role model, there's Boyd Summerhays. The
Farmington resident was 16 when he played in Utah's original
Nationwide Tour stop in Provo, shooting 74-75. Summerhays later
became one of the few Utah high school products ever to qualify
for the PGA Tour, although injuries have set him back.
"It's great experience; they'll be able to kind of gauge where they are," Summerhays
said of the Finau brothers, having completed his own round of 75. "They
should do fine out here."
They did, in stretches.
Gipper, who advanced through Tuesday's qualifying round with
a 63 at Wingpointe Golf Course, made four birdies and three
pars on his last seven holes. "Actually, coming out here
at the beginning, I didn't feel I belonged," he said.
Yet by the end, "I wished there were more holes."
Tony justified his sponsor exemption with entertainment value
off the tee, not counting that first swing. On the par-5 No.
12, his drive traveled some 400 yards. Two holes later, he
ended up 15 yards short of the green on a 384-yard hole, and
his brother - on the green in the threesome ahead - was a witness.
"That scared me," Gipper said. "Right when I saw that rolling
up, I knew it was Tony."
There were not enough shots like that for Tony, who hit only
four fairways. He intends to come back strong today, but he
also knows there's a lot of golf ahead, including next week's
Junior Ryder Cup in England.
"Hopefully," he said, "I can get all of my bad shots out of
the way in this tournament."
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Kurt Kragthorpe can be reached at kkragthorpe@sltrib.com. To
write a letter about this or any sports topic, send an e-mail
to sportseditor@sltrib.com.
Article
Courtesy of The Salt Lake Tribune
