Stephen Golden, 14, plays 18 holes of golf and then turns around and plays nine more.

``I could play another 18,'' he said. He has to practice if he's going to play like Uncle Jimmy -- Jaunty Jimmy Demaret, the first golfer to win the Masters three times.

Stephen wants to be a master, too.

``I hope to,'' said the Riverside Middle School seventh grader.

``He doesn't play to have fun -- he plays to win,'' said his mother, Debbie Golden.

His TV is always on Channel 39, the Golf Channel, he subscribes to Golf Digest, has his own camouflage golf cart and he can't count the number of times he's watched Tin Cup and Happy Gilmore (he owns both). Not to mention Uncle Jimmy's custom-made clubs and Masters Tournament badges hanging in his bedroom.

Strangers come up to Stephen on the course or the driving range and tell him what a great swing he's got. They ask who taught him.

No one.

``It's just natural,'' Mrs. Golden said.

``He has his own swing and he just picked it up,'' said his grandmother, Nancy Demaret Helton Demaret's youngest sister. ``That's just the way Jimmy did. He never really had any golf lessons either -- I'm just so proud of both of them.''

Their father, a house painter, was a shell-shocked veteran of the Spanish-American War. There were 10 kids in the family and not much money. ``It was rough times then,'' Helton said.

Demaret won $50 in a tournament and decided golf was a good way to make money. The boy from Houston was described as ``hot as a Texas oil gusher;'' the Houston Hurricane.

Every Christmas, Demaret came home and gave his mom a $100 bill. He also slipped one to Helton, who was 15 years his junior. He sent her a china coffee set from London, alabaster angels from Italy and a great big package from Marshall Field's in Chicago -- filled with a coat, dress, skirt, twin sweater set, slips, panties and socks.

``It had everything,'' Helton remembers. ``I was so excited.''

She talked to her brother every couple of weeks. They spoke for 30 minutes just before he died. He was heading out to the golf course, and she told him not to play (he had just gotten out of the hospital for his allergies). He told her he was just going to ride around in his surrey (what he called his golf cart). He hung up the phone, walked out to the cart and dropped dead of a heart attack.

That was in November 1983. Stephen was born Jan. 12, 1984. Demaret's picture hangs on a wall in Stephen's home, and is in the scrapbook on the coffee table. And Stephen watches every time his famous uncle's on The Golf Channel.

Aside from being the first man to win the Masters three times, Demaret is known as the tour's Ted Turner, taking golf from black and white to technicolor splendor.

``Everybody looked like a pallbearer,'' Demaret once said in an interview. He was described as more colorful than the NBC peacock.

``He was very flashy,'' Stephen's mother said of Demaret. ``It doesn't look to me like he even matched.''

Some days he'd dress all in yellow, other days he would wear a deep-purple cap, a green shirt, orange doe-skin slacks and suede shoes. They say cardinals, bluebirds and mockingbirds followed him around the course.

Stephen's more of a navy-blue and tan kind of guy. His grandmother buys him golf shirts -- but no pastels.

The shy, quiet teen isn't as outgoing and partying as his uncle -- who was a friend to everybody on tour.

``Jimmy was a party-goer, I know that,'' Golden said. ``They were all party-goers in mama's family. They all liked to sing, drink and be jolly.''

Bob Hope described Demaret as the Texas daiquiri-drinking champion. In a soft tenor voice, Demaret crooned with Bing Crosby on Kraft Music Hall and he was on the Lawrence Welk Show. He cut a record called ``The Swing,'' crooning:

In the office you're a peasant.

On the golf course you're a king.

The swing's the thing.

It's a lovely day on the old fairway.

Folks said Demaret was good-looking enough to be in the movies -- but golf was what he loved.

Helton bought Stephen plastic training-clubs when he was 2 years old, she said. Then she bought him a little set with three clubs when he was 4. He got a junior set when he was 6. Last year he got a big set for Christmas.

Stephen plays basketball, paintball, hockey and goes hunting. Plus, he was a Little League All Star last year. He's been seriously playing golf only a year now -- his longest shot is 225 yards.

``I could not believe he hit that far,'' Helton said. ``He is a long hitter.''

She bought him a $90 putter and he saved up money cutting grass to get a $275 driver.

He comes from a long line of golfers. Aside from Demaret, his great-uncles Milton, Al and Mahlon were also professional golfers. Plus, his great Aunt Jane and his grandmother won golf tournaments.

Stephen's best score so far is 90.

``He's knocked off 30 strokes since he's been playing,'' said his dad, Kris Golden, who never liked golf but plays every weekend now to be with his son. ``They're getting harder to knock off.''

But he will. Some day, he might be a champion.

``I want to give it a try,'' Stephen said. And if pro golf doesn't pan out, maybe he'll be a forest ranger.

He doesn't play to have fun -- he plays to win.Debbie Golden,

Stephen's mother