Monday, July 30, 2001
Golf prodigy makes national mark
Edgewood's Alex Volpenhein, 12, breaks 21-year-old record
By John Erardi
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Alex Volpenhein won the Future Masters, arguably the most prestigious junior golf tournament in the U.S.
(Steven M. Herppich photos)
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As the heat of another grueling Tristate summer turns golfers' swings into mush like a banana left too long in a golf bag, we bring you 12-year-old Alex Volpenhein of Edgewood. His swing remains as cool and smooth as a banana split.
Any hacker who's ever chili-dipped a pitching wedge from 80 yards out as the sweat dripped off his nose won't know whether to love or hate this kid.
But we know this:
We'd like to change places with him.
And not just for a day. How about for a year? (After all, who except a 13-year-old wouldn't like to be 12 again?) Especially if its means splitting fairways with 240-yard drives, hitting 8-irons stiff to the pin and curling in 20-footers for birdies, all of which Alex just got done doing at the 52nd annual Press Thornton
Future Masters at Dothan Country Club in Dothan, Ala.
Playing in the blast-furnace conditions of the Deep South from the white tees normally used by adults — the course measured just shy of 6,000 yards — Alex fired a 3-under par 71-70 to break a record that had been on the books for 21 years. The Future Masters is arguably the most prestigious junior golf tournament in the United States.
Volpenhein got his first par at age 4.
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On the final hole of the Future Masters, Alex stood in the fairway 120 yards from the pin, dead into the wind, knowing that he needed a birdie to shoot 70 to go with his first-day 71 to break the two-day tournament record of 142. So what does Alex do? He hits the 8-iron to 2 feet. Birdie.
By the way, how did he know he needed birdie? He was already leading the tournament by 5 strokes. It wasn't like he was being pressed.
“I read in the program that 142 was the record,” Alex said.
He won the tournament by 6 strokes (another record) and his 69 in the qualifying round was also a record. In the next age bracket (13-14) they played the same white tees as Alex did, and only one player beat his score. And that player is a member of Dothan Country Club.
Alex, by the way, is not one of those nouveau golf guys, whose sport psychiatrists tell them not to look at the leaderboard. Just play every shot as well as you can.
He's into sports drinks, not sports shrinks. (For the record, he's also into Tony Hawk's Pro Skater II, J.T. Money, and The Fast and The Furious, but we digress. You'll need a 12-year-old's lexicon to figure all that out.)
When we heard Alex had shot 71-70 from the white tees, our first thought was that this kid could beat 95 percent of the adult golfers in America. John Leach, the director of golf at Traditions and Alex's teacher, said the figure is more like “98 or 99 percent.”
“You have to understand, the average player shoots 100,” Mr. Leach says. “From most white tees, Alex is a 3 handicap. From where he plays tournament golf (usually a bit shorter than the average white-tee lengths of 6,100 or 6,200 yards) he's scratch — or below that.”
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ALEX'S FAVORITE...
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• Video game: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater II (PlayStation)
• Summer activity: Swimming
• Movie (all-time): Happy Gilmore
• Movie (new): Fast and Furious
• Fast food: McDonald's cheeseburgers and fries
• Ice-cream flavor: Black raspberry chip
• Dinner: Shrimp Diablo at Karlo's in Florence
• Music: Rap
• Song: “High Low“ by J.T. Money
• Sports besides golf: baseball, basketball (plays both).
• TV show: SportsCenter (ESPN)
• Golfer: Tiger Woods
• Hole in one: His only one, in November, a 6-iron 146 yards at “The Rail” in Springfield, Ill.
• All-time shot: A go-for-it approach, 150-yard carry-over-water to the seventh hole at Traditions last year, to blow open a tournament. (“It was a chunkable shot with my 7-wood, but I hit it perfect,” Alex remembers.)
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Who is this kid, anyway?
Well, for starters, he's the first cousin of Jim Volpenhein, six-time winner of the Cincinnati Men's Met who narrowly missed a seventh last month at Traditions.
Jim wasn't exactly a late bloomer, either. As an eighth-grader, he played No. 1 on Covington Catholic's varsity golf team.
Alex, 5-foot-3 and 130 pounds, begins seventh grade in August at St. Pius Elementary. Ultimately, he may be headed to Covington Catholic for high school, but the rules for parochial schools have changed since Jim was in school. Now a student can't play for a parochial high school team until he's in the ninth grade. (In Kentucky public schools, junior high schoolers can play on the high school team.)
Alex began hitting golf balls when he was 2. His father, Carl, so liked what he saw of a golf-range instructor in Aberdeen (across the river from Augusta, Ky.) named Don Berry — magic tricks, jokes, ball-in-barrel games — that he asked Mr. Berry the age of his youngest students.
“Normally 6,” Mr. Berry said.
“I got one 3 1/2 and he can hit a golf ball,” Carl said.
“Bring him over,” Mr. Berry said.
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ALEX'S EQUIPMENT
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• Driver (9.5 degree loft): Titleist 975J
• 3 and 5 woods: Titleist PT
• 3 through 9 and pitching wedge: Taylor Made LCG
• Gap wedge (52 degree) and sand wedge (58 degree): Titleist Vokey Chrome
• Putter: Titleist Coronado Two, Scotty Cameron
• Ball: Titleist Pro V 1
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At his first lesson, Alex put his golf club between his legs and began hopping around the range.
“Now, Alex,” Mr. Berry said, “next week leave your horsey at home.”
At age 4, Alex parred his first hole.
At 4 1/2, he shot 36 on a par-3 course for nine holes.
At 6, he won his first tournament, a Pepsi event, and he was the youngest to ever win it. He shot a 39.
By the time Alex took his first lesson from Mr. Berry, Mr. Berry had lost a leg to diabetes. Three years later, he would lose the other. Despite that, he never lost his sense of humor and easy manner. Three years ago, he died. Every Friday, Alex had made the drive with his dad to Augusta and taken the ferry to Aberdeen for his lesson, and then rode to Maysville, Ky., to play nine holes. Now, when Alex is asked what he thought of Mr. Berry, his light-brown eyes fill with tears and he can't talk.
No teacher will ever top that for a relationship with a pupil.
And no pupil will ever have a better start than Alex.
It is moments like this that remind you he is 12.
And that he probably will never suffer burnout.
Not at a young age, anyway.
Golf's been kept too much fun for that.
For his parents, Patty Cobb and Carl Volpenhein, it's a balancing act of pushing ever so gently without appearing pushy. Get him into tournaments where the competition is stiff to bring out his best. Don't overdo the lessons, but let him know the coach is there when he's needed: such as just before the big tournaments to provide some meaningful swing thoughts. The tougher stuff is left to Coach Leach, who knows what it takes. He's had Alex since he was 6.
“Stop working and those other kids will blow right by you,” he tells Alex, and Alex nods knowingly.
Alex had flown to Dothan with his mother, while his father drove the 660 miles. After packing up the 43-pound trophy (yes, Alex knows the exact weight; he put it on the bathroom scales), he hopped into his dad's car for a 534-mile trip from Dothan to Paducah, Ky. (Patty, not knowing Alex was going to blow away the field in Dothan — he won the Future Masters for 10-year-olds two years ago, but finished 10th for 11-year-olds last year — had lined him up to play in Paducah right after Dothan.)
When Alex arrived at the golf course in Paducah, he looked around and said he was tired, that he'd rather go home and go swimming.
And Carl looked in his son's eyes, and he knew.
So they drove the 325 miles home to Edgewood.
And that is how you keep a kid from burnout.
Alex slept most of the way home.
“I'm good at sleeping in the car,” he explains. “I learned that back in the days when we were riding back and forth to see Mr. Berry.”
Check out our Tristate golf guide for a directory and features on local courses, tournament coverage and other news.
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