From today's TIMES and NEWS-STAR
Some
who read this section don’t read much of the sports section and few of you are
from Scotland, so let me call attention to something you’ll find interesting if
you love North Louisiana. Three young guys around here have put together an
impressive resume, both individually and collectively. One of them will even
represent the United States – that’s the entire country and not just Louisiana –
in competition overseas in September.
The
three teenagers are Sam Burns and Nathan Jeansonne of Calvary Baptist and
Philip Barbaree of C.E. Byrd, each a member of their high school’s state
championship golf team and each a Top 7 finisher in the Junior PGA on a Bryan,
Texas, course in August. Sam finished first. This is no small feat.
Also,
Sam is featured with the female champion on the back page of the current
Golfweek magazine for winning yet another tournament, the Rolex Tournament of
Champions in June.
Two
things here for the non-golf fan:
First,
three of the top seven junior golfers are from Shreveport-Bossier and practice
and play together. This isn’t like the Three Stooges growing up in the same
apartment complex or all the Beach Boys being cousins or friends. It’s not the
Beatles living as boys within blocks of each other. But it’s in the ballpark.
That’s a lot of good junior golf in one spot.
And
two, Burns’ Junior PGA victory – 13-time PGA Tour winner David Toms won it in
1984 – earned him a spot in the PGA Tour’s Valero Texas Open in San Antonio in
March. Even bigger than that, Burns will play on the Junior Ryder Cup USA team
in Scotland in September.
Roy
Lang III, sports editor of The Times in Shreveport, is in a small group of
people who know as much golf as I do; he’s also in a tremendously large group
of people who play it better. We lucked into Roy when he came from his home in
Chicago to Centenary College on a golf scholarship. He says this trio of talent
is legit and that Burns, just 18, is a player without a weak spot in his game.
I’m
proud. And jealous.
Sam
I’ve known since he was 2ish, playing with Tonka cars in the dirt while his
older brother, Chase, served as a first sacker on our fall ball Orioles team 15
years ago. He remains the quietest Oriole I have ever not heard. Chase turned into
an all-district linebacker at Captain Shreve High. Also quietly efficient, his
little brother quit football in junior high because he was shooting under par
at East Ridge Country Club, something that grownups and certainly kids don’t
normally, well, do.
Funny.
Just a few years before, Sam would go play golf with Chase and Chase’s friends
with his little U.S. Kids set of clubs, and when bored he’d chase fairway bugs
with a fly swatter. His “Uncle Butch” McClellan, close friend of Sam’s dad,
Todd, since the two were boys, thought that Sam, as much as he had to fight
Chase and his buddies growing up, would be the toughest linebacker to ever come
out of Shreveport-Bossier.
But
golf got Sam early. Or Sam got golf. And now, from Tonkas and fly swatters, he’s
graduated all the way to Scotland and the Blairgowrie Golf Club in Perthshire,
September 22-23. We’re talking berns and brae and heather and peat. Bogs and
clover and people in funny hats. In more ways than a few, Perthshire’s a long
way from Sam’s home courses of East Ridge and Toms 265 Academy and Squire Creek
in Choudrant.
The
courses are different and so is the language. They talk funny in Scotland. An
internet investigation tells me that what appears to be an insult, “Awright ya
wee bawbag?” is just a friendly “How are you!?” greeting. But if you drop the
“awright” and “wee” and say, “Haw you, ya bawbag,” you’re saying, “I dislike
you and think of you as a testicle.”
This
makes me glad Sam does most all his talking with his clubs. Good luck, young friend.
We’re proud. Speak softly, and carry a big driver.
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