SPECIAL FEATURE Bruce Young Award-winning Golf Journalist and Commentator
Like Father Like Daughter West Australian amateur Kristie Smith’s golfing career is already stacked full of experience and achievements. She will soon head to college in the US but, before she does so, there is some unattended business to see to.
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he may not yet be the professional golfer she eventually wants to be, but, given the amount of time she is now spending playing tournaments around the world, Smith’s life currently resembles that of many of professional stars she hopes to contend against and beat before too long. As I spoke to her earlier this year during the US Girls Junior Championship in Charlotte in North Carolina, Smith looked back over the previous month or so, a period that had been somewhat of a whirlwind and one that had seen her elevate her status in junior golf to an even higher level. Just over a month earlier Smith had arrived in the US and had finished eighth in her first event, the Ping Junior Mirasol event in Florida. From there she headed to North Carolina where she won the first of two consecutive junior events, a Callaway PGA Junior series, event at Duke University, by 13 shots. A week later she won an American Junior Golf Association event at the famed Oak Tree Country Club in Oklahoma by five shots. In between the two victories Smith had managed to earn a place at the USGA Girls Junior Championship via final qualifying, and then a week after her win in Oklahoma she teed up in the final qualifying for the US Women’s Amateur where she topped the list of qualifiers at her venue. That performance earned her the right to play the most significant event in women’s amateur golf in Oregon in August. On the day that event started Smith would turn 18. Before the US Amateur Smith played in the Callaway World Junior Championship near San Diego where she struggled early in the event but played her back nine in the final round over the North Course at Torrey Pines in five under to finish eighth. 20
Kristie and father Wayne
On the surface, the campaign appears to be extensive and demanding for one so young and relatively inexperienced in tournament golf, but on closer analysis her capacity to handle whatever comes her way is perhaps easy to understand. Smith’s background in golf has already been significant, even away from playing the game. Her father, Wayne, was a relatively successful golfer, having gone to college in the USA and experienced success on both the Japan and Australasian Golf Tours. He won the Victorian PGA and the South Australian Open and as a result the younger Smith has been exposed to the game from a very early age and been safely guided through the early stages of her career. Born in Perth, Smith moved with her family to Margaret River at the age of 12 and it was at that time that she became serious about her golf. “I joined the Margaret River Golf Club then, but had been hitting balls at the range with my dad from about the age of 10 and joined the junior golf clinics at Wembley Golf Club in Perth before we headed down south. I really started to focus on practising and working hard on my game when we moved down there.” Smith was into sport of any type, but it would eventually come down to a choice between hockey and golf. She had played hockey in country Western Australia, but it became clear at about the age of 15 that she had a tremendous golfing talent and it was at that time that golf became the main focus. Womens GOLF December 2006