A Memory I Will Never Forget

Matthew Whitworth

During the summer of 2018, my dad and I were in St. Louis for the PGA Championship at Bellerive. This was the first time in 25 years the PGA Championship was in St. Louis. It was a big deal since it was the 100^th Championship for this tournament. The PGA Championship is one of the four major tournaments that the PGA holds every year, which meant that all the big players like Tiger Woods, Phil Mickleson, and Dustin Johnson were at this tournament. Little did I know that my biggest memory of the weekend would come from my dad and a football.

We had tickets for the Wednesday practice round and Round 1 on Thursday. I decided that I wanted to wear my PGA Jr. League Captain Underpar team jersey, since some of the big players, like Rory McIlroy, were big partners and supporters of the PGA Jr. League. The team name Captain Underpar is a parody of the name Captain Underpants. I have been playing on the Captain Underpar team for the past four years.

On the first day, we watched as Tiger Woods was able to scream a ball around a tree from the deep rough. Brooks Koepka drove the golf ball 30 yards farther than anyone else. It was golf at its best. But there is one particular incident that I will never forget.

Since I was wearing my Captain Underpar shirt, another PGA Jr. coach saw it and thought that was a cool name, so he came up and talked to us about it. “Captain Underpar, I love it!” he said as he walked up to us. He told us that he was a new PGA Jr. coach and was starting a league for the first time at his golf course in the bootheel of Missouri. We talked with him a little more about PGA Jr. League and our experiences with it before he left.

The next day, we followed more golfers played their opening round. We decided that we wanted to pick up some souvenirs to remember our trip to the 100^th PGA Championship at Bellerive. We walked toward the white metal tent that had a big blue sign that said “Merchandise”. As we walked in, we saw a colorful selection of golf items for sale. A sea of people were waiting in lines to grab any memento with the 100^th PGA Championship logo. While we were making our way through the store, I saw a football go zooming by my face. Whack! The football flew straight into the back of my dad’s head. “Sorry!” an apologetic man announced as he emerged from the crowd. Of the 25,000 people at the tournament, it was no other than the man we had met the previous day that loved the name Captain Underpar. To this day, we still laugh about the time my dad was hit by a football at a golf tournament.