College Park senior heads to Pebble Beach
Hailey Salomone awoke crazy-early one morning in late July. She gathered with her family to watch on Golf Channel as the junior participants in this week’s PGA Tour Champions event at Pebble Beach were unveiled.
Salomone, now a senior at College Park High in Pleasant Hill, struggled to stay awake until the show finally listed the players from California. And then, suddenly, her name appeared on the television screen.
“It was basically like Christmas morning,” she said.
The moment carried deep significance, and not only because her dad, Jon, got remarried on the beach near Pebble. This week’s chance to play in a tour event also punctuated Salomone’s journey through a difficult stretch: Her mom turned to drugs when Hailey was younger, she said, and gave up custody when she was in seventh grade.
“She picked a different life that didn’t include me,” Salomone said. “It was kind of hard to be a young woman without a mom.”
The First Tee, a national program designed to teach life skills through golf, helped Salomone navigate those challenging years. ( Juniors were selected for this week’s tournament based on their First Tee commitment, volunteer work and golf success.) She became involved in the First Tee of Contra Costa at Diablo Creek Golf Course in Concord, where she met a coach named Monica Sanders.
Sanders provided a strong female role model, as did Salomone’s stepmom, Stephanie. They made a profound impact as Salomone, now 17, became more and more involved in golf.
One of the program’s core values, perseverance, morphed into Salomone’s guiding principle.
“The First Tee showed me perseverance at a time when my life was hard,” she said. “It doesn’t matter your path — if you persevere, you can do anything.”
Asked how Sanders shaped her, Salomone said, “She taught me to always have a positive attitude. If you hit a bad shot, it’s more important how you recover. I use that off the course: If you have a bad test, how will you prepare next time?”
Salomone, who carries a 7-handicap index, shared Most Valuable Player honors last year in the Diablo Athletic League’s Valley Division. She hopes to play in college after her graduation from College Park in June.
For now, she’s focused on the PURE Insurance Championship (formerly known as the First Tee Open) starting Friday at Pebble Beach and Poppy Hills. The distinctive format includes 81 tour pros on the 50-and-older circuit, along with 81 junior players from First Tee programs across the country.
Among the tour pros in the field are Tom Watson, Fred Couples and Bernhard Langer. Scott McCarron, who stands No. 2 on the money list behind Miguel Angel Jimenez, also is playing this week.