HETHER SHOWS HIS PASSION FOR GOLF
Junior nabs Arizona championship, sets sights on college career
At 5-foot-7 and 115 pounds, Rodriguez High junior golfer Easton Hether may not be able to drive a golf ball as far as some of his bigger competitors. But very few can hit it straighter.
“(Size) is definitely a big factor in distance, but really the key is how straight you are on the course,” Hether said. “I drive it a good amount of distance to where it’s not hurting me because the courses are not long to my game anymore. It used to hurt me a lot. I used to have woods into the holes, but now I’m pretty much with the other guys.”
He was ahead of all the other guys as a freshman when he was the Monticello Empire League’s Player of the Year. At every league match — a point system is used for individuals. The player with the lowest score receives 12 points (next lowest 11) all the way down to one point for the highest score. At the final MEL tournament at Rancho Solano Golf Course in Fairfield, points were doubled.
Vacaville senior Chase Hascup finished with 144 points, Hether edging him for first place with 144.5.
“Coach ( Tom) Nelson and I prepared many hours and many weeks (for the MEL championship) because we knew the points were close between all the number ones on the varsity,” said Hether. “So we knew it was going to be close, too close for a little bit. But it was definitely fun.”
Hether learned early on to enjoy the game of golf. His dad started teaching him when he was 4, taking him to the driving range and engaging him in putting contests.
“I took to it right away,” he recalled. “I remember it was really fun. I was begging my dad to go out on the course. He wouldn’t let me until I was a little better and a little older.”
He first played competitively at age 7 at Green Tree Golf Club in Fairfield.
“At first I was a little nervous, but I learned that I thrived on the nerves of the tournament and had a lot of fun doing it,” he said.
Hether also thrives on hard work.
“The thing that stood out most with him at such a young age was his work ethic,” said Nelson, who has coached Hether for the past four years and has trained some of the most successful young golfers to come out of Fairfield. “He is incredibly mentally tough and he just has a phenomenal attitude for golf and a passion. Even before he was in high school this kid every day had a plan. This kid was like a 12-year-old golfer in a 25-year-old golf mind.”
Aaron Beverly, who Nelson asked to take over coaching Hether in October and who plays professionally on the Mackenzie Tour in Canada, added, “He always wants to learn ways to get better and he takes time to ask the right questions in order to improve. He listens well and he takes feedback well.”
Nelson saw Hether’s potential early on.
“He had very good hands around the short game, around the putting greens and around chipping,” said Nelson. “And that’s a really important aspect to very
successful golfers.”
Is anyone born a great golfer?
“I don’t think someone can just pick up a golf club and be really good at it like you could with basketball or football,” said Beverly, “because there are just so many different aspects of golf that you have to be good at, whether it’s putting, driving, distance control, short game. And that’s what Easton does well. The times I get to coach him we try to work on every aspect that we can. He definitely would be a mix of being a natural and (a hard worker).”
Nelson watched Hether progress from shooting in the high 80s to becoming a scratch golfer, one who can shoot par on a course on any given day. His tournament play has been quite impressive as well.
In December he won the Phoenix Holiday Junior Open for boys 16-18 years old. He was also the NorCal Junior Open Champion and the Sacramento Junior Open Champion this year. He took first place in the NorCal Junior Tour in Monterey last year and was the U.S. Kids Monterey champ in 2018 and 2017.
Nelson notes that young golfers can learn a lot by watching video of their
swing and can also learn a lot on YouTube.
“But what a coach can do is help the player get from point A to point B faster by directing their work habits or their training sessions or what they need to work on,” he said. “When you find a kid ( like Hether) that is that dedicated and has that much passion for the game, he’s going to be successful whether it’s me or any other coach out there.”
Beverly, who may have to coach Hether remotely if COVID allows Beverly to begin the MacKenzie Tour in May, echoed those thoughts.
“I try to be a mental coach more than anything,” he said. “That part of it I used to do with my dad (Ron Beverly, who passed away in September last year). I’d call him after every round and we would just go over what happened and areas to improve. So in that way I can still be effective.”
COVID has not kept Hether from playing tournaments, but it did shut down his sophomore high school golf season at Rodriguez before it could get off the ground.
“It was a disappointment,” Hether said. “I was definitely feeling good about this season, I was feeling really good about my swing, about my short game, every
thing was really coming together.”
Now he is hoping that COVID will relent enough so that he can play high school golf this spring. He is also looking forward to a college golf career, hoping to play for a Division I West Coast college. After that, he would like to turn professional.
“I believe that’s his long term goal,” said Beverly, “and what I try to tell him is it’s great to have that as your end game, but it’s important to have goals daily that you can achieve, or weekly. So when I first started coaching him, I was like okay, if you want to be a professional, let’s first focus on how can we get your driving better, how can we get your short game better, so then when you play in these tournaments, your goal can be I want to be in the top five, then I want to win, then I want to win two times in a row, and so on.”
So far, all is going according to plan.
“The win at Arizona helped the resume,” Hether said. “I’m still working, playing in as many tournaments as I can. I know colleges like to see you playing in tournaments.”