Part 2
Web posted
Sunday, April 4, 2004
WEIR GREW UP in a normal suburban area at the southern tip of Lake Huron, about an hour from Detroit.
Sarnia, Ontario, was featured as the nonviolent Canadian counterpoint to gun-happy America in Michael Moore's Academy-Award-winning documentary Bowling for Columbine. This industrial city claims to be the "kissing capital of the world" because 1,588 couples simultaneously smooched for 10 seconds on Feb. 11, 2000, to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. Alas, that record was shattered Jan. 12, 2004, by more than 4,400 couples in Santiago, Chile.
Brights Grove is a charming residential community a few kilometers from Sarnia's "chemical valley" of petro-chemical plants that line the Canadian side of the St. Clair River.
Weir's roots are in an area no larger than Augusta National Golf Club. The beach was one block north, where Weir would clear snow off a bluff and drive balls into Lake Huron when he wasn't hitting into a net set up in the garage. Huronview Park, where signs explicitly prohibit hitting golf balls, is just a few par-5s west. It's now called Mike Weir (Stats | Bio) Park.
Two blocks south, directly across Lakeshore Road from St. Michael's Catholic Church, where Weir and his wife, Bricia, were married, is Huron Oaks Recreation Centre. The club's sign proudly boasted being "Home of Mike Weir (Stats | Bio) : 2003 Masters Champion" until it disappeared when the club was sold this winter.
It was at Huron Oaks where Weir spent nearly every waking hour of his youth honing his golf game. His mother even brought his meals there.
"I didn't worry about him, because I knew where he was," Rosalie Weir said. "But it was a little embarrassing at times because he never came home. Members used to say, 'Why don't you just bring his bed here?'"
Weir played hockey, like any Canadian boy, and was pretty good at baseball. But it was golf that took root in his soul and inspired visions much grander than his parents had for him.
"He had tunnel vision," said his father, Rich. "He'd say, 'I'm going to be a PGA golf player' probably when he was 16. We thought he'd get a golf scholarship and get an education out of it. Maybe he could come back and be the pro at Huron Oaks. The rest was a bonus."
Weir, like most young golfers, fantasized about the Masters. Canadian golf fans have always had a natural affection for the season's first major, which coincides with the start of golf season in Ontario.
"He grew up in the spring glued to the TV to watch the Masters," his father said. "When he putted on the practice green it was to win the Masters and not the U.S. Open or Canadian Open."
The Masters is the first tournament Weir remembers watching, and he remembers being inspired by Jack Nicklaus (Stats | Bio) . It was Nicklaus, after all, whose visit to Huron Oaks in 1981 for an exhibition match with club pro Bennett drew Weir closer to golf. It was Nicklaus to whom Weir famously wrote a letter four years later asking whether he should switch to right-handed play. Nicklaus wrote back and advised Weir to stick with his natural swing.
Now Weir shares Augusta's champions locker room with the six-time Masters winner.
"It really has come full circle," Bennett said.
Weir made the less obvious choice, opting for the Mormon university with a strict dress code and policies against drinking Coke, coffee or even Canadian beer. Weir is not Mormon.
"I asked him what made him make that choice," said his mother, Rosalie. "And he said, 'Mom, if I go to any other university I might tend to party. I won't there. I want the discipline.'"
He struggled his first year at BYU but soon got comfortable. The young Canadian developed into an All-American by his senior year. He also fell in love with his future wife and with the outdoors lifestyle in Utah - he would settle in nearby Draper.
Weir got married a year after school and set out to make his future in golf. His path was nothing like that of Gretzky or Woods, instant superstars who never had to consider where the next paycheck was coming from. They never had to carry their equipment down muddy Indonesian hillsides or hitchhike to meet a tee time or bunk with sympathetic Australian cabbies. They never had to move all their worldly belongings into a storage unit each year because they couldn't afford to maintain annual rent on an apartment.
Weir built his career the old-fashioned, blue-collar, Canadian way.
"He earned his stripes," his father said. "This was not just something that happened. He worked very hard at it."
With Bricia as his caddie on the Canadian Tour to save more money, the couple drove back and forth across Canada from Vancouver to Prince Edward Island to play events.
"They were warned not to drive at night," his mother said. "You'll more than likely hit a moose."
Weir believes playing the Canadian Tour forged a bond with his countrymen.
"I kind of got a fan base through that, then it grew from there," he said.
Each fall, Weir took the shot at his American dream - qualifying school for the PGA Tour. He failed five times before finally breaking through to earn a card in 1997, just a week before his first daughter, Elle, was born.
That difficult road to his dream job still sticks with Weir, seven wins and one major championship later.
"You know, I can remember many times that I was missing cut after cut on the Australian Tour," he said. "And you're by yourself over there and you don't have any money and you battle through those times and you're out there on the range by yourself practicing until you can't see a shot five feet in front of you. I'll always have those in my memory bank, those tougher times. And I think if anything contributes to my determination and not giving up, it is because I know how hard it is to get out here. It's not easy. And I don't ever want to have to go back to that qualifying school."
After his rookie year, he had to go back, but by then his place in the game seemed more secure, and his confidence was stronger. He was medalist in his seventh - and likely last - Q-school.
"Coming back to win that thing really kind of propelled me along to get off to the kind of start I did (in 1999)," he said.
IN 1999, WEIR was finally poised to become an overnight success. He played in the final groups at the Tucson Open and the BellSouth Classic in Atlanta, finishing 13th and fifth. He did it again at the Western Open, this time finishing second while paired with eventual winner Tiger Woods (Stats | Bio) .
A month later, the glare of the spotlight intensified even more. With rounds of 68-68-69, Weir was tied with Woods for the lead heading into the final round of the PGA Championship at Medinah.
"If you'd told me at the beginning of the year that I'd be here, I'd probably have said 'No way!'" Weir said after the third round. "But I've been playing a lot better and gaining more confidence, gaining some momentum. I'm definitely the underdog, so I don't have anything to lose tomorrow. It will be a great experience for me."
At the time it was anything but. Weir bogeyed three of the first four holes to fade from contention en route to a devastating 80 and a tie for 10th. Television mercifully shied away from him as the drama focused on the duel between Woods and Sergio Garcia (Stats | Bio) .
"I don't know if I choked," he said. "But I wasn't ready, that's for sure."
"He was crushed," said his mother.
The Chicago-area galleries showed no mercy during his nightmare. Weir was callously heckled around the course only a day after some fans serenaded him with riffs from O Canada!
"They were saying some things that I'm not going to repeat because it would be inappropriate," said Woods, who was heckled by a pro-Garcia gallery. "The things that they said to Mike, it was just tough. I felt bad for him because he wasn't playing as well as he'd like and it was just a tough day."
JUST WHEN IT SEEMED that day could be the most discouraging of his career, Weir received encouragement from a surprising source. Gretzky called for a Canadian-athlete-to-Canadian-athlete talk.
"Being the fact that I was a professional athlete, I think I can relate to some of the trials and tribulations Mike himself might have been going through," Gretzky said of his compulsion to call a stranger.
Gretzky's message was simple. The first time his Edmonton Oilers reached the Stanley Cup finals, in 1983, they were swept out in four games by the New York Islanders. Gretzky's Oilers endured that lesson and went on to win four Stanley Cups in the next five years.
"Sometimes you've got to lose to learn how to win," Gretzky said. "I just tried to tell him to take what you learned today and move forward."
Weir appreciated the gesture from one of his boyhood idols and the wisdom behind it.
"He said how (losing) made them want to work harder because they were so close and they wanted to do it again," Weir recalled. "That's how I felt. I didn't have the greatest day. It was my first crack at it. But I learned from it, and at the Masters I was able to pull through."
"I think (Gretzky's call) helped," Weir said. "On the very first hole of Sunday's round, I got kind of a bad break and hit it an inch in the rough and made a bogey. But from there on out I shot 8-under. I didn't let it bother me and stayed with it."
Gretzky downplays his mental pick-me-up.
"By no means am I responsible for making him the golfer he became," he said. "I just wanted to pass on to him that you can't get too down from not winning. You learn from what you went through and use that to your advantage the next time you get in that situation. Obviously I think that's what he did."
Winning his first PGA Tour event in his native country elevated Weir to the forefront in Canada's sports consciousness.
"For me to win my first event there was something I'll always remember," he said. "The first one is very special, and to do it in front of essentially hometown fans, it was incredible."
"That's when it started getting crazy," his father said. "He became a local hero and national figure."
