Cool hand Luke ready for Augusta
15-year-old Fonthill golfer competing in National Drive, Chip and Putt competition
WHEN HIS DAD bought him some golf clubs, the gift came with a suggestion. Which might’ve been a request or a plea or some instructions.
“He said, ‘Use them,’” Luke DelGobbo says. “‘Don’t use them once. Use them.”
The then-11-year-old wasn’t a golfer at the time. But it seemed like a hobby he might enjoy, so he took his new clubs and headed to the golf course with a friend.
By his own admission, he was no Tiger Woods. How good or bad was he? Hard to say since he didn’t keep score that day. What he does recall is that he loved it. He immediately became engrossed with everything about the game. And, he started using those clubs all the time.
Three years later, the Fonthill native now regularly shoots in the mid-70s, he’s the Junior Niagara Champion of Champi-
ons, the Niagara Junior Tour Champion and his club champion, and he’ll be playing at Augusta National this week during Masters week. Having just turned 15?
Actually, yes. On Easter Sunday, he’ll be at North America’s most-famous golf course doing his thing on national television against the best players his age.
Last spring, when he watched The Masters for the very first time, his eyes were opened. T
Grade 9 student at E.L Crossley Secondary went online to sign up for the National Drive, Chip and Putt competition. It’s a youth skills competition in which the winners of various regional events get to go to Augusta to compete for the overall title.
Step 1 was a qualifying tournament at Fox Valley in Buffalo which was just one of 250 qualifying sites across the U.S. with dozens of competitors at each. The top three finishers earned the right to go to the next level.
DelGobbo came third. That moved him to the second round in Syracuse, now one of 80 sites with a couple of dozen survivors in each. The top two moved on this time.
He won.
That victory pushed him on to the moment of truth. At famed Winged Foot Golf Club just outside New York City — five-time host site of the U.S. Open — he was one of 20 players still standing. Win and you go to Augusta along with winners from the other 10 remaining sites around the country.
His drives were all accurate and landed in the scoring zone and his chips were pretty good. That put him in a solid position when he reached the putting segment with his Masters moment on the line.
His first one from six feet was mediocre, he says. When they backed him up to 15 feet for the second, he needed a good result. “It actually dropped,” he says. When the third one hit the back of the cup, popped up in the air and landed just a foot past the target, he thought he had a chance.
When the final score went up, he was in first place. By a big margin.
He won’t be expecting to win at Augusta and he knows he’ll be nervous.
Once he’s done competing, he gets to stick around to wander the grounds and watch a practice round. If everything goes really, really well, perhaps with a national title in his pocket. He’s just excited about the chance to take in what he saw on his TV that inspired him to try this.