Paramore: Future Masters has many memories

Some notes and quotes about the Future Masters…

As the tournament celebrates its 60th year, the Future Masters has yielded memories that would rival any junior tournament in the country. The list of players who have won the affair reads like a who’s-who of golf, not to mention the great names who tried in vain to win it.

Curtis Strange won the U.S. Open, but never captured the FM’s overall crown. David Duval is a British Open champ, but never donned a jacket on the 18th green of the Dothan Country Club.

Speaking of the club, its course has undergone remarkable changes down through the years. A total renovation eight years ago left the golfers with a far more challenging layout with lightning-fast greens and the kind of bermuda rough that can make golf balls all-but disappear.

Personally, the only part of the old layout I miss was the short par-five 17th. A slight dogleg-left, it also featured a pond on the right. Virtually every player could get home in two, but there was trouble long and left of the green. Bottom line, a player could make anywhere from a three to a seven, and do it on the next-to-last hole of the tourney.

I’ll always remember asking defending champion Stewart Cink about what he’d hit off the tee box in his effort to win the FM back-to-back.

“A 3-iron,” he said. “My driver got me in trouble last year, so I didn’t even bring it. Left my woods at home.“

I also recall watching Daleville’s Brian Gay put forth so much effort in trying to win a tournament that seemed to always be just outside his reach. What a nice gesture for him to send the tournament a message this week congratulating it on its 60th anniversary. Gay, of course, has won a pair of tournaments on the PGA Tour this year and just missed the cut in the U.S. Open at Bethpage Black.

It’s difficult to dismiss the image of a young, slender Charles Howell III leading a contingent of Augusta natives who played at the FM every year, a link between the two cities that still lives today. In one of his first interviews with the Golf Channel, Howell pointed to winning his age-group championship at the Future Masters as the defining moment of his junior-golf career. It was then, he said, that he realized he could compete with top players his age in the country.

Then there was little-known Shaun Micheel, a future PGA Championship winner, who seemed shocked that he’d come out on top as he called his parents to give them the news.

And for us locals, who could forget Glenn Northcutt becoming the first Dothan player to win it all in decades?

Quite a memory book? Indeed. And the best thing is, there’s more to come, starting this week.

Phil Paramore’s column appears Tuesday and Friday in The Dothan Eagle. He can be heard weekday mornings from 7-9 on AM 560 WOOF or at http://www.woofradio.com. He can be reached at the same Web site.