A club pro with a major championship lineage

Under glass in a display case at his family's Florida home, Scott Ford has a set of irons that won the 1957 Masters and a set of irons that won the 1982 Florida Junior Championship. They are the same set.

His grandfather, Doug Ford, cut them down and then handed them down to the then- 12-year-old. Over the years, the elder Ford also handed down wisdom and a love for the game that have made Scott a third-generation pro, working his first year as an assistant at North Hills Country Club in Manhasset. This past week, with modern clubs, the younger Ford won the Met PGA Professionals Championship and earned a place in next year's national club pro tournament.

He finished 36 holes on Rockland Country Club at 7 under par, with a two-stroke triumph that validated his decision to move to Long Island for the next phase of his career.

Scott Ford, 40, had wanted to be a major champion like Doug, who also won the 1955 PGA Championship as well as 17 other PGA Tour events. Scott grew up on Florida courses after his dad, Doug Jr., stopped his own attempt on tour and became a club pro. The youngest Ford did play the PGA Tour in 1995 (his dad caddied for him at the qualifying tournament) and did win the 2001 CanAm Days Championship on the Canadian Tour.

"I've been at it a while, with mixed results, really," he said in the busy North Hills pro shop Friday. "I've had some success but not as much as I would have liked. So a couple of years ago, I started gearing myself toward becoming a PGA member, going through the process, and I finished it this past winter."

That is, he plans to spend the next part of his working life as a head pro or a teaching pro at a club. It was just a matter of where he should start. "I still had the urge to play competitively, and it's no secret that this is the best section of the country for that," he said, adding that he was lucky his friend Mike Caporale, the North Hills head pro, had a staff opening.

Doug Ford Sr. had settled in Westchester as a club pro late in his career (in which he nearly won back-to-back Masters, having lost in 1958 by a shot to Arnold Palmer). He often came down to play North Hills with his buddy Mal Galletta Sr., a 19-time club champion. By then, golf was in the family bloodline. Doug Jr.'s brother Mike also played on tour and later took a club job. The game was in the air for Scott.

"A lot of kids today, it seems like they're taking lessons when they're five. I was swinging clubs as soon as I could walk, probably. I'm sure I was taught fundamentals, but then the lesson was really to have fun and learn your own best way to play, which is the best way to do it," Scott said.

The patriarch passed along those irons, and an iron will on the course. Scott acknowledged his grandfather always has been considered "a gruff guy," but chalks it up to being a pro in golf's rough-and-tumble age. The new Met PGA Professional champion sure learned a lot from him, especially in 1988, when he caddied for his grandfather at Augusta.

"That was one of the highlights for me in golf. I'm sure I was much more nervous than my grandfather was," he said. "On the third or fourth hole, he had a 20-foot putt. He said, 'What do you think, how much for this break?' It looked to me like it would break a few inches. He kind of laughed. It broke about six feet because of the speed of the green. I learned that I was there to observe."

He is here now to teach. For the first time in his life, he is working regularly with students and is gratified by seeing them improve - something he never had a chance to do during tour clinics and pro-ams.

"Typically, it's a tough adjustment, coming from the gypsy touring life. But he has pulled it off perfectly," Caporale said. "Right away, I knew he was the top player in the section. There was no doubt in my mind. I told people that, too."

It sometimes helps a teacher when his students see him with a trophy. Young Ford felt like a rightful heir down the stretch at Rockland Tuesday. "To even be in the hunt is fun, to get the juices flowing again," Ford said. "But obviously, to win is great. You don't win that often in golf."