It was a day more than 20 years ago, but Ben Portie recalls the details as if it were yesterday.
Long before Portie won the 2011 HealthOne Colorado Open, a few hours he spent at the International PGA Tour event helped set him on the path toward becoming a professional golfer.
At the end of a weather delay at Castle Pines Golf Club when he was 12 or 13 years old, Portie was sitting behind the practice tee. Out of the blue, Tour player Russ Cochran invited Portie — a lefty like himself — out on to the range to hit a few balls.
“He actually let me hit some of his clubs,” Portie recalled on Tuesday. “I remember hitting a 6-iron and it was the heaviest club that I’d ever swung. He let me hit three balls. After the rain delay I followed him around for the last nine. Most of the people had left, so I got to chit-chat with him for about nine holes. I still remember it to this day. And that’s what kind of (got me thinking), ‘this is what I want to do — play professional golf.'”
And on Tuesday, Portie — along with nine fellow professionals with strong ties to Colorado — had an opportunity to pay it forward. With a few hundred people in attendance — many of them kids — Portie (pictured above) thought he might be doing for some youngster what Cochran did for him way back when.
The International episode “was a little different, but it was kind of similar to this,” he said.
The “this” Portie was referring to was the U.S. Amateur Alumni Day the CGA and CWGA held Tuesday at CommonGround Golf Course as a way of promoting next month’s U.S. Amateur, and getting kids involved in the game. CommonGround will serve as the second stroke-play course for this summer’s Amateur, while Cherry Hills Country Club will be the primary host course for the Aug. 13-19 championship.
A total of about 30 past U.S. Amateur qualifiers from Colorado showed up to participate in the Alumni Day, including Jim English, who competed in the event about five times from 1947 to 1961. English hit a shot on the CommonGround practice tee to start a Skills Challenge in which 10 U.S. Amateur alums competed against one another and put on a show for the kids and adults in attendance.
For the record, Gunner Wiebe won the “Phlop” shot contest (named in honor of Phil Mickelson). Scott Petersen was tops in accurately curving the ball around an obstacle to a designated target (a la Bubba Watson at the Masters). Former Air Force Academy golfer Tom Whitney earned the distance title with a 342-yard drive. And Tom Glissmeyer, who qualified for the U.S. Open as a 16-year-old in 2003, landed the overall title with the best combined score in the three contests.
Besides the “Skills Challenge” per se, there was some trick-shot freelancing by some of the players, including hitting drives off their knees and whacking balls in mid-air. (Charlie Soule is pictured above.)
“To see the guys interacting with all the kids and interacting with each other, and giving each other a little grief when they hit a bad shot, that was fun,” said Wiebe, whose dad, Mark, was in attendance and signed autographs a couple of days after finishing eighth in the U.S. Senior Open. “I have never been to something like this on such a wide scale.” (Mark Wiebe is pictured below signing autographs.)
Combined, the Skills Challenge contestants have won a couple of Colorado Opens, five state high school titles and eight CGA Stroke Play or Match Play championships. They’ve also competed in four U.S. Opens.
At the end of the day, the “alumni” seemed to be having just as much fun as the kids and adults who watched the show.
Besides seeing some skillful demonstrations, the kids received a free lunch and a U.S. Amateur hat for autographs and got an up-close-and-personal look at the U.S. Amateur replica trophy that was on hand.
“Personally I wish we had the opportunity to do this more often,” said Steve Ziegler, a quarterfinalist in the 2009 U.S. Amateur. “This is the kind of thing that inspired all the guys here who are performing to get to the higher levels of golf. Seeing all these kids … it’s a special opportunity. I think it’s wonderful.”
Gunner Wiebe, who like Ziegler grew up honing his skills on the Colorado junior circuit, spoke with CGA executive director Ed Mate six or seven months ago about the possibilities for what eventually became Tuesday’s Alumni Day. And the end result left a big smile on Wiebe’s face.
“I think this is one of the coolest things we could do as part of the CGA, the U.S. Amateur or anything,” said Wiebe, who won a CGA Match Play Championship at CommonGround. “We don’t get enough opportunities to come back and have fun with a bunch of kids who just want to see golf. We might not be Tiger Woods or Phil (Mickelson), but to them we might be more than just your normal everyday (golfer).
“I just wanted to come back and say thanks really more than anything because I think I owe these guys (at the CGA) a lot. And since I don’t have enough money yet to donate back, I can at least donate my time. I wish I could do it more.”
Mate, who came up with many of the ideas that led to the Alumni Day, thinks such events could become mainstays at other venues set to host USGA championships.
“I think this is a perfect model for every state and regional golf association anytime they’re the host association for a USGA championship,” he said. “It makes sense to do an event like this where you invite all your past qualifiers from the event and make sure there’s lots of activities for the kids to keep them entertained.”
