Trevor Immelman was 6 years old when he walked into his family’s living room in Somerset West, South Africa, and told his parents he was going to become one of the best golfers in the world.
Ah, the audacity of youth. Fortunately, his father, Johan, firmly believed in the importance of listening to his children.
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“I was immediately obsessed with this sport. I get goosebumps just saying that,” Trevor said Friday at a news conference ahead of the PNC Championship. “We used to record them on VHS and listen to them and watch golf all the time, professional golf all the time, and try to emulate those players and do the things that I saw them do on TV, hoping that one day I would get the opportunity.”
The first major tournament he watched as a child was the 1986 Masters won by Jack Nicklaus and it made a lasting impression.
“Everything I do from now on, the decision and the answer to the decision has to be: Is this going to help me get to the Masters one day?” » said Trevor.
Fred Couples and Trevor Immelman share a laugh while walking from the first tee during the second round of the 2024 PNC Championship at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando, Florida.
In the aftermath of Trevor’s bold statement, Johan turned to his wife, June, and said, “Two things can happen here. We can kill his vision instantly or we can choose to believe him. But here’s the trick: If we choose to believe him, what are we going to do?”
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To start, he built a putting green in the front yard of their South African home, complete with a bunker and floodlights. It became the home of Trevor’s Corner Shootout, an annual multi-day backyard competition. Johan mapped out an international schedule for Trevor, often communicating by fax in the pre-Internet era, and sent Trevor on the 19-hour trip to the United States solo.
“We put him on a plane with a credit card and an international phone card and said, ‘I hope to see you again,'” Johan once said. Golf Week.
But it also gave him all the tools to fuel his passion, which allowed him to win the 2008 Masters among his 11 world victories. In winning the green jacket, he held off Tiger Woods for one of his seven second-place finishes in majors, but it was one of the few times he got the better of Tiger.
“Every time I see him, I give him a hard time,” Trevor said. “I always told my kids that. I also have a younger daughter, Maya. I told them if you sent a Christmas card every year, you’d better send it to Tiger because without him we’d be in a different situation.”
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What Trevor achieved coming from a small suburb of Cape Town is remarkable in itself and it didn’t hurt that his parents supported his efforts to achieve the greatness he envisioned.
“It’s a pretty noble thing for a young kid to say, ‘I want to be a great golfer and win major championships,’ and for a parent to say, ‘OK, fine. We’ll empower you,'” said Mark, Trevor’s brother and fellow CBS golf commentator. “Kudos to my dad for being a visionary.”
Trevor passed on a love of the game to his son Jacob, a 20-year-old freshman at Clemson University, where he is a member of the golf team and studies finance. It’s unclear whether the children of professional golfers will show the same affection for the game as their father, but the apple hasn’t fallen too far from the tree with Jacob, who will partner Trevor at the PNC Championship for a second straight year.
“I think the reason I love it is because it was never forced on me,” Jacob said. “I feel like if it’s forced on you, you might end up hating it. So playing it and falling in love with it was my whole decision.”
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Team Immelman fits pretty well into the philosophy of what makes the PNC Championship such a beloved event for both participants, fans and viewers at home. While Trevor’s current focus is on the world’s best players, he tried to dust off his clubs for the two-day 36-hole scramble competition and his son said they had been practicing playing in the popular format.
“I’m not a golfer anymore, so I have to go back in time in my mind to remember some good shots I hit in the past,” Trevor said. “Over the last few weeks we’ve been trying to practice a bit and hopefully we won’t embarrass ourselves over the next few days.”
This article was originally published on Golfweek: Trevor Immelman tells his kids to send Tiger Woods a Christmas card
