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Tuesday, July 22, 1997

British Open winner's golf career started early

By MARK McDONALD The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS - The extraordinary arc of Justin Leonard's golf career always has begged the question of when he would win one of the sport's major titles. Not if, but when.

And while the Dallas golfer's three-shot victory Sunday in the British Open could hardly be called unexpected, it is certainly a far cry from his first days as a youngster trundling around Royal Oaks Country Club.

His first legitimate round of golf is now lost to memory, although he once recalled what he shot on that first loop: "Probably a thousand."

He was born Justin Charles Garret Leonard and he came toothless into the world in the very teeth of the professional golf season - June 15, 1972. The 72nd U.S. Open began that very day at Pebble Beach, won three days later by Jack Nicklaus.

Local legend has it that Justin Leonard started "playing" golf when he was about 5 years old, then got a few lessons when he was 8, using a couple of his grandmother's old clubs that had been cut down. Justin's parents, Larry and Nancy Leonard, were regulars at Royal Oaks, and during their rounds, once they were out of sight of the pro shop, they'd let Justin play, too.

In school, Justin designed fantasy golf courses in the margins of his notebooks, and he wrote so many English papers about famous golfers that one junior high teacher had to rule the sport out of bounds as a topic.

On sick days, with no parents at home, the boy would get a sand wedge and practice - inside the family's split-level home in Lake Highlands. "Up the stairs, around the dining room table and over the dog," he once told writer Sally Jenkins.

Leonard's golf skills developed in ways other than his childhood chip shots over the Chippendale - largely from countless hours on the practice tee and through countless lessons from Royal Oaks pro Randy Smith.

But Leonard learned about poise, composure and pressure - and probably about $10 Nassaus - from his father and his golfing buddies. They nicknamed him "Jasper," all the better to torment him, and it was not infrequent that, at the top of his backswing, Jasper would hear change jangling loudly in someone's pockets or see golf tees flying past his head. And whenever Leonard was about to hit a key putt, someone was sure to break into a fit of uncontrolled lung-clearing.

Leonard won a four-hole event in the Pee Wee Division of a Dallas Junior tournament - his first known victory as a competitive golfer - and he recalls playing in those days with only a 3-iron and a putter. He carried his clubs in a floppy, cloth day bag whose bottom kept collapsing. A neatnik even then, Leonard remedied the situation by placing the round lid of a Cool Whip tub into the bottom of the bag.

It wasn't long before he had won a half-dozen regional junior titles, two Southwest Junior championships, and he began to gather the usual chrome-and-walnut hardware that all first-rate golfers accumulate. His first significant title was the 1986 Oklahoma Junior Classic. He was 13.

Even then, Randy Smith knew, "A blind man couldn't have screwed him up."

Leonard's first state high school title came in 1989, when he was a junior at Lake Highlands, and he repeated as a senior. He was elected a Rolex Junior All-America and then elected to take a scholarship to the University of Texas. It was in Austin that he got some world-class tutoring by the likes of Texas-ex Tom Kite.

Leonard won the 1991 Southwest Conference championship, not bad for a freshman, but it was hardly a seismic season. That would come next year.

As a sophomore, Leonard took the SWC individual title and tied for fourth in the NCAA championships. The Southern Amateur was next - it was a five-shot runaway - followed by a victory in the match-play Western Amateur. And in a nice bit of symmetry, 20 years after Big Jack had won that 1972 U.S. Open, Young Justin captured the U.S. Amateur at Nicklaus' Muirfield Village Golf Club in Columbus, Ohio.

Another SWC championship came in 1993 - ho-hum - and Leonard was picked for the Walker Cup team. He played in the GTE Byron Nelson Classic that year and made the cut. More than that, he was six shots out of the lead going into Sunday, but a final-round 75 was his ultimate undoing.

So after the summer it was back to school, back to a fourth SWC title and the NCAA crown as well. He is the only golfer ever to win four SWC titles.

At the '93 Masters, Leonard played a practice round with veteran Lanny Wadkins, and he soon began to date Jessica Wadkins, a student at Wake Forest. Golf was always there, he said, even in his personal life.

Leonard turned pro after the '94 NCAAs but he still managed to graduate on time, completing a business degree in the regulation four years.

His first tournament was the '94 Greater Hartford Open, and he looked more like a kid trying to sneak in to watch a tournament rather than a young professional playing in one. Indeed, the parking attendant at the Hartford wasn't buying it: Leonard had to park in a faraway spectators' lot, and one story has it that he had to hitch a ride to the front gate in a passing tow truck.

He finished third in his third pro tournament, the Anheuser-Busch Classic, and he made $74,800. Best of all, Leonard's end-of-year earnings ($140,413) got him a PGA Tour exemption for the following year.

He needed that exemption. He missed the cut in his first three tournaments of 1995. But he rebounded with a string of top-10 finishes and, in that first full season as a pro, he would finish 22nd on the PGA money list with $748,793, enough to put triplets through Harvard.

His first PGA Tour victory almost came in January of 1996, but he lost to another Gen X-er, Phil Mickelson, on the third hole of a playoff at the Phoenix Open. Mickelson, an Arizona State alumnus, had the crowd solidly (and loudly and rudely) on his side. Spectators were openly cheering against the young Texan.

The playoff loss seemed like the golfing equivalent of the bends, and Leonard had to wait until August of last year for that first - some say inevitable - Tour victory. It was another five-shot runaway, at the Buick Open in Grand Blanc, Mich. He was barely 24 years old.

"You get tired of answering the question," Justin Leonard said that afternoon. "Everyone wants to know: 'Why haven't you done it yet?' Now I don't have to hear that anymore."

Hear, hear.

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