Driving David Sutherland

Driving David Sutherland From Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Golf Book

Golf is a game of days. And I can beat anyone on my day.
~Fuzzy Zoeller

One of the best days in David Sutherland's golf career happened in August 1989, in a series of events that still seems too dizzying to succeed. That day he hit zero warm-up balls, spent no time at the practice green and his heart was racing at the first tee. Yet he produced a level of play few competitors could duplicate in any circumstances.

If the Sutherland name seems familiar, it's because David's the younger brother of Kevin Sutherland, who in a dozen-plus PGA Tour seasons earned $10 million as well as the 2002 World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship. They were stellar players at Christian Brothers High School in their hometown of Sacramento, California, and became all-America selections at Fresno State. David followed his brother onto the tour, too, but a series of injuries curtailed his competitive career and led him to become the men's golf coach at Sacramento State.

Though for everything that older brother Kevin has done, nothing equals what David went through in 1989 on the final day of the 87th Western Amateur. Of all the amateur tournaments crammed into the summer, the Western is the only one that approaches the U.S. Amateur in prestige. Its list of past champions includes Charles (Chick) Evans Jr., Marvin (Bud) Ward, Frank Stranahan, Jack Nicklaus, Lanny Wadkins, Ben Crenshaw, Curtis Strange, Hal Sutton, Scott Verplank, Phil Mickelson, Justin Leonard and Tiger Woods.

You don't make it onto that list by simply falling out of bed. Years of preparation go into surviving the Western's format: 36 holes of stroke play Wednesday and Thursday before a cut to the low 50 players, 36 holes Friday before a second cut to the low 16, then four rounds of 18-hole matches across Saturday and Sunday. Not a week for the timid.

David shot 70-78 the first two days at Point O'Woods G&CC in Benton Harbor, Michigan, which eked past the first cut. He then went 71-67 Friday to reach the prestigious Sweet Sixteen, itself enough of an accomplishment to make most players' summers. Saturday morning he defeated Len Mattiace (who would lose a 2003 Masters playoff to Mike Weir) and in the afternoon he topped Doug Martin, who had won the qualifying medal against one of the summer's strongest fields by an eye-popping nine shots.

Sunday morning's semifinal was the kind of match that would make anyone pray for a day where everything went perfect. Sutherland would face Greg Lesher, low amateur in that year's U.S. Open. The previous day Lesher advanced past the quarterfinals by eliminating Phil Mickelson (who in a few months would win the PGA Tour's Northern Telecom Open as an amateur).
As is still the case with many Western Amateur competitors, Sutherland and a friend were guests of a local family. The family lived in Kalamazoo, about thirty miles east on Interstate 94. The family loaned them one of their cars for the week, so when the pair returned to the house Saturday night they naturally left David's clubs in the trunk.

Which wouldn't have been a problem if Sutherland and his friend hadn't discovered early Sunday that the family had taken that car, most likely by force of habit, to attend church services. Imagine for a moment the panic. You have no idea where the family worships, no way to reach them (there weren't too many cell phones floating around in 1989) and the match of a lifetime fast approaching.

With Sutherland's friend driving the family's other car, the pair began crisscrossing the city looking for the car with the clubs. Remarkably, they found it in fairly short order. The only remaining hurdle was getting to the first tee by the starting time.

Remember that scene in The Blues Brothers where Jake and Elwood drive like mad in a police car to reach the tax assessor's office before the deadline? It was a lot like that. At one point Sutherland and his friend had the car doing 110 miles per hour.

"We had a radar detector, and about a mile before we were caught my friend started hitting the brakes," Sutherland admitted later that day. The officer clocked the car doing 87 in a 65-mph zone. "As we were pulling away from the trooper, my friend said, ‘If we get caught again, they're not going to stop us until we get to the parking lot.'"

Meanwhile, the gallery at The Point's first tee milled nervously, scrutinizing any car rolling up the long entrance drive. Lesher was "visualizing how it would be to play alone" because The Rules of Golf call not for disqualification of the absent party but require the one present to play for his victory. In the closing seconds, literally, Sutherland's car came onto the property at breakneck speed and screeched to a stop in the parking lot. Sutherland scrambled out, wearing one untied shoe and carrying the other. Once on the tee, he mumbled a quick apology, put on his other shoe, took a few practice swings and ripped his first drive.

Sutherland was so consumed by the morning's adventures that he barely caught his breath all day. Lesher, thrown off his rhythm by the surprise appearance, began the match 6-5-5 and was 5 down after seven holes. Sutherland won, 3 and 2. After a brief lunch break Sutherland went back out and captured the title by defeating Tony Mollica, a six-time Western competitor and that year's qualifying runner-up, 2 and 1.

"You know, that's the way we play a lot of our golf in college," Lesher recalled later that day. "You just get out of the van, take a practice swing and rip it down the middle, like there's nothing to it."

And that may be worth a try. Whenever you find your head is stuffed to bursting with tips and suggestions and lessons and sayings, try going straight from the parking lot to the first tee with a golf shoe tucked under your arm. No practice balls, no putts, nothing.

Of course, the speeding ticket is optional.

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