Under Pressure describes the upbringing of a pair of golf prodigies:
Mr. Martin, who played soccer and tennis in high school, in addition to ping pong, says he wished he’d concentrated on a single sport growing up. Then he might have had a chance to play on a team in college at the University of North Carolina. When he became a parent, he wanted to see how good his children could become if they focused on a single sport and had top instruction.When Zach was a toddler, his father hired a baseball coach at nearby Barton College to teach him the fundamentals of hitting and throwing. He paid women on the Barton College soccer team $20 an hour for kicking and dribbling lessons, turning the kids into top players on their travel and recreational league teams.
At 5, Zach attended tennis camp at North Carolina State University. The next year, when the boys were 4 and 6, Mr. Martin signed them up for weekly golf lessons with a friend who was an assistant pro at a local club. Both exhibited decent hand-eye coordination. Josh had that sweet, natural pendulum stroke.
With regular practice and lessons, their games improved, as did their results in local tournaments their father signed them up for. By the summer of 2003, both were state champions and top 10 finishers at the U.S. Kids World Championship in Virginia. “That’s when I said, ‘It’s on,’” Mr. Martin says.
The Martin boys’ baseball, soccer and tennis careers were officially over. “I was just excited we weren’t going to have to shuttle them around to all these different sports and practices anymore,” Mrs. Martin says. “We were getting pretty stressed.”
Zach Martin says he misses other sports, especially the camaraderie his friends enjoy in team sports. “I do love golf, though,” he adds. “Really, I do.”
Golf long ago ceased being a game in the Martin family. It is a way of life that sucks up nearly every penny of disposable income. Most weekends are spent traveling to tournaments or to other courses, perhaps in the Appalachians or down at Myrtle Beach, that expose the boys to new challenges. The Martins drive the carts or carry the clubs while the kids play.
Three years ago, the Martins decided to sell their four-bedroom home in Wilson and move two hours east to a two-bedroom, $289,000 townhouse in Pinehurst, a golf Mecca with thousands of retirees, towering pine trees and eight sprawling courses, including the legendary Pinehurst No. 2, host of the men’s 1999 U.S. Open Championship. Pinehurst offered proximity to a variety of courses and the best coaching available.
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On a series of Excel spread sheets Mr. Martin keeps statistics on nearly every competitive round his children have played in the past five years. After the boys drop their final putts, the family goes out to lunch and the boys spend several minutes replaying each hole in their minds, writing down the number of fairways and greens hit, sand shots, saves and putts; or in other words, every calculation a pro golfer keeps.Mr. Martin then processes the data so, for instance, he can show Zach he hit the fairway on just 70% of his drives this summer compared with 78% during his winter play, but his putts per round dropped from 31.6 to 30.2 for an average of 1.87 putts per hole compared with 1.93.
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The boys play as many as five rounds each week. Most days they arrive home from school, wolf down a bowl of chicken noodle soup, and head out to the course. During the summer, they tee off for 18 holes at 7 a.m. nearly every day they are not at a tournament. They rest during the afternoon, then go back out at 5 p.m. and play until dusk.The devotion comes with a steep price. The Martins paid $15,000 to join Pinehurst, and nearly $5,000 a year for their membership. Cart fees are $18 each time the boys play. Lessons with Pinehurst pro Eric Alpenfels, rated one of the country’s top 50 teachers by Golf Digest, cost another $2,500 annually.
The boys play 25 to 30 tournaments each year with entry fees that range from $100-$300 for each player. A five-day trip to the Callaway World Junior Championships near San Diego can cost more than $3,000 if they can’t use frequent flier miles. Gas for their minivan for a trip down and back to the two tournaments in Florida can run another $1,200. The boys’ custom clubs cost about $3,000 for each set and have to be changed every other year.