A CUT ABOVE
ST. LOUIS — For a good few weeks it looked like Danny Balin was going to have a very uncomfortable decision to make:
Play in his fifth PGA Championship as one of the 20 club pros who qualified — which is quite an accomplishment for someone who spends most of his year teaching his members how not to slice.
Or attend the birth of his first child.
Kate Callahan, Balin’s girlfriend of 2 ¹/2 years, had an Aug. 5 due date to give birth to their baby daughter. That was Sunday. Practice rounds for the PGA Championship at Bellerive began Sunday, with the tournament’s opening round Thursday.
Balin, a teaching pro at Westchester Country Club, had battled his way into this week’s world-class field by surviving a nine-man playoff through seven holes in the PGA Professional Championship that ended in darkness with him as the last man standing on June 20 at the Bayonet Course in Seaside, Calif.
As fate would have it, Kali Elizabeth was born prematurely July 4, spent 11 days in the NICU and is home as a happy and healthy infant. So the 36-year-old Balin never had to make that choice — to play or stay — something that likely would never have been a choice at all.
“I don’t know what would have happened,’’ Balin said during his practice round Monday. “We had talked that I need to be here, but I honestly didn’t want to miss my daughter’s birth, my first child.
“It was amazing, something that might only happen once in somebody’s life or might never happen. And to miss that is something that I didn’t want to do. Whether I was going to have to withdraw or not I don’t even want to think about that, but it could have been a possibility.’’
With his girlfriend and daughter at home now, Balin said the early birth “took a little stress out of it’’ for him.
Now, of course, comes the golfstress part: Trying to make a PGA cut for the first time in five tries. Or maybe, just maybe, accomplishing something even better.
They are always the dreamers at these major championships, the club pros trying to catch lightning in a bottle, to potentially change the course of their lives in the scant span of a week.
Balin and 40-year-old Matt Dobyns, the head pro at Fresh Meadow Country on Long Island who’s playing in his fifth career major championship and fourth PGA, are the two representatives from the New York metropolitan area.
Since 2006, 20 club professionals are a part of the 156-player field in the PGA Championship, down from 25 (1995-2005) and from 40 (1980-1994).
Might one sneak through, make the cut and even make some noise on Sunday with the likes of Jordan Spieth trying to complete the career Grand Slam, Justin Thomas trying to repeat, Tiger Woods trying to capture his 15th career major, Dustin Johnson attempting to reaffirm his status as the No. 1 ranked player in the world?
Based on history, the chances are slim. Since 2011, only two club pros have made the cut — Omar Uresti last year and Brian Gaffney, the current pro at Quaker Ridge in Westchester, in 2015. Uresti is a former PGA Tour player who’s now a club pro.
You have to go back 28 years to find a club pro who finished in the top 20 — Bob Boyd tied for 19th in 1990 for those of you scoring at home.
Still, you never know. What if a club pro won the PGA Championship and changed the course of his career?
“Does that sneak into my head?’’ Balin said. “Of course that crosses my mind, hoping that possibly could happen. You’d be an idiot not to think about it. It’s like keeping the dream alive, keeping hope alive. Financially, of course, I would love to make a million dollars. I’d buy a house and pay off some debt.
“But,’’ Balin went on, sounding as if his mind quickly downshifted to reality, “I’ve also accepted the fact that there’s a 99 percent chance that it won’t happen. I have a nice club that I work at and nice members that support me while I play in local events.’’
For right now, the more modest goal for the likes of Balin and Dobyns, who’ve played eight major championships between them and never made a cut, is to secure a Saturday tee time. That, of course, would guarantee a Sunday tee time as well.
“It would mean everything,’’ Balin said. “It’s every club pro’s dream to play in the PGA Championship, and then to be able to play on Saturday competing with the best players in the world? There are no words to describe what that feels like. I don’t know what that feels like.’’
Until five weeks ago, Balin didn’t know what being a father felt like. Maybe, just maybe, he’s in for another life-altering first this week.