Jesse Smith, an amazing tale of the US Open
Mother of Jesse Smith sums up the amazing tale of a man who has not hit a ball on the PGA Tour
It isn't until you run across a story like Jesse Smith's that you remember why this is called the US Open.
There is no shortage of longshots, wannabes and never-were's in the field. But scan a biography of any of the 155 other entrants who teed off yesterday and you won't find even one like Smith's.
I'll be honest. I almost expected more sooner, because he has plenty of talent
He is 33 and has yet to hit a shot on the PGA Tour. Golf wasn't even on his radar until he was well into his teens. He didn't have much of an amateur career, either, unless you count talking his way on to the Colgate golf team.
While trying to carve out a living on the mini-tours from Canada to the US deep South afterwards, he spent part of each year living in his grandfather's log cabin on the Six Nations Territory near Brantford, Ontario. It was hardly a hotbed of the game.
"One day up there, it was 95 degrees [Farenheit], really hot for that place, so I knocked off after four or five hours of playing and came inside," Smith recalled. "My grandfather came straight over and looked me in the eye. All he said was, 'Jesse, if you want to be better, you have to practice more'.
"I turned around and went back out. He died six years ago, but I can still hear those words."