I was in California last month, 2,000 miles from home, and I met a Stanford University communications major. His name is Ethan Ng. He is 24 years old. He is six feet tall and matchstick lean. He has a sun’s-rising smile. He is impossibly good-looking. He hits golf balls 300 yards. Otherwise, he is a normal guy.
He had been assigned to write a profile on a sportswriter. He came with questions, I came with answers, and then it was my turn to ask a question. What’s next for a Stanford graduate about to enter the real world?
Whatever he said, I best heard this: “I’ll play my first pro tournament.” Of course he will. It was time after five seasons on the Stanford golf team and a graduate year as an assistant coach. (Tiger Woods was a Stanford guy, remember.)
“Where will you play that first tournament?” I said.
He said, “Metamora, Illinois.”
Ng said those words slowly. “Metamora . . . Illinois.” His tone suggested that such a place might exist, though perhaps not. I explained some flyover geography to the New York City kid. Metamora, Illinois, is a pretty town of 3,859 people. It exists between cornfields and beanfields. It is about 25 minutes from my house, which is in Carlock, Illinois, famous around here for its country cemetery where Democrats once were buried on the good side, Republicans on the other.
So, an hour after dawn last Wednesday, I was at Metamora Fields Golf Club to see Ethan Ng make his professional golf debut. It came on the All Pro Tour. The APT is one of the dozens of obscure regional pro tours for players who have not qualified for either the PGA Tour or its little brother, the Korn Ferry Tour.
Metamora drew 170 players competing for $130,000 with $30,000 to the winner. That is chump change in the Jim Nantz universe; Scottie Scheffler’s caddy has better weeks every week. Accordingly, no one much cared. Local TV gave it a couple minutes. Local newspapers did not rise from their graves. There were no spectators. Players wore shorts, like reasonable people. Caddies? You kidding me? You gotta pay ‘em; during a Tuesday rain delay, I stood in line behind APT’ers ordering Deluxe McCrispy meals.
Still, Metamora was real and it was fantastic. These guys were dreamers doing something about their dreams. “I want to play the PGA Tour,” Ng said this week.
The dream began with a question to his father, Lawrence Ng, an immigrant from Hong Kong at age 11, now the owner of two NYC restaurants. They had seen a documentary on Tiger Woods.
“Ethan was 6 or 7 years old,” the father said, “and he asked me, ‘What college did Tiger go to?’ I told him Stanford. He said, ‘That’s where I’m going to go.’”
Fast-forward past all the through-the-tunnel trips to Jersey for golf. “New York is all concrete,” the father said. Fast-forward to Stanford telling the son to come on out.
“I called my father,” Ng said, “and he started crying.”
Today the father laughed about that call. “I was hysterical,” he said.
At 8:28 a.m. Wednesday, Ethan Ng’s first professional tee shot went left into knee-high hay. He made par from there. Got it up and down to par the second. Then this happened:
Made a 12-footer for birdie at 3.
A 6-footer for birdie at 4.
At the par-3 fifth, a 6-iron to 30 feet – made that one, too.
Six-footer at the 6th.
At the 7th, a 316-yard drive and 60-degree wedge to 6 inches.
As to what a guy thinks at that moment – his first start as a pro, five straight birdies in an hour – Ng said, “When I’m in that zone, I’m not thinking about anything other than the shot I’m hitting, being super present.”
He created a sensational round of 63, eight under par on Metamora’s kind 7,100-yard course. Lesser days followed. Fairways seemed narrower, putts refused to drop, and Ng’s numbers became 72, 73, and 71. He finished T-50 and earned $820.
“The week was a learning experience,” he said. “The first thing is, out here you have to keep your foot on the gas. College is a team event and you have to play conservatively sometimes for the team’s sake. Out here, it’s individual competition and you have to stay on the gas.”
One thing more. Ng was one of the top six scorers in Metamora’s first round. That got him an invitation into the Monday qualifier for this week’s John Deere Classic. Only a handful of 150 invitees will make it into the PGA Tour event. No matter to a dreamer. After Saturday’s round here, Ng drove two hours north on I-74 to the John Deere site.
Oh, wait. That paper he wrote. About the sportswriter. He got an A.
