Of the 4 grandkids who competed to play with Gary Participant, Alex Corridor (far left) shot the bottom rating.
Amanda-Leigh Participant Corridor
If you happen to’re Tiger Woods, choosing a companion for the PNC Championship is a no brainer. As a result of certainly one of your two youngsters doesn’t play golf, you go along with the opposite, who performs effectively. Simple, peasy. Charlie it’s.
For an additional legend within the discipline this week, the choice course of is extra complicated.
At 89, Gary Participant has six kids, 22 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, and there’s hardly a non-golfer within the bunch.
“That’s plenty of decisions,” Participant advised Golf.com.
What’s a patriarch to do?
Between 2001 and 2006, when his household tree was smaller and the match was referred to as the Workplace Depot Father/Son Problem, Participant ham-and-egged it along with his son, Wayne. However as time wore on, and the clan expanded, the 9-time main winner discovered it harder to decide on a teammate. What’s extra, as a result of he’s aggressive to the bone, he wished to make sure that he selected the member of the family within the best kind.
His answer: maintain a contest for the spot.
4 years in the past, the South African star established what he calls—relying on the cheekiness of his temper—the Grandsons Problem, the Cousins Qualifier, or the Choker’s Cup. By any title, the format and the stakes are the identical: 18 holes of stroke play; winner will get to peg it with the paterfamilias within the PNC.
On this 12 months’s qualifier, held simply earlier than Thanksgiving on the Bear’s Membership, in Jupiter, Fla., 4 of Participant’s grandkids teed it up, and the youngest within the group, 17-year-old Alex Corridor, took the title, posting a 78, seven pictures away from his cousin and previous Grandsons Problem winner, Jordan Participant.
All issues thought-about, it was a tidy rating, in blustery circumstances on a tricky, tipped-out monitor, carded by a child who solely began enjoying golf two-and-a-half years in the past.
“I used to be very pleased with that quantity,” Alex stated. “There was a ton of wind and it’s a really lengthy course.”
He was talking by cellphone from his grandfather’s place in West Palm Seashore, the place he has been staying whereas preparing for the PNC. Within the quick window since he took up the sport, Alex has confirmed a fast research, whittling his handicap to a plus-1. It helps, he says, that he performs golf “just about day by day.” It additionally doesn’t damage that he has realized the basics from a Corridor of Famer, in coaching periods that included a three-month stretch in South Africa, the place he lived on a golf course and labored on Alex’s recreation.
“My grandfather has been serving to me be taught mentally and bodily,” Alex stated.
Alex is not any stranger to match golf. Although he’s home-schooled, he’s a stalwart on the golf group for the Perkiomen Faculty, a highschool north of his hometown of Philadelphia. He has additionally competed within the Pennsylvania state championship. Nonetheless, he stated, the Grandsons Problem was “probably the most nervous I’ve ever been.”
He received off to a tough begin, and was five-over after 4 holes earlier than discovering his rhythm and solely dropping one shot the remainder of the best way. Although his grandfather wasn’t available, a small group of relations adopted the play, including to the strain and, when all was stated and achieved, snapping photos as Alex held the trophy — sure, there’s a trophy—aloft.
The actual prize, in fact, is a spot within the PNC.
Of the juniors within the discipline, Charlie Woods is certain to attract the brightest highlight. However Alex hopes to draw consideration, too. His purpose is to play Division I school golf.
“And whereas it is a clearly an awesome alternative to play with my grandfather, it’s additionally an opportunity to get some publicity in entrance of coaches,” he stated.
In April, Alex will play in one other uncommon occasion established by his grandfather: the Gary and Vivienne Participant Basis Junior Problem, a 90-hole problem (in honor of Participant’s upcoming ninetieth birthday), open to junior golfers across the nation, that raises cash in the direction of efforts to raise kids out of poverty within the U.S.
However first issues first: the PNC Championship, at Ritz-Carlton Golf Membership, in Orlando. Having received the qualifier, he was now taking intention on the principal occasion.
“We’re positively not simply going on the market to have enjoyable,” Alex stated. “We wish to win.”
