|
|
The Next Golf Prodigy?
If you're wondering who will rewrite the record book after Tiger Woods, 6-year-old Reece Campbell may be the answer By Lisa Taddeo
Associate Editor, GOLF MAGAZINE Looking out across the
gray coastal shards of Fife,
Scotland, high up on the
17th hole at Kinghorn Golf
Club, the golfer tees his ball.
He's dressed in all blue and
white, the colors and form of St.
Andrew's Cross, looking like something
of a Highlands astronaut. And it's
fitting, too, because he fully intends to
drive the ball to the moon. Staring
down the green as though daring it to
avoid the thump of his ball, he takes the
club back like a coil and mightily
releases, like a spring, swing after swing
after swing.
Really Young gun: Reece's Daly-esque swing is full of firepower. David Cruickshanks
|
He drives it as straight as 6 o'clock
nearly every time. He plays consistently
precise wedges tight to the hole. He
rolls in 60-foot putts. Riding a spray of
sand, his ball shoots up toward the
hole, crawling to within inches. That's
fine, leave him a tap-in—he'll broom it
in one-handed like a Tour player and
move on.
This could be, you'd think if you saw
him, the next Tiger Woods. Nay, he
could make the world forget Tiger ever
existed. But wait. In fact, wait 10 years
or so. Because this golfer, with his icy
confidence and his dream shots, with
his disarming good looks and his
champion's stare, is all of 6 years old.
Reece Matthew Campbell Murphy,
aka Tiny Woods, with nearly as many
words in his name as he's logged years
in his life, did not come to the game by
watching his father, like Jack Nicklaus
or Woods. Nor did Reece learn from a
teacher or a swing coach or a summer
camp. Rather, Reece learned the game
by watching his father toggle the
controls to Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2001
on Sony PlayStation. A video game.
At 18 months, he was mimicking the
characters with a ruler and a plastic
golf club, both of which he held crosshanded
(left hand under right), just as
he still holds the club for every swing.
This tiny Tiger's introduction to the
game doesn't conjure fairy-tale visions
of a young boy putting on pocked
greens, learning organically with the
land, like young Seve Ballesteros on a
moonlit beach. But neither does the
robotic squadron of Nike-visored, Eccoshod
fairway rats at phenom mills like
the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla.,
where children inhale swing dynamics
and exhale childhood as their clucking
parents pace driving ranges, having
their swing thoughts for them.
Steven Campbell, 32, wouldn't fit in
on that Bradenton range with all the
Lacoste polos because he isn't a Golf
Dad at all. He didn't even start playing
the game until Reece did. Unemployed
as a result of complications from
muscular dystrophy, Campbell occupies
himself as Reece's caddie, and it's quite
a thing to see this man—at times
hunched in gargoyle stances—wheeling
this child's trolley, picking up his errant
balls, playing a shadow role in the life
of one who is barely tall enough to cast
his own.
So it hasn't been conventional, the
wooing of this little boy by the game. All
the same, there's no shortage of the
dream factor. Reece goes to bed each
night wearing his golf glove. His teddy
bear is a 7-iron. When he wakes, it is not
to Saturday morning cartoons. It's to a
pre-breakfast putting and chipping
competition with his father.
|
advertisement
|
