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LI GOLFBEAT: Junior event on LI sparkles

Mark Herrmann

August 3, 2008

Golf still can pull young people. It can tug them away from video games and faster moving sports, it can nudge them across the country for tournaments. It can draw them even when their inclination is, as 16-year-old Kelly Shon of Port Washington put it, "At first, I was like everyone else, 'This is just a boring sport.' "

Nothing was boring at Lessing's American Junior Golf Association Classic at Island Hills in Sayville this week. Especially not in the boys division, which was decided in a one-hole playoff after Alex Edfort of Somerset, N.J. and Michael Furci of Sayville each finished 54 holes at 5 under par.

Edfort split the fairway, nailed a 110-yard 52-degree wedge within six feet and made the birdie putt that gave him his first victory.

"It's hard to say I didn't expect to win because you never want to say you didn't expect to win," said Edfort, who is preparing for his senior year at Franklin High School. "My goal really was just to play well. I knew my best could put me up there. But this was a little bit of a surprise."

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The real story was that there was something in the sport that kept pulling him and the 96 other teens from 15 states and four countries.

Edfort decided to take the plunge, so to speak, after having been a national class platform and springboard diver since he was 10.

"It was just because I love golf so much and I felt I had never given it as much time as I wanted to," he said, having shot par 71 in the final round Thursday. "I decided this is what I wanted to do, now and in the future."

So he hangs out at Quail Brook, a public course near his house, and works on skills that edged him past Furci and Jim Liu of Smithtown (4 under).

The game can grow on you, as Shon can attest. The defending girls division champion finished at 10 over this year, 13 shots behind Brittany Altomare of Shrewsbury, Mass. Shon has played this year in Texas, Florida, Indiana, Pennsylvania and upstate New York, where she competed in the boys state high school championships.

"It was just nice to know I could play with the guys who outdrive me by 100 yards. I can still beat them," she said.

Shon was born in South Korea and had come to Long Island for what she thought would be a year while her father, a doctor, was invited to work at the Hospital for Special Surgeries. "We liked it so much, we just stayed," she said.

Four years ago, her mom, Kae, dragged her along to fill out a foursome. It turned out Kelly had some skill. Eventually, she even grew to like it.

Annie Park of Levittown, 13, found she was a natural when she was nine, after her mom brought her to a driving range.

Now she goes to school in Florida, where she trains. She was 16 over par this week, probably because she was feeling jet lag from having played in the Evian Masters Junior Cup in France.

This week, Park will be in Oregon for the U.S. Women's Amateur. Furci, on his way to DePaul in the fall, will be in the Metropolitan Amateur at Friar's Head, where he studies under Tom Patri, once a Long Island teen golfer and now one of Golf magazine's top 100 teachers in the U.S.

Edfort has more tournaments this summer, too, and a new respect for the game. "This could be for me," he said. "Maybe it was a good decision to give up diving."

Prize round with Gulbis

Care for a date with Natalie Gulbis? A nine-hole round and dinner with the LPGA glamour star make up the first prize in a contest run by the RSM McGladrey business consulting firm. The winner will be the one to have been judged best on a 200-word essay, "Who's Behind Your Success?" Deadline is tomorrow, entry information can be found at www.rsmmcgladrey.com/nataliecontest.