BREAKING BARRIERS
A Masters debut is cherished by all who get there, but for Finau his first drive beneath the shady canopy of Magnolia Lane was particularly poignant.
Finau can pin-point the moment he became a golfer. Up until the 1997 Masters, golf was not on the landscape surrounding Finau at all, and why should it have been when at seven years old he was already a budding basketball star in the less than salubrious Rose Park neighborhood of Salt Lake City? There were plenty of hoops in Rose Park and no shortage of pick-up games, but golf… what?
Then Tiger Woods, aged only 21 at the time, gave the sport what remains arguably its most significant shake-down ever, over 72 holes at Augusta. He shot 70-6665-69 for a total of 270 to beat Tom Kite into second place by 12 shots. 270 remains a scoring record and so does the winning margin, by the first black golfer to win at Augusta.
Tom Watson, aged 47 at the time, played brilliantly to finish fourth but no-one noticed. Woods set 20 Masters scoring records that week and remains the youngest to don the Green Jacket, the first of his 14 major victories. Back in Rose Park, Finau was gripped.
“The 1997 Masters kind of changed everything for me,” he says. “That is the reason I started playing golf. The ‘97 Masters drew my eyes to the game. It was very special for my dad, me and my brother [Gipper] to see someone like Tiger win, not only with how classy he was and with what he brought to the game, but to see that guy have the same skin color as ours. It was very meaningful because at that moment we realized that maybe we could have a place in this game. Tiger broke that barrier at Augusta in the ’97 Masters and from then we grew up to love golf and love playing the game.”
But it wasn’t straightforward for the Finaus. Tony was one of seven children of mom Ravena and dad Kelepi. Ravena—who was lost to an auto accident in 2011 at the age of only 47—stayed at home or kept odd jobs while Kelepi was an airport baggage handler. Kelepi would scour local garage sales for cheap second-hand golf clubs and balls for the boys when he could, and he hoisted up an old mattress in the middle of the garage, so it was like a partition down the middle. While Tony would hit golf balls into painted targets on the mattress from one side, Gipper would do the same from the other. Thwack-thud, thwack-thud, thwack-thud, for hours on end. As an occasional treat, the boys would get a bucket of balls at a local range so they could actually see their ball flight.
The Finau family has Polynesian heritage. Kelepi was born in Tonga while Ravena’s parents were from Tonga and Samoa, and Ravena would organise traditional Polynesian celebrations—luaus—at which Tony and Gipper would perform dances with flaming knives to raise money to fund trips to golf tournaments.
“We would hold the luaus once or twice a year and they would help to fund all the travel and tournaments,” says Finau. “It was a cool thing and serves as testament to my parents: they had two boys who wanted to play golf and they put a lot of time and resources into enabling us to pursue our dreams. When I look back, we didn’t have the money to play golf. Golf is an expensive game and we came from very humble beginnings. Golf shouldn’t have been an option for us but our parents sacrificed quite a bit and I am always humbled by the thought of what they did for us.”
At the local par-3 muni, Jordan River, the boys could hone their short games for free around the practice green, and play nine holes when they had a couple of bucks.
“At Jordan River we learned how to play the game from the green back,” adds Finau. “It was a very good golf course, tree-lined. The longest hole was 165 yards and the shortest was 65 or 70 yards.”
Today—sadly from a golf perspective—Jordan River has been converted into a frisbee golf course.
Some two decades later, Finau is a star of the world game. He edged into the world’s top-10 for the first time during the 2018 FEDEXCUP Playoffs, was one of very few American Ryder Cup players to shine in Paris in the fall and now he just needs to convert a couple of his regular top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour into victories, to add to his success at the 2016 Puerto Rico Open. Standing 6-foot-4 and one of the longest hitters on tour, with that deft Jordan River short game to match Finau is too good to own a solitary title for long.
“I believe I can continue to get better,” he says. “That’s what it’s all about. I have been able to do some pretty cool things in this game—like being on the Ryder Cup team—but I am hungry for more, to put myself in that type of atmosphere again. I was fortunate to play well in three of the four majors last year and I want to put myself back in those positions so I can try and win one. I believe I have a place in this game and my case has never been stronger than it is right now. I have a goal to become the best player in the world. That is a high mountain to climb but my coach, my family and I all believe I can do it. It is going to take a lot of great golf over the next few seasons if it is going to happen but I will continue to chase it.”
Once Finau had received his invitation to play in the Masters last year there were some added emotions swirling around Amen Corner when Kelepi joined him to play a couple early familiarization rounds at Augusta.
“Ever since Tiger in ’97, for me, my dad and Gipper it was always about trying to get to the Masters and Augusta National, so it was very special for me and my dad to share our first visit together. We spent two days there and played it twice with a friend who is a member. To be out there with my dad is something I will never forget.”
Finau was only one among vast legions of people— young and old, black and white, male and female—who took up golf after the ’97 Masters, all dreaming of fist-pumping on Augusta’s 18th just like Tiger, yet out of all of them, Finau is the one who might just do it.
“Ever since Tiger in ‘97, for me, my dad and Gipper it was always about trying to get to the Masters”