Local Player Transforms Over Time From Dabbler To Competitior
November 12, 2016 at 2:42 a.m.
Local Player Transforms Over Time From Dabbler To Competitior
By Mark [email protected]
Darrell won six times and Scott nine over the summer of 2016, and each has qualified twice for the national tournament, held in Palm Springs, Calif. in 2015 and Tampa, Fla. this year.
The elder Johnson, 65, the chair of the Sports Management program at Grace, had played for 40 years, but not very seriously until 1994. He remembers well how he made the transition from dabbling in the game to serious competitor. He was more or less drafted to be the Lancers’ golf coach, and served from 1994-2001.
“The athletic director here at Grace at the time (the late Phil Dick) walked in to my office and said ‘Darrell, you’re going to be the golf coach next year.’ And I said ‘Phil, I’ve never broken 100 before.’ And he said ‘well, you’re going to be the golf coach.’ So I thought ‘I’d better get serious about this.
“So I went to Don Dicken and got some lessons, and all of a sudden I started playing better and became much more enthused about golf, and have played much more seriously in the last 15 years.”
“Both Scott and I get lessons in Fort Wayne from William Lillard, and since I started on the tour two years ago, I’ve played the best golf I’ve played in the last 10 years. In fact, both Scott and I were moved up a flight last summer; our games have improved enough to be moved up a flight.”
It was Scott, who played golf and basketball as part of Lakeland Christian Academy’s class of 2005, who took the initial interest in the tour.
“I had played high school golf and always enjoyed the competition of it, and I saw this tour through watching countless hours of The Golf Channel and thought ‘that looks kinda fun. I’m going to look in to that.’
“Once Dad started to figure out what I was doing, he decided to join on the tour with me, and he’s been with me ever since. We’ve been at it two years and had an absolute blast doing it.”
Most of the competitions are within a half day’s drive. They leave early on a Friday morning, arrive and play a practice round in the afternoon, then play in the tournament Saturday and Sunday. They play in separate flights, but usually at the same time, so neither knows how the other did until the end of the day. The travel allows father and son to enjoy some one-on-one time that few enjoy. Jan Johnson, Darrell’s wife and Scott’s mom, approves of the arrangement, even when there’s not a tournament involved.
“Actually, after I’ve been around the house for a while, my wife says to me ‘isn’t there a golf course open someplace? Go find it,’ Darrell said. “So actually we get along very, very well with that.
“Really, my wife misses me when I’m gone playing golf and things, but she sees the fact that I’m doing this with our son, and she really enjoys that part of it.”
Darrell said he doesn’t play an insane amount of golf’; certainly not as much as touring professionals.
“In the summer, between playing at Rozella Ford and tournaments, I probably played three or four times a week,” he said. “During the school year that cuts back a lot, basically to weekends at that point. Every once in a while I get an afternoon where I don’t have a class and I can sneak out to the golf course. But basically it’s the weekends during the school year.”
Another perk of the AM Tour is the opportunity to play some of the nation’s top courses.
“We’ve played in tournaments as close as South Bend and as far away as the national tournaments,” Johnson said. “We’ve played at TPC Michigan, TPC Rivers Bend (Cincinnati), Sagamore in Indy, PGA West, and at Firestone in Akron, Ohio, among others.
“We’ve played some really fantastic courses that we would have never had the chance to play otherwise.”
A perhaps unexpected benefit to playing the tour is gleaning information for the classroom, Johnson said.
“The whole idea of event management has always been an interest area for me, and one of my favorite classes at Grace,” he said. “So being involved in this I see the event management that goes in to it, especially going in to the national tournaments and all the things that go in to managing an event like that, and I’ve certainly pulled things from those events and brought them into the classroom.
“One of the neat things about it is we’re starting to get some inquiries from The Golf Channel itself and the AM Tour, for student interns coming to work with them. Craig Asbury, the Indy tour director, has asked about an intern coming in to work with him and helping him run the tour during the summer. So those kinds of opportunities have come up also.”
Neither father nor son has any desire to take up golf on a professional level. The friends they’ve made from around the country, the time they spend together and the ability to scratch a competitive itch are more than satisfied on the AM Tour.
“At my age, this satisfies my need to compete. I don’t see myself going much more than this. I don’t want to compete with Denny Hepler (golf pro at Raccoon Run and occasional PGA Senior Tour player) at all. This is taking care of my competitive itch, and I’m really enjoying what I’m doing right now.” Johnson said.
“I’m making a lot of new friends and meeting a lot of good people and that’s a very enjoyable part of it for me, too. I have a really good friend who lives in the state of Washington, and we’ve met in Arizona to play golf.”
Both Johnson men recommend the AM Tour for those looking for a higher level of golf. For more information on the AM Tour, visit www.gcamtour.com.
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Darrell won six times and Scott nine over the summer of 2016, and each has qualified twice for the national tournament, held in Palm Springs, Calif. in 2015 and Tampa, Fla. this year.
The elder Johnson, 65, the chair of the Sports Management program at Grace, had played for 40 years, but not very seriously until 1994. He remembers well how he made the transition from dabbling in the game to serious competitor. He was more or less drafted to be the Lancers’ golf coach, and served from 1994-2001.
“The athletic director here at Grace at the time (the late Phil Dick) walked in to my office and said ‘Darrell, you’re going to be the golf coach next year.’ And I said ‘Phil, I’ve never broken 100 before.’ And he said ‘well, you’re going to be the golf coach.’ So I thought ‘I’d better get serious about this.
“So I went to Don Dicken and got some lessons, and all of a sudden I started playing better and became much more enthused about golf, and have played much more seriously in the last 15 years.”
“Both Scott and I get lessons in Fort Wayne from William Lillard, and since I started on the tour two years ago, I’ve played the best golf I’ve played in the last 10 years. In fact, both Scott and I were moved up a flight last summer; our games have improved enough to be moved up a flight.”
It was Scott, who played golf and basketball as part of Lakeland Christian Academy’s class of 2005, who took the initial interest in the tour.
“I had played high school golf and always enjoyed the competition of it, and I saw this tour through watching countless hours of The Golf Channel and thought ‘that looks kinda fun. I’m going to look in to that.’
“Once Dad started to figure out what I was doing, he decided to join on the tour with me, and he’s been with me ever since. We’ve been at it two years and had an absolute blast doing it.”
Most of the competitions are within a half day’s drive. They leave early on a Friday morning, arrive and play a practice round in the afternoon, then play in the tournament Saturday and Sunday. They play in separate flights, but usually at the same time, so neither knows how the other did until the end of the day. The travel allows father and son to enjoy some one-on-one time that few enjoy. Jan Johnson, Darrell’s wife and Scott’s mom, approves of the arrangement, even when there’s not a tournament involved.
“Actually, after I’ve been around the house for a while, my wife says to me ‘isn’t there a golf course open someplace? Go find it,’ Darrell said. “So actually we get along very, very well with that.
“Really, my wife misses me when I’m gone playing golf and things, but she sees the fact that I’m doing this with our son, and she really enjoys that part of it.”
Darrell said he doesn’t play an insane amount of golf’; certainly not as much as touring professionals.
“In the summer, between playing at Rozella Ford and tournaments, I probably played three or four times a week,” he said. “During the school year that cuts back a lot, basically to weekends at that point. Every once in a while I get an afternoon where I don’t have a class and I can sneak out to the golf course. But basically it’s the weekends during the school year.”
Another perk of the AM Tour is the opportunity to play some of the nation’s top courses.
“We’ve played in tournaments as close as South Bend and as far away as the national tournaments,” Johnson said. “We’ve played at TPC Michigan, TPC Rivers Bend (Cincinnati), Sagamore in Indy, PGA West, and at Firestone in Akron, Ohio, among others.
“We’ve played some really fantastic courses that we would have never had the chance to play otherwise.”
A perhaps unexpected benefit to playing the tour is gleaning information for the classroom, Johnson said.
“The whole idea of event management has always been an interest area for me, and one of my favorite classes at Grace,” he said. “So being involved in this I see the event management that goes in to it, especially going in to the national tournaments and all the things that go in to managing an event like that, and I’ve certainly pulled things from those events and brought them into the classroom.
“One of the neat things about it is we’re starting to get some inquiries from The Golf Channel itself and the AM Tour, for student interns coming to work with them. Craig Asbury, the Indy tour director, has asked about an intern coming in to work with him and helping him run the tour during the summer. So those kinds of opportunities have come up also.”
Neither father nor son has any desire to take up golf on a professional level. The friends they’ve made from around the country, the time they spend together and the ability to scratch a competitive itch are more than satisfied on the AM Tour.
“At my age, this satisfies my need to compete. I don’t see myself going much more than this. I don’t want to compete with Denny Hepler (golf pro at Raccoon Run and occasional PGA Senior Tour player) at all. This is taking care of my competitive itch, and I’m really enjoying what I’m doing right now.” Johnson said.
“I’m making a lot of new friends and meeting a lot of good people and that’s a very enjoyable part of it for me, too. I have a really good friend who lives in the state of Washington, and we’ve met in Arizona to play golf.”
Both Johnson men recommend the AM Tour for those looking for a higher level of golf. For more information on the AM Tour, visit www.gcamtour.com.
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